In Jeffrey Burton Russell's Prince of Darkness, moral evil is described as "when an intelligent being knowingly and deliberately inflicts suffering upon another sentient being." Throughout the semester, the plays we've read have applied this concept to a more literal sense of evil. With characters such as Magus in David Mamet's Faust, Jack in David Aguirre-Sacasa's Say You Love Satan, and Lucy in Qui Nguyen and Robert Parker's A Beginner's Guide To Deicide whose objectives are to collect a character's soul, kill pure innocent youth to preserve their own, and destroy humanity to ultimately kill God himself, it is easy to label them as evil. But in life it is not as simple to point out evil as it is in theatre. Sometimes our "Satan" is more abstract. In my essay I am choosing to discuss the United States agribusiness, specifically the meat industry, and how it is difficult to classify it as evil because of its benefits to society.
We live in a world in which meat, a product which requires the death of living beings, is extremely accessible ; with the price of beef costs 30% less than it did in 1970 ("Modern Meat"). On the surface this seems great; cheaper food that is easily accessible is good for our society; however, there are many problems with how the U.S. is currently attaining inexpensive meat. The United States meat industry has become extremely centralized, as a few giant corporations have slowly made their way to total dominance of the business. This new system of industrialized farming may have led to low-cost meat but it has also introduced many new risks. The United States agroindustry focuses solely on maximizing production and profit. For the sake of humans, animals, and the environment, the U.S. should remove itself from industrialized farming and revert to a more modest, diverse style of farming.
One of the key elements in the radical change of the United States meat industry was the influence of corn, which in turn has created severe problems for the people, animals, and the environment.
