Animal law's contradictions

Dara Lovitz raised some really important issues in her presentation on animal law on Wednesday. I have always been frustrated by the loopholes in animal law. It's great that some legislators have good intentions toward animals, but good intention is not enough. What animals need is action. Because it is so difficult for any type of wide-scale change to happen in today's society, governments figure they will make small changes bit by bit in order to accustom industries to new rules and regulations (not to mention the fact that these industries are trying to fight changes in regulations and such). And although there is no easy way to create a sudden and seamless rule change, politicians aren't acting quickly enough to end the mistreatment of animals that happens every day. Unfortunately, there isn't much of a solution to this problem. The most important thing to do is raise awareness of the problem. I would like to focus for a moment on the factory farming industry.

Factory farming, as one of the biggest polluters in the US and biggest industry/trade that employs animals, is a huge deal. And yet, the industry lobbies so hard in Congress that the issue has really only 'leaked' to the public through animal rescue organizations. I am a firm believer in the idea that the government doesn't always tell us what's up, and this is a great example of that issue. What the American public needs is education. If the US could be educated on a large scale about where exactly their food comes from, we'd be set--so many people would be outraged and the industry would fall into a deep slump, and, hopefully, completely fail. Of course, it's not as easy as that, but that is the general idea. The same goes for pet abuse and adoption: so many people choose not to adopt because they don't "trust" shelter pets. But people who say this are really being ignorant.

So the main idea I'm trying to get out is just one word: educate. It starts on an individual scale, so we should take advantage of every opportunity we have to educate, inform, and hopefully succeed.