Have you ever deeply thought what kind of factors can affect people’s food choices? Most people choose an urban lifestyle. It means that people eat large amounts of red meat, intake high-fat dairy food, and eat refined grains in their daily life. Of course, they include me. Nowadays, more and more people now aware that they should eat less meat. But most people are trying to change in order to improve their health.
Most of the time, when people purchase their meat products, people usually concerned about nutritional values in meat, meat hygiene or taste. Neither diet habit nor consumption habit is hard to link animal welfare to food choices. As for me, after reading the article, I already think animal welfare is an important issue. I will take animal welfare into consideration for my food choices because animal welfare affects food safety, environmental pollution and relates to animal abuse.
Animal welfare plays an important role in my food choices because it affects food safety. Animal welfare is that use ethical way to treat animals. People should respect animals, and believe that animals are sentient. People must consider their well-being or suffering, such as the living space, transport conditions, slaughter methods. Indeed, food safety directly affected by the welfare of animals because poor welfare and animal health issue lead to food-borne diseases. For example, Salmonella, E.Coli and mad cow disease, they all can pass infection bacteria by food-borne. This a fatal infection produced a toxin that destroyed human bodies.
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As Laurie Snyder in the article “Whence the Beef mentions that consumers have high opportunities to eat nerve tissue (the brain and spinal cord) of cattle. “cows walking up the slaughterhouse line are often killed with a blow to the head, which can spew bits of brain into the muscle. That there’s a process called “advanced meat recovery in which the meat-later ground into tasty sausages or ballpark hot dogs-is sheared so close to the bone that there’s a decent chance the meat contains spinal cord tissue. (Snyder 116)
It brings high risks to consumers. For example, September 19, 2018 outbreak coli O26 in Colorado. Public health and Regulatory Officials recalled ground beef products. It was due cattle was raised through poor condition, and fed a large of numbers corn instead of grass. In fact, food safety relies on how people manage animals. As for me, I will reduce to eat meat products. It is not only to help me improve my health but also decrease animal loss. For example, I could eat plant-based products instead of meat products. Moreover, animal welfare plays an important role in my food choices because it affects environmental pollution.
The feedlot is the vital part in raising of cattle in the U.S because it can produce billion tons pounds of beef every year. Therefore, the most serious environmental pollution close linked to the feedlot, such as polluted water and air, toxic wastes, novel and deadly pathogens. As Michael Pollan mentioned, cattle was suffered because they were irritated by feedlot dust. Especially, in the summer months. When the cattle raised dust, workers had to spray water in order to keep it down. It formed fecal dust, and caused air pollution. In addition, cattle manure caused water pollution. In the process of raised cattle, the cattle produced a mass of manure in feedlot pens.
When it rained, rainfall water infiltrated soil surface with manure. It polluted surface water and groundwater. Manure storage also is known as the lagoon. If it leaked, it contaminated groundwater and steams. All of these affect humans health. For example, surface and groundwater contained nitrogen and phosphorus from manure. High levels of nitrates caused babies to have “blue baby syndrome”. It threated babies’ lives. Finally, animal welfare plays an important role in my food choices because it related to animal abuse
. Animal abuse abounds exists in the factory farm industry. For instance, Laying hens were confined to battery cages caused they were a huge crowd gathered. It was hard to stretch their wings. Birds must trim their beaks to prevent them from fighting with each other. The toxic air was hurting birds respiratory systems and can cause they blindness. More terrible things happen to chicks born male. They were killed when they alive or were thrown into trash bags to suffocate. When I went to a supermarket, I never buy a dozen large white eggs at $1.29. Because of people used cruel ways to raise them. I concerned about animal welfare of the products I buy. I will select food with higher animal welfare standards, like free-cage eggs. Using nature way to raise them.
Make sure they can get fresh air and sunshine, enough spaces and grass. Before reading this article, I never put animal welfare into my food choices. Now, I have a new view because animal welfare affects food safety, environmental pollution and relates to animal abuse. People can get a higher quality product when we raise them of the human way and keep them healthy.
