Joel Sparks did make some good points in his article, “Zoology students’ letter was misleading, accusatory” (SN 11/1). However, he never mentioned why farm animals need antibiotics to stay alive. Virtually all farm animals live out their lives on what are considered factory farms.
Egg-laying hens are housed in tiny wire cages where they can’t even spread their wings. Egg-laying hens and chickens are typically given less than half a square foot of floor space per bird. That is less than three-fourths the size of a sheet of paper.
Because the birds are kept in such extreme confinement, they resort to pecking each other. The farm industry has decided the solution to this is to not give the birds more space, but to cut their beaks off.
The beak is a very sensitive part of a bird’s body. This practice is done to egg-laying hens, chickens and most turkeys and ducks.
Pigs are castrated and have their tails cut off without any anesthesia. Sows spend most of their lives in tiny gestation and farrowing crates. These crates do not even allow enough room for the animal to turn around.
Many chickens, turkeys, hens, pigs and cows literally suffer to death before they even reach the slaughterhouse.
According to a 2006 report by the Livestock, Environment and Development Initiative, the livestock industry is one of the largest contributors to environmental degradation worldwide and “the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.”
I want to urge everyone to consider going vegetarian or at least cutting back on their meat consumption.
Phil Letten, 2009 MSU graduate
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