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Animal Rights Versus Human Appetites

Can animal rights exist in a world dominated by human appetites? Human health is dependent upon healthy food sources. Animal stress and food safety are co-dependent factors. Food borne illness continues to contaminate the food supply through careless attention to the details of the lives of food animals. When this happens repeatedly, the link between animal stress and human health becomes impossible to ignore.

How does animal stress become a factor in food borne illness? Pigs, cattle and poultry carry high levels of pathogens in their intestinal tracts. When these animals undergo stress in their environments, stress such as overcrowding, rough handling, extreme cold or heat, or inadequate transportation to the slaughterhouse, their stress levels increase causing susceptibility to new and more severe infections. These infections from salmonella, e-coli, and campylobacter then enter the human food chain through cross contamination causing illness and even death in the elderly and the very young.

Animal rights are a human health issue. Human nature will not change. However, human motivation led by self-interest is creating positive change in the lives of animals used for food. Corporate factory farming is proving to be counter to human health and animal health as well. 

Individual choices made locally can influence the lives of animals in a positive way. Purchase cage free eggs, and organic meat and support the local farmers and growers as often as possible. Demand that corporate grocery suppliers buy and distribute local f