In the Mc Libel case, from 1994, 2 activists, Helen and Dave, took McDonalds to court battling against them on several points. One of those points was that McDonalds is culpably responsible for animal cruelty. Today we will discuss this issue further. We will be basing our cases on true evidence and facts that we have seen on the video and work sheets we have been given.
Mc Donald's is the world's largest user of beef, approximating to 6% of the worlds cattle. The chicken farmers that are the major suppliers of McDonalds chickens and eggs raise up to 27 million chickens per year, in intensive farming. .
McDonalds use intensive farming producing eggs via battery hens because it is a cheap method, and cuts a lot of costs, that can be used on other things. .
Imagine being a battery hen, spending majority of your life sitting on a piece of wire, mass-producing eggs everyday. Suppliers to McDonalds, switch the lights on and off in the sheds twice everyday, so the battery hens are deceived into believing 2 days have passed in the time space of one, therefore producing double the amount of eggs.
At the current time, there is no proof that animals can aquire feelings as complex as those developed in humans, so we cannot attribute human feelings such as boredom and pain, to the battery hens. If the method of turning the lights of twice a day works sufficiently for the suppliers, why wouldn't you use it, then you have double the amount of eggs per day.
In these intensive farming chicken coups, 1000 unwanted chickens are gassed everyday, and a further 4000 die every week. When the chickens are killed for meat, they have their throats cut on a production line, by a metal razor, which is particularily unhygienic, not to mention inhumane.
Inhumane again attributes human feelings to these animals. The razors used are sterile. In the meat industry the suffering of animals is inevitable. .
What is inhumane is the FDA regulations, allowing dead horses and pigs to be used in the cattle feed with other dead poultry.