Our Daily Bread
The video, Our Daily Bread, is about food production in the farms and how the food is utilized by the consumers. It elaborates the methods that are used to harvest or collect the food products. The method that is employed in harvesting crops and animals in the video are almost similar. In the farms, machines are used to harvest ripe produce and the same is done with animals. There is no compassion that is shown towards these animals at all. In the video, animals are treated as if they are impervious to pain. Chicks are separated from the grown hens when they are still very tender and handled without caution, they are thrown around and some are inspected and separated due to some unclear reason but most likely because they are dead. The mating of animals is controlled. A bull is timed and when it mounts the cow then there is interference by someone. The video also shows pigs running in fear from a person who marks them with some paint and leads them to a tunnel where they come out from the opposite side dead. The pigs seem to be afraid owing to the sound they produce when they are annexed to go through the tunnel. The video is like a comparison between how animal and vegetable food products are produced. They are both carried out by the use of machines for faster production.
It is however very traumatizing to see how these operations are carried out. For example, when a calf is brought out of the cow who is still conscious and alive. The animals are capable of feeling pain and some of these practices are wrong and should be illegal. How the cows are shot in the head is also a very saddening scene. Some struggle but their struggles are in vain as they are put in a container that limits their movements before they are shot in the head and then die. The animals seem to undergo pain as they are murdered for food. Some methods especially those that are used to produce vegetable food products are good. The crops are grown and nurtured properly, a suitable condition is provided to ensure that they thrive. For example, the use of sprinklers to water crops or carrying out greenhouse farming which are impressive ways of producing food. Milking of cows using machines is also done in places where their movements are limited, they can barely turn or move and if it is done for long hours then this is torture. Animals should be free and allowed to roam, reproduce and take care of their young ones the best way they know how. The video has shown different instances where the young ones of animals are taken away from them or allowed limited access. Piglets are taken away from their mothers breastfeed them through cages.
The video also shows hens hanging with their heads barely attached to their body facing the ground, their bodies move helplessly as if they are in pain while they bleed out. The video shows how the animals suffer and are exploited so that people can have food. Animals are exploited for their eggs, meat, and milk but robbed the freedom to enjoy their lives. The plants are however harvested in their natural setting and left to produce more for consumption.
Meet Your Meat
This is a video that warns about animal cruelty and advices people on how they should choose their meals as this has an impact on the lives of animals. The video aims at persuading people to stop eating animal products so that the cruelty shown to animals when they are raised for food can be reduced. Birds that are reared for food such as turkeys and hens are shown to be suffering in the hands of those people who rear them. Some of the hens die due to starvation because of their huge size hat can no longer support them and carry them to where there is food. Farmers beat up sick and injured turkeys with a metal rod with the aim of killing them but always leave them injured and conscious which adds to the suffering of these birds. This should be illegal as the birds also have the ability to feel pain. Such animal cruelty should be punishable by the law. It is however, ironical that this is an acceptable and legal exercise in the industry. The condition in which the hens are kept especially those that lay eggs is also very unpleasant. Their movement is restricted and sometimes starved. It is wrong to treat an animal that can feel pain with such cruelty because even if they cannot actually speak, they suffer at the hands of the farmers so that we can have food.
The video explains the ordeal that cattle face at the hands of the farmers. Branding, castrating and chopping off of horns are some of the things that cattle actually pass through. All these things are done to an animal that is alive and conscious without using painkillers meaning that they feel all the pain there is. Some of these body parts are important to the animal for its own gain, for example, castrating an animal takes away its ability to reproduce. Cows also suffer when they are taken to slaughter, their throats are slit and they die slowly by bleeding out while their blood is harvested. They are hung with their heads facing down which is a very slow and painful death. This is making the animals suffer deliberately which is morally wrong. Calves also suffer as some have difficulty in walking as a result of their diet. They are also taken away from their mothers at a tender age and sold denying them the motherly love that they deserve.
Pigs are reared in cages which allows for little to no movement at all. Their young ones are also taken away from them, castrated, their tails cut off and their ears mutilated without any pain killers which causes them a lot of pain. Pigs who do not grow as required sometimes are slammed head first on concrete floors. This is also a very painful death that these pigs are subjected to. Their throats are also cut at the slaughter and they are left to die a slow and painful death. If they are capable of suffering just like humans, then we should put ourselves in their situation and for example imagine how dying the way that they do feels. We should imagine how being burnt alive feels like. Animals have the right to live a life that is free from suffering and exploitation just because they are animals. Such cruelty makes humans more animal than them.
Work Cited
“Our Daily Bread,” YouTube, uploaded by Surya Teja 26 April 2015. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddxo7QSiqfs