Animal Cruelty As A Global Issue
Animal cruelty is a worldwide issue. Animals have no voice of their own. Animals suffer abuse, torture, and injustice all over the world. Creatures all over suffer abuse through passive cruelty in homes where they are ill-treated and not properly cared for, they are abused as guard dogs in business places where they spend their whole life on the end of a chain or muzzled. These are just a couple of examples but animal cruelty is extensive. Animal cruelty results in thousands of helpless, innocent animals being hurt physically or emotionally every day, and if people work together and try to eradicate this problem, they can!
Animal cruelty exists in many forms whether it be passive or active cruelty, from being given food or water (passive, neglect) or as horrific a civilian tossing bricks at a kangaroo or a more organized form of abuse like animal testing in a lab (active cruelty).
Every sixty seconds, an animal is hurt. Animal abuse is happening all around the world at this moment. Globally, animals are suffering daily as they are wounded, tortured, mercilessly hunted and even left neglected to die.
On February 28, 2018, a twelve-year-old female kangaroo in the Fuzhou Zoo in Fujian province, China, was killed due to an incident of animal abuse. The 12 year old kangaroo is now dead because tourists pulled bricks from the pavement of the zoo and repeatedly hurled them at the kangaroo, killing her and injuring another kangaroo in the process. Does anyone even know what happens behind the walls of the ASPCA? Every year, 1.5 million shelter animals are euthanized. Euthanization is not the solution to address animal overpopulation because animals deserve as many rights as I do. Whoever gave humans the right to decide if an animal gets to keep their life or end it? Humans should not kill each other nor should they kill innocent animals. There is something wrong there and people need to fix it. People need to accept responsibility to have their domestic animals spayed or neutered to avoid overpopulation and long-term euthanization.
Maybelline is one of the biggest cosmetic companies in the world and practices and supports animal testing. Cosmetic companies like Maybelline are responsible for the death of over 62 million animals each year. These cosmetic companies do not practice humane ways to handle the animals. In some cases, the animal’s cages are no bigger than the palm of the world’s hands. Sometimes, the animal’s bones are broken just to get them to fit into the cages. Some animals spend their whole life without walking or getting any physical activity and stimulation. These animals suffer excruciating pain for months on end just to be euthanized in the end. Some of the cruel procedures that these animals endure are: blinding due to their eyes having constant interaction with chemicals, being pumped up with steroids to keep them from dying and sometimes, due to various acids, their fur and skin completely burn away leaving their bones and muscles exposed.
Animal abuse also takes place with the argument that is it for human medical use. Since 1923, chimpanzees have been used in medical research, pioneered by Biologist Robert Yerkes. Chimps were used because they have the same DNA make up as humans. They are used in various experiments as animal models for human diseases, because like humans, they can contract nearly all diseases, for example HIV, Hepatitis A, B, and C. Chimpanzees are also used in research for heart transplant, alcoholism, aging, social and maternal deprivation, oral contraceptives, as well as skull impact research. Some of the effects are, animals get depressed and try to hurt/kill themselves, and animals can also hurt/kill other animals in the lab.
Animals all over the world are also killed every day for human consumption. This is a big problem because, due to the growing meat industry, farmers are rearing more and more animals to supply the demand for meat. This means that since there is a huge increase in the number of animals being bred, more and more food will be required to feed these animals. To grow the food fast enough, farmers need more land in order to grow the quantity of crops needed to meet the demand. As a result, farmers are now buying acres of land in the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil, the world’s largest natural resource, and practicing slash and burn to clear the land for planting the crops. This results in the death of millions of animals, some of which are now becoming extinct in the rainforest due to habitat loss.
Farmed animals like pigs, goats, cows, and chickens are as intelligent as dogs or cats yet most of these animals spend their lives in such confined spaces that they are unable to move. These spaces are usually overcrowded and not kept clean for the animals. (Mercy for animals.org) Do people think about the living conditions for these animals when we buy our food? We are consuming animals that reared in cruel conditions and suffer severe stress.
Human entertainment is not to be taken lightly, as this industry is one of the main contributors to animal cruelty. The 300-year-old Gadhimai Festival in India is a festival where millions of animals are slaughtered for sacrifice. Animals are decapitated and sacrificed as people believe that this will bring them good fortune, by the Gods keep giving them life, ending evil and bringing prosperity. This festival is extremely gruesome. Men, women, and children all gather around to watch baby calves being decapitated and witness the demise of the headless body of the animal as it clammers to the ground. Thousands of goats, calves, dogs, and chickens are killed during this ritual. It is estimated that in 2009, two hundred fifty-thousand animals were killed for the festival all under the umbrella of religious beliefs.
In circuses, animals are often born into captivity and undergo torture to get them to perform tricks. Elephants are chained by their feet with spiked rings. They are also beaten with a bullhook to make them do uncomfortable tricks, such as standing on their heads or balancing on a beam. Animals in a circus have lost all of their values for life such as social interaction amongst each other and all their hunting instincts as they live in captivity. Thankfully, some countries have taken a step in the right direction and have banned circuses. Australia, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, El Salvador, Greece, Israel, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, Paraguay, Peru, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia are the champions of this cause and hopefully, with continued education and awareness, other countries will follow in their footsteps.
Seaworld is a popular attraction for tourists to witness animals being forced to perform outside their natural habitat. Seaworld generates millions of dollars annually and is one of the many companies that take innocent animals from their natural habitat and torture them for the entertainment of humans. Seaworld opened their cruel doors on March 15th, 1959. Seaworld uses many inhumane methods to train some of their many attraction animals. Some of these torturous procedures include starvation, injections to various nerves in the whale's bodies and many more. Seaworld also puts a lot of pressure on the whales which are captive to this establishment, because whales are very social animals and when the whales are not out in the arena performing, they are sometimes locked up in dark sheds while suffering starvation. These whales only get to interact with each other when they are performing or, when they are forced to mate. When these whales do eventually mate, the young calves are taken from their mothers from as young as three months old, to be sold to other parks. This causes both the mother and the calf emotional distress for the rest of their lives. The mothers sometimes are so distressed they go on a rampage killing or injuring themselves or others. The whales then pay for these actions with horrible punishment such as being burned with hot iron or starvation.
Despite the many animal activist groups and organizations for the protection of animal rights that now exist globally e.g. Cruelty-Free International, Animal Justice Project and the Animal Liberation Front, just to name a few, there is still a lot of work to be done. Not long ago, international news agencies reported continued trophy hunting in Africa as this is big business there, generating several millions of dollars for the economy. This inhumane practice is acclaimed as “human recreation.” On account of this practice, the lion population in Africa has decreased by almost half over the past twenty years. == CNN Some may argue that this is beneficial to the economy, but keeping only certain body parts of the hunted “trophy” animal is inhumane. The “Big Five” trophy species includes recreational hunting for lions, elephants, rhinos, buffalo, and leopards in Africa. From 2005-2014, over 30,000 of these “trophies” were imported to the United States. (trophy hunting - Wikipedia)
All animals, domestic as well as those living in the wild, deserve to be safe and treated with respect by humans. Animal cruelty is a global issue, whether it is animal testing in China or deforestation and animal slaughter in Brazil or mass animal murder in India, trophy hunting in Africa, the abuse and cruelty of farmed animals and many more. In fact, animal cruelty occurs in homes, businesses including farms, and in the wild throughout the world, in many different forms. It is people’s civic duty to protect these animals and be their voice and continue to pursue animal rights. Animals must be protected and not be forced to struggle to survive. They must be treated humanely and not have to endure any pain and suffering.
