It is morally wrong for humans to eat animals.

Modern Animal Agriculture In the production of animal products, we confine animals for their entire lives and make them miserable. They are denied proper veterinary care, free space to move around and exercise, appropriate social interaction with members of their species, and anesthesia during the process of castration and other mutilations. Once these animals reach market weight, they are sent to a slaughterhouse where they are hung upside down and have their throat slit. This causes an immense amount of suffering and the animals are condemned to hang there dangling, while they scream in agony. Here is a short documentary of a collection of videos recorded by animal rights activist across the United States. From Farm to Fridge: The video I linked is not meant to spark an appeal to emotion. I put it there as evidence to support my claims, and to show the reality of today's modern farms. Here is a quote from a professor of animal science at Oregon State University who teaches people about animal agriculture. He says "If most urban meat-eaters were to visit an industrial broiler house, to see how the birds are raised, and could see the birds being 'harvested' and then being 'processed' in a poultry processing plant, some, perhaps many of them, would swear off eating chicken and perhaps all meat." - Peter R. Cheeke, Professor of Animal Science, Oregon State University The Ethical Argument Since the animals that are raised for our food endure a life of suffering, and are prematurely killed in brutal methods, I don't see a moral justification for continuing to eat them. We don't need to eat meat or any other kind of animal product in order to be healthy (which I will show later on in this essay.) So clearly, we have a case where we are causing suffering and death to sentient beings for reasons of pleasure, satisfaction, or amusement, which cannot be justified. To demonstrate this, let me use the example of dog fighting. Most people realize that just because a person may enjoy causing dogs to fight, those are not in themselves good enough reasons to inflict harm on those dogs. Same situation should apply to eating animals. Health The American Dietetic Association explains on their website that "appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes." This shows that we don't need to eat animals in order to be healthy. Link to their site: http://www.eatright.org... The Killing Plants Objection This is one of the most common arguments meat and dairy eaters make. It is an attempt to justify the continued killing of animals for food. The argument states that if it is morally wrong to kill animals, then it is also morally wrong to kill plants. In my view, only beings with conscious desires can be harmed in the morally significant since, so things like bacteria or a plant can't be harmed in the moral since. I don't think plants matter morally because they are not sentient. A plant is not a subject of conscious experiences and other mental states, who has interest, desires and a capacity to feel pleasure and pain like a nonhuman animal. Since plants lack all these characteristics, I fail to see how they can have any moral value. However, if we truly were concerned about plants, then I should inform the plant's rights activist that we would destroy less plants if we ate them directly, instead of feeding them to billions of land animals that we are going to kill for food. This means vegans, ironically, kill less plants than meat eaters do. World Hunger We feed large amounts of grain and soybeans to feed animals, and in doing so we waste most of the food value of the grains that we're feeding them. Depending on the species, the animals may return to us somewhere between 1/10th and 1/3rd of the food value of the grains and soybeans that we put into them. So we are just wasting huge amounts of food in order to produce the large amount of animal products. It would be better and more practical if we fed our grains and soybeans to people, instead of feeding them to billions of land animals. One acre of land can yield 30,000 pounds of carrots, 40,000 pounds of potatoes or 50,000 pounds of tomatoes. However, one acre of land can yield only 250 pounds of meat, which means that a meat and dairy diet is an unsuccessful way to combat world hunger, and that a vegan diet is a superior alternative. This is why Food For Life Global, the world's largest feed the hungry organization, only serves plant based food. As well as Everybody Gets Fed, Earth Save and Plenty. Links to their sites: http://www.ffl.org... http://www.earthsave.org... http://www.everybodyfed.com... http://plenty.org... Here is an article by Jeremy Rifkin explaining how we waste grain by feeding it to billions of animals: http://articles.latimes.com... The Environment According to the research of Professors Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin, the World Watch Institute's report, and the November 2006 report from the United Nations, animal agriculture is one of the top contributors to environmental destruction. Links to their reports here: http://www.fao.org... http://www.worldwatch.org... http://pge.uchicago.edu... Conclusion In this essay I have demonstrated that eating animals has some very negative consequences, not just for the animals, but for the environment, and world hunger. Therefore we must accept that eating animals is morally wrong.