Dear future President,

I believe that animals should have rights that they deserve; we as people are also animals. But we don't even treat our loving animals as such. Yes I understand that as animals we have to eat, and we may have teeth that scientifically prove that we are supposed to eat meat. But at the very same time the way we kill the animals is just wrong. Imagine we live in a world where another animal had taken over in the evolutionary path. And we were the ones being fattened up for the slaughter and being brought to the table of almost every household in America.

In 1920 12.5 million was the cattle inventory.  In 2012 29.9 million is the cattle inventory. It's skyrocketed. That may be for other reasons as well as surplus population. But that doesn't change the facts that not a lot of Americans even know where their meat is coming from. 29.9 million of our cattle and hardly any kids in the room I'm sitting in would be able to tell me where their meat is coming from. Not enough people in the room you're sitting in would make any sense as to why they are eating so much meat every year. It is understandable as to why we are eating it.  If we are talking as in survival, but honestly if we are as intelligent as we say we are, why would we not understand that survival is a lot different than gluttony. I'm not saying that we need to completely stop eating meat but go back to when we were killing the right amounts.  People knew where their meat was coming from because there wasn't all this inhumane type of killing. Imagine that was us stuffing in cages and fattened up that would be completely terrible, and we wouldn't even care like we are doing with our land's animals. We will turn a blind eye and worry about the things that are more important to us. We would say things like “i need the new shoes, or i need the new phone.”  Animals that we need to survive are surviving and hurting us in ways we can’t understand but only because we choose not to want to understand.

I also believe that in the animals rights they should have the right to not be tested on; there is no way for them to consent to these tests. Why would you want to be taking something that has to be tested multiple times and hurt multiple animals for it to work? Especially because it makes some of the animal's lips blow up and or swell for the lipstick you want to be wearing. The eyes can sometimes be temporarily blinded. Monkeys can sometimes lose their hair.  For me I wouldn't want to be wearing something that took the life of a living creature. Now some people may not care, but that's only because they haven't seen it. When a majority of people see these things, they feel awful.  We really need a majority vote to stop all these people from testing on the animals.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         I believe that animals are creatures like me; it's just that we’re more advanced than some of them and they should have some rights. The rights they deserve at least not to completely forget we're eating them to survive. They’re not just taste, so we need to at least stop possessing them like they're nothing but the meals of flavor, but meals of survival. Those meals on our tables we talk about them like they were never alive. And they really are living breathing animals, and we treat them like nothing, a thing we can just use as we see fit. So to me we should fix it. We fix it by starting with our minds. Then work on food. Animals should not be in the same category cause that in its own is treating them as such. Again I'm not saying not to eat them, I won't even suggest taking away that right. But they should be living happy healthy lives before we send them off to the slaughterhouse or the testing lab. We have to think of them as if they were alive as they really are.  Think if it was you pushing them in the grinder as a baby or pushing the needle into them giving them a chemical that you know has a 50/50  chance of hurting them. Think that way and maybe things can change.

What if animals could talk and had the mental capacity that humans can possess? Do you think they would try to ban humans from eating them, hurting them or even ban us from living where they live on earth? Because of the way we handle things and think about them, do you think they would try to eat us?  What would happen?  Maybe just maybe they would make earth a non human planet and call us a virus to earth and other living creatures because of the way we've handled everything so far. I believe animals deserve rights just like us and it's our job to fix what we’ve done.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Thank you,                                                                                                                                                                  Sapphire