The Case for a Plant-Based Diet - Free Essay Example

There are countless reasons to stop the raising and slaughter of farmed animals for food, including health, environmental, and humanitarian concerns. My main reasons for not eating meat or dairy products are humanitarian, but in this paper, I will try to make the case for ceasing the raising of farmed animals for the sake of the environment and vulnerable people groups, in our own and in other countries, who raise animals or animal feed to satisfy Americans’ taste for animal flesh. Good! People shrug and say that eating meat is â€Å"natural†, that humans have always done it, and that’s the way it is—and, evidently, that’s the way it should continue to be. Really? Isaac Bashevis Singer said, â€Å"People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.† In fact, eating meat the way we now do it is not â€Å"natural† at all. According to Dr. Neil Barnard â€Å"[M]eat-eating probably began by scavenging—eating the leftovers that carnivores had left behind. However, our bodies have never adapted to it.† In talking about humans’ early diet, Barnard explains that we â€Å"had diets very much like other great apes, which is to say a largely plant-based diet †¦. To this day, meat-eaters have a higher incidence of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other problems.† (The Power of Your Plate) Very good! Nature is cruel; industrializing that cruelty is wrong. ( 2018 U.S. Animal Kill Clock) â€Å"No other country raises and slaughters its food animals quite as intensively or brutally as we do. Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to raise, kill, and eat animals the way we do. Tail docking and sow crates and beak clipping would disappear overnight, and the days of slaughtering four hundred head of cattle an hour would promptly come to an end — for who could stand the sight?† (Pollan 333) In 2014, in the U.S. alone, nine billion land animals were killed to produce meat, dairy, and eggs for human consumption. One million animals per hour were slaughtered. Globally, 70 billion were killed. The number of aquatic animals slaughtered annually is in the trillions. (https://awfw.org/factory-farms/; https://awfw.org/factory-farms/) No one wants to think about this stuff, let alone see it: â€Å"Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand that something terribly wrong is happening. Our sustenance now comes from misery. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film. We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own.† (Foer, 2013) Farmed animals are not the only victims of the industrialized animal slaughter in the U.S. There are not enough agents to inspect the conditions inside slaughterhouses, leaving industry to set rules and standards that most benefit them and their â€Å"bottom line†. Those who do the dangerous, stressful, demeaning work of killing tens of thousands of animals for others to consume are left unprotected. â€Å"Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science Ive discussed, that something terribly wrong is happening. Our sustenance now comes from misery. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film. We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own.† Slaughterhouses are operated in remote or rural areas, far from the eyes of urban populations and those who don’t want to know how they get their meat, and slaughterhouse workers come from the most marginalized and vulnerable populations among us. Most are people of color from low-income communities. (https://www.kbia.org/post/largest-slaughterhouses-mostly-rural-communities#stream/0) Once mostly African-American, many are now Latin-American. Thirty-eight percent are foreign-born, often recruited by the corporations for whom they work. Many are undocumented, knowingly hired by employers to meet high turnover rates. (https://southernspaces.org/2013/low-wage-legacies-race-and-golden-chicken-mississippi-where-contemporary-immigration-meets) Many others are convicted felons, often in â€Å"pre-release† programs, unable to find employment elsewhere. And finally, most are â€Å"at-will† employeesunprotected from being fired. Undocumented workers live in fear of ICE raids or deportation by employers. Under these circumstances, few are willing to report abuse or mistreatment on the job. (Slaughterhouse Workers:The Forgotten Victims of the Meat Industry) Animal production for consumption by the developed world hurts the environment in the undeveloped world. Seventy percent of agricultural land and thirty percent of the global land surface devoted to animal production results in adverse effects on all aspects of environmental well-being. Biodiversity loss is extensive, with one-sixth of global species loss. The social cost to local, indigenous populations is extremely high, with widespread loss of local incomes due to the expansion of soybean production in former rain-forested areas in South America. Relentless deforestation to support the meat production industry has resulted in the irretrievable loss of billions of acres of carbon-rich rainforests, and displacement of indigenous ways of living and disruption of long settled property rights has given rise to widespread poverty and social breakdown. Loss of life-sustaining resources includes the deterioration of water due to run-off from the vast amounts of artificial fertilizers and pesticides used to produce animal feed, the sharp rise in greenhouse gases from methane production of animals, and the waste and pollution generated from cattle housed in highly concentrated numbers, and discharges of ammonia and nitrous oxides connected with intensive cattle feeding. (Francis) Meat-eating hurts the most vulnerable, disproportionately people of color. The U.S. alone grows enough feed for livestock to nourish 800 million human beings in the world who currently do not have enough to eat. The world produces enough food to feed everyone. Of 7.3 billion people in the world, 795 million suffer chronic undernourishment in 2016and almost all of them live in developing countries. It does not have to be this way. Meat-eating is a leading cause of climate change, producer of green gases, the reason for excessive water use, waste production, chemical pollution, enormous land use, rainforest deforestation, pollution of oceans, overfishing, and, as previously mentioned, species extinction. Beef-eaters use 160 times more land resources than plant-eaters. Beef requires 88% of all U.S. land allocated to producing animal-based calories. In contrast, sustainable plant-based diets help people, animals, and the planet. The one acre of land needed to produce 250 pounds of beef could grow 50,000 pounds of tomatoes, 53,000 pounds of potatoes, or 30,000 pounds of carrots. The average person who eats a plant-based diet can save 162,486 gallons a year and cut their carbon footprint in half. if every American stopped eating meat, we could redirect enough grain from the livestock system to feed 1.4 billion people. For growing numbers of people, not eating meat is an ethical choice on behalf of fellow creatures who have no choice and no voice—human and nonhuman alike. It is about not supporting an industry that profits from the suffering of billions of animals and harms the earth and millions of humans in the process. In closing, here is a quote my favorite humanitarian, Dr. Albert Schweitzer: â€Å"We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.† Great facts and strong quotes—wonderful job!! Works Cited: 2018 U.S. Animal Kill Clock. 2018. Foer, Jonathan Safran. Eating Animals. New York, Boston, London: Little, Brown Company, 2013 Little, Brown Company. Francis, Taylor . The Challenge of Common Pool Resources. Environment Magazine 29 April 2015. https://www.kbia.org/post/largest-slaughterhouses-mostly-rural-communities#stream/0. n.d. https://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/beef-eaters-plant-eaters-land-resources/. n.d. https://awfw.org/factory-farms/. n.d. https://listverse.com/2015/11/25/10-negative-effects-the-meat-industry-has-on-the-world/. n.d. https://southernspaces.org/2013/low-wage-legacies-race-and-golden-chicken-mississippi-where-contemporary-immigration-meets. n.d. Pollan, Michael. The Omnivores Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals . New York: The Penguin Press, 2006. Slaughterhouse Workers:The Forgotten Victims of the Meat Industry. 6 December 2017. www.livekindly.co/slaughterhouse-workers-victims-meat-industry/.

A Study On Cross Cultural Groups And Organizations

A Dutch Social psychologist, Geert Hofstede carried out research studies on cross-cultural groups and organizations. He defined culture as a collective programing of the mind that makes the members of one group different from those of another group. His studies were instrumental in the developing of a systematic framework that is used in the assessment and the differentiation of organizational and national cultures. The framework was designed to show how a society’s culture affects the values of the members, and also, how the values relate to their behaviors. Hofstede was born on October 2nd 1982 and was an employee of IBM. At IBM International, Hofstede worked as a trainer in management and also as a manager of research on personnel. It is at this point, when he made a transition into psychology from engineering. He was highly recognized through his work on developing the cultural dimensions theory. His work was found useful by scholars and practitioners who took interest in the relationships between different cultures. His position in IBM International gave him opportunities to interact with and study different cultures around the world. This is because IBM had over 70 subsidiaries in different countries around the world. Hofstede travelled and conducted surveys and interviews in different parts of the world regarding people’s behaviors in their workplaces and how they interacted. Hofstede collected large amounts of data and analyzed it through different ways, whichShow MoreRelatedAnalysis : Managing Across Borders1132 Words   |  5 PagesMany studies have highlighted the fact that culture influences the way of thinking of an individual that can have major impact on the communication pattern of the strategies (Mazanec et al. 2015). 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Considering this, multinational corporations (MNC) must be highly sensitive towards cross cultural management in orde r for them to expand, implement their strategies and achieveRead MoreCross Cultural Leadership And Diversity975 Words   |  4 PagesA511.8.4.CM - Leadership Concept Map Chapters 14 Cross-cultural Leadership and Diversity Globalization and changing demographic patterns are making it more important for leaders to understand how to influence and manage people with different values, beliefs, and expectations. There has been more leadership research on cross†cultural aspects and gender differences than on other types of diversity (Ospina Foldy, 2009). Importance of Cross-cultural Research Leaders must also be able to understandRead MoreThe Global Environment That Multinational Corporations ( Mncs ) Essay1583 Words   |  7 PagesDue to the changes, globalisation has caused through the butterfly effect, multiculturalism and diversity are becoming important topics for many MNCs globally (DeLancey, 2013). Numerous methods have been implemented by MNCs in order to capture cross-cultural differences in the workplace and how these can be readily applied to change management objectives in order to remain competitive and relevant in the ever-evolving business environment. This literature review will consider the significance that

Violence Against Women During The United States - 2143 Words

Violence Against Women The topic this policy analysis assignment will focus on is violence against women in the United States. Seven in ten women experience some form of violence in their lifetime (Unite, n.d.). To curtail violence against women, the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 created the first U.S. federal legislation acknowledging domestic violence and sexual assault as crimes, and provided federal resources to encourage community-coordinated responses to combat violence (nnedv.org, n.d.). A question to be pursued for this project is how much has violence against women improved over the last decade? According to CBS News in 2013, â€Å"Rates (of rapes and sexual assaults) declined from a peak of 5 per 1,000 women in 1995 to 1.8 per†¦show more content†¦The importance of this issue to the development of social welfare policy is that personal safety falls under the umbrella of social welfare. Female citizens have a right to feel safe and protected, and the violence being committed against women is negating this right for women. Thankfully, the VAWA has recognized the past failure of society to provide protection for women, and so it has been enacted to improve these conditions. In the policy analysis assignment, the Violence Against Women Act will be analyzed and its history will be discussed, as well as the details of what it entails, the unintended consequences, how effective it is, and what changes could be made to it. The analysis will be completed by gathering information from the Internet, specifically scholarly resources and U.S. government documents. The Handbook of Social Policy will also be a main source of information, as well as any other books that address the issue of violence against women. There will only be one person conducting this analysis and the imagined role of that person will be citizens’ advocate. Discussing the nature of the issue, violence against women includes females of all ages, race, and socioeconomic status, who are being violated through acts of physical and sexual violence, as well as psychological abuse. It is not just

David Ulrich Contributions in Hr Roles free essay sample

David Ulrich is known to be an HR Guru, who defined the HR Roles model that are commonly used in the market. The model is well known for introducing mainly the characteristics of Human Resources with the highest value added. The contribution of David Ulrich in defining Human Resource roles are given below: Â  Strategic Partner is about alignment of Human Resource activities and initiatives with the global business strategy and it is the task of the HR Management and HR Business Partners. Sometimes, it sounds easy to implement Strategic Partnership, but it needs a lot of effort from Human Resources.Change Agent is a very important area of the Ulrich’s HR Model. Change agent is about supporting the change and transition of the business in the area of the human capital in the organization. The role of Human Resources is the support for change activities in the change effort area and ensuring the capacity for the changes. We will write a custom essay sample on David Ulrich Contributions in Hr Roles or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Employee Champion is a very important role of Human Resources. The employee advocate knows what employees need and HRM should know it. The employee advocate is able to take care about the interest of employees and to protect them them during the process of the change in the organization. Administrative Expert changes over the period of time. In the beginning, it was just about ensuring the maximum possible quality of delivered services, but nowadays the stress is put on the possibility to provide quality service at the lowest possible costs to the organization. All the HR Roles defined by Ulrich are essential for the success of the whole HRM Function. The stress must be put to all the areas; there is no chance to select one and to excel in this one concrete area. Many HRM Managers forget to balance the approach and they decide to be a real star in one of the needed components and they forget about the danger not meeting the basic requests and expectations in the rest.