Dear Mr / Madam President,

The topic I would like to talk to you about today is Animals' lives versus Humans lives. When I hear people talk about how they would rather save their friend than an animal, it scares me. They also tell me that I am wrong for wanting to save an animal over a human and that I should instead kill myself.

Even though I would rather save an animal than a human, that does not mean that I am a bad person and should be killed. That leads me to another topic that I need to talk about: execution of animals compared to the execution of humans. Humans are only eligible for execution if they commit a heinous crime or are already on the edge of dying and they just want the end it. Animals are killed for sport and for their skin, feathers, and horns.

The types of execution for animals is also worse. A steel pole inserted into the arteries near the heart just so the animal can bleed before they die, a bullet to the head, a boiling tub of water, a knife to the throat. These are just some of the ways animals are slaughtered every day. The types of execution for people are, a poisonous injection, a firing squad, the electric chair, gassing, and hanging. Hanging is about one of the worst ones on the list just because you suffer before death. But animals get broiled alive and stabbed then left to bleed out. I don’t believe that these are appropriate ways to slaughter our animals. While people get the swift painless deaths, animals get a painful demise.

The amount of animals killed a year and the amount of materials that we choose not to take from them is a staggering amount. The number of humans killed a year is around 55.3 million while the amount of animals killed a year is well over 150 billion. I know that we, humans need to eat to live but the amount of food we waste is unacceptable. We waste a ton of the food  we create in a year amounting to about 30 %  while a whopping 60% of that waste is animal products. I myself am not a vegetarian because I still believe that we have to kill to survive and live, but not when it means we are overkilling and killing in an inhumane way.

Sincerely, 

 Connor R . (Sacramento, CA)    

Sources:

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/methods-execution

http://www.adaptt.org/killcounter.html

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/10/thirty-percent-world-food-wasted-2014103192739208584.html    

http://www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/en/