Extra Credit - Timothy Liu

In one of his poem's, Timothy Liu spoke of butchering animals, cattle in particular. This poem inspired me to do some research on slaughterhouse and find more information about them. According to Erin Williams's book Why Animals Matter,there are around ten billion animals that are slaughtered every year in 5,700 slaughterhouses and processing plants employing 527,000 workers in the United States. Also, 28.1 billion pounds of beef were consumed in the U.S. alone in the year 2007. The largest slaughterhouse in the world is operated by the Smithfield Packing Company in Tar Heel, North Carolina. It is capable of butchering over 32,000 pigs a day. After looking into the topic of slaughterhouse and butchering animals, these numbers seem astounding and very shocking to me. I personally eat meat everyday and it is something that I take for granted too much. When stopping and thinking about what is truly going on in the world, it makes me question if what society is doing is truly right. Are slaughterhouse nescessary? Do we really need them? Is it appropriate? There are many questions that can be regarded to the subject that all relate back to "animal's rights". Should animals be treated in the same ways that humans are and receive the same rights? It is an issue that is becoming more and more popular in society today, even Wesleyan has an Liberal Arts Seminar class that is about animal cruely and animal rights. Even if people think that slaughterhouse are necessary, I think they should be dealt with in the appropriate manner. For example, the animals should be treated a "humane" way with the least amount of cruely possible. Additionally, I feel that if people do choose to eat meat, they need to be thankful and recognize what they have been blessed with. I completely agree with Timothy Liu when he noted that every animal shoud be blessed right before they are killed and processed. I think everyone should become more aware of slaughterhouse and what is truly occuring whether they agree with them concept or not.