The many people that support major corporations that produce animal based products have increased dramatically over the years. Major corporations such as McDonalds and KFC are just some of the many that have to battle it out with the animal rights activists PETA has influenced. Not only does PETA influence its supporters but they influence us as well. If you can think of one thing that we all see and come in contact with everyday, one of the first things is the media. Not only does PETA use the media to their advantage to put images into peoples minds of the treatment of animals, but they can also create different points of views by grabbing one of our most easily victimized age groups, our youth. Young adult minds are well known for soaking up information up like a sponge. Putting images and thoughts that can be very offensive to some, into these young adult minds has become a problem for many. This is why there are many people that would rather support the animal based product industry rather than the animal rights organization.
One of the biggest animal-based products we use and consume is meat. The whole topic of meat brings up how we get the meat in the first place. Slaughterhouses are used throughout the U.S and in the world. In 2005 four different companies alone were processing 80 percent of the United States meat (Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation). Not only is the demand for meat high, but also so are the risks that come with this high demand. When animals are slaughtered, there is a high risk for people's health. Any presence of fecal matter can contaminate the meat with bacteria such as E coli. Not only are their risk for bacteria, but also the risk of the animal having a disease such as Salmonella and mad cow disease. Federal health authorities estimated that food born diseases sicken 76 million, hospitalize 350,000, and kill 5000 people per year (Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation).
