Entry #7. Gluttony, Our End.

    Everyday you crave food, of course it is a natural human drive to be hungry and eat. However, there are over 7 billion people on Earth and each person carries this drive. We live in a world of limited resources and have a growing population that seems to only grow larger each day. Obviously, without balance there is a lot of disparity between how much we consume and how much we can grow whether that is due to land restraints, weather, crop health, invasive species, et cetera...

    The absolute point is that our gluttony may be our end if we do not figure out how to turn our consumption habits into healthy ones.

    Between 70 and 85 billion chickens are killed yearly on our Earth in order to keep our store shelves stocked and our bellies full. However, we never think about how the food ended up on the shelves or what conditions they must go through. These days, chickens are kept in large slaughterhouses and raised from the day they hatch to the day they are slaughtered in terrible conditions with minimal care for their individual health. We are then fed these animals that had experienced stress, disease, and mistreatment. 

Image by Katie Tracy

    Although the chickens have the worst end of the stick, being treated only as a food source than a living being, humans receive terrible karma in the form of disease and poor work conditions. Many workers are working around raw meat, bacteria, and sharp instruments all day long to move the meat to our shelves. In these conditions, workers are constantly put at risk and paid very little for the amount of danger they are in. Even worse, the farmers who raise the animals are led by corporate to trust every word they say in exchange for a penny.