The rights of animals is seen as insufficent when compared to those of humans. I will never understand how people feel the need to harm such a beautiful and helpless creature. Animals can be brave and strong and powerful, but when placed at the hands of a cruel people they become weak and needy.
    It breaks my heart to see somethings as pure as an animal be destroyed by something as evil as a man. The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated... I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.
--Mahatma Gandhi
   As Gandhi has said, animals require protection from man, by man. It is people like him that see the true way that man treat animals. It's a harsh and cruel torture placed on them. Their lives are subjected to death, if lucky the death they see will be natural and peaceful. People turn their faces and minds away from the food they eat. They place it in their mouth and chew; never thinking about where their meat came from. They like to think that the animal died peacefully and of natural causes, but that is not the case. If that ever happens it is very rare indeed.
    Animals are forced into slaughter houses and raised there in most cases. Never to see a normal, peaceful life. Chicks will be hatched and debeaked, often they are debeaked incorrectly and it causes serious injury to the chick; but as long as it grows up to be cooked for someones meal they take no care to treat the chick. If it's lucky it will make it. When they grow up they are forced to either boxes to be shipped to a place that will kill them for their meat, or they go into a cage to lay more eggs. Cages are cramped and hard and often the hens will become violent. The boxes the others are shipped in are large, but for how many they stick in there, there is never enough room. Often chickens will be pressed up against eachother and will sometimes sufficate before they reach their destination.
     Cows, in my opinion, are by far the most cruely tortured of the food chain. Milking cows never leave their stalls, and are forced to give milk all day, every day. Cows have an average lifespan of about 20 years, but milking cows have an average lifespan of about 4 years old. The cows that end up in the actual slaughter house are most commonly bled. A slit to the throat is the "humane" way that they are killed. The people don't make sure their dead either, they let them bleed it out and most often they are left alive, bleeding to death, as they continue down the conveyer, until finally they reached the end and die. If they are to be kosher meat, the people can't touch them at all. The cut them, then lay them on a floor and wait for as long as it takes for the cow to slowly and painfully wait for its release.
   People around us often overlook what goes on in the world around us. They ignore the suffering some see day to day. And others enjoy the pain they inflict onto the poor creatures. I will never understand why, but they do. House pets can also be cruely tortured or killed. But people overlook the cruelty of this world. Granted not all people are like this. Some help to fight and stop this. Some commit themselves to a life meat free and dedicated to helping the poor creatures some never will. I am on the road to a meat free life and a life dedicated to helping any creature in need. This world, those animals need people like that. And if you can't beat them, join them. But join what you know is right. And animal cruelty is not just; it is not right.

I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.
--Leonardo Da Vinci

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them, that's the essence of inhumanity.
--George Bernard Shaw

But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.

"Earth can provide enough to satisfy everyone's need, but not everyone's greed."
- Mahatma Ghandi

As these great men have stated, the Earth was made for all of us. We are all Earthlings. Creatures of the Earth. And we all deserve to be here. Animals too, not just man. (If you are interested about this information, you can hear more from this awesome documentary called "Earthlings")