Baron T.

Topic: GMO use on animals

Once there was a boy named Jeff who lived on a farm, and he had screaming goats, big cows, and tiny loud chickens. He would do chores around the house and in the yard. He and his family has a big business: they sold meat to companies called Wellmart, Treeget, and Consco.

He also had a vegetarian friend who did not like the way meat was produced. He thought it was inhumane and cruel. His vegetarian friend was okay with the boy killing animals, but he wanted Jeff to do it without using GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and not in a cruel way. He also disapproved of how the animals are kept in small cages and fed fake food. Jeff wanted to alert his parents about this so they could put a stop to it.

Jeff told his mom, “...and that we should stop using GMO food because it is not good for us to eat and it's not good for the people buying it at the store. We should feed the animals real food, real hay, real corn, not that fake stuff.” The parents did not want to do that because that would mean getting less money when they sell the meat. So Jeff came up with a plan to sneak real food into the animals' diet.

As Jeff snuck into the barn late at night while the floorboard creaks behind him, trying not to step on any sticks or make any loud noises, he tried to find the GMO food bag and replace it with real food he bought from the store the day before. But when he picked up the GMO food, it all fell out of the bag and made so much noise that he thought the neighbors heard. So he had to go back inside to get the broom. He successfully got the broom and swept it up. And then he replaced it, but he ripped off the GMO food label from the GMO bag and put it on the Real Food Bag so when his parents got up in the morning to feed the animals, they actually fed them the real food. The reason why his parents didn’t want to feed the animals real food is because the fake food makes the animals grow faster and makes the meat taste better so the stores can sell it at really low prices. So when he put the real food in there, their animals weren't going to grow as fast. It was about a month later when they had bacon for breakfast and his parents said to him, “This meat tastes strangely good.”

And then one day his parents were reading on the newspaper about side effects of eating meat. And then they realized that meat isn't good for you with GMOs and fake protein in the food. And so from that day on, they stopped buying meat and giving meat to their local stores because they realized what was happening to the people in their town from their GMO meat, and they felt so bad that they decided to just become vegetarian because they knew it wasn't good for them.  

Tor G.

Topic: Cattle farming's effect on global warming

As I swam up to my iceberg I had two things on my mind: seals and sleep.

As the world gets hotter, it doesn’t only get worse near the cattle farms, but also in other areas like Antarctica with this polar bear. With all the cows burping and farting (methane gas), it just makes matters worse than they already are.

As I swam up to my iceberg on the second day, I noticed that it was smaller than it had been the day before. When I surfaced, I saw that all the other icebergs were almost all gone. What was happening? I was so worried that I went to my friend to check on him, and when I got there he was sitting on a sorry excuse for iceberg. I asked what was happening, and he said, “The ice is melting and we need to move, but we won’t be able to hunt seals if we do.” As I swam away from his iceberg I had two things on my mind: sleep and food.

However, this story is not over: All over the world people are frantically trying to cut down on CO2 emissions: not using cars, not burning fossil fuels, and reducing their carbon footprint. Even after all of this work and all this effort, they still don’t see that the BIGGER problem is cow burps and farts that hold 23 times more heat than CO2 does. You might be wondering what's so bad about CO2 and methane. Well, let me educate you. Methane and CO2 are both greenhouse gases. That means that they trap heat, and if that is in the atmosphere, that's making the world hotter and hotter every day. This leads to melting the ice. Polar bears and many other animals need ice, and if it isn’t there they will die.

Here I was, swimming away from my home, no idea where I was going and not to mention I don’t know if I will be able to catch enough food. I might even have to swim back to sea to hunt seals when I can’t catch land prey. As I stepped out of the water, oblivious of what was happening to the world, I went to the usual place we go when we go to land.

But polar bears will just adapt, right? No. In winter, polar bears migrate to the sea ice to hunt seals so they can gain weight so that in spring they can make up for the amount of prey they don’t catch. If they can’t, they will die. This is all the effect of cows and the fact that people can't live without meat. All of this can be solved by a methane tax that would make you have to pay more to have livestock.

As I was swimming back to the sea I had only one thing on my mind: Where did my iceberg go?

Lydia H.

Topic: Veganism

My eyelids slowly opened, and I see my ceiling. It has white chipped paint and looked like it was painted years ago, which it was. I rolled over, my eyes quickly widened, and a big smile appeared on my face. I almost forgot today would be my first day on my father's farm. I hurried out of bed and quickly put on my clothes. I was wearing a long black thermal top with carpenter jeans that were a little too long on my legs. I reached for my black felt cap and headed to get a quick breakfast. I chose a cup of milk and some bacon that my dad had made previously. I ate it quickly and went on my way to meet up with my dad.

I met him in front of where the dairy cows were kept and was quite excited. I had never actually gone into the farm because my dad had always told me I was too young. I never knew what he meant by “too young.” He hugged me and had a big smile on his face.

“Son, sometimes you may see things that you don’t want to see, but it’s business.”

“What would be things I wouldn’t want to see? It can’t be that bad, right?”

“Some people can’t handle it, but they are just animals, they can’t understand it.”

I didn’t answer and started walking to the door. My dad walked in front of me and opened the door slowly. Then he stopped and laughed because he forgot to tell me what I was going to do. He told me I would be helping a mother cow give birth to a baby. He never revealed the other thing we were going to do. If he did, I would’ve said no right then and there.

He proceeded to open the door. When we got in, it was kind of dark, and the walls looked dirty. They looked as if they hadn’t been washed in years. Then I took in a breath of air, and it smelled so gross. I almost gagged in my mouth. We started to walk to where I was supposed to have my first job, and as I was walking, I couldn’t help noticing that all the cows were hooked to machines, unable to move. I didn’t ask because I thought it was normal and nothing was wrong with it. I kept walking and was wondering why none of the cows had their babies with them. If they are dairy cows, shouldn’t they have babies? These thoughts raced through my mind but never seemed to get out then. When we finally got to where the mother cow was supposed to give birth, we were both happy to see that she already was finished and needed no help. My dad went next to it and told me to push the baby cow and lead it out of here and into the field.

“Why?”

“Because we need the baby to not be with his mother.”

“Why wouldn’t you want it to?”

“Because we need the mother’s milk, and if the calf stays, it’ll drink all of the product.”

I felt guilty about doing it, but did as my dad said. I pushed the cow in another direction, away from the mother, as my dad guided us into the field. We were greeted with a big truck that would take the calf away to a seperate farm called a veal farm, which means it would be used for meat. I carried the heavy calf, carefully trying not to hurt it, into the back of the truck. I hesitantly closed the back of the truck. Before the truck left, I asked Larry, the worker who transported some of the animals, if the mother would ever be able to see him again. He answered with a quick no. I tried to stall him by asking him questions, like where the calf would go, if he enjoys his job, things like that, so he would take a little longer. Alas, Larry drove away into the country to drop the calf off. To my surprise, the mother cow ran crying as her baby was being taken away, but the cow could run only so long until it was blocked by a fence. I watched in regret as the truck left. I watched it until it was no more than a speck in the distance.

What had I done? I had taken a young innocent baby from its mother. That milk I drank didn’t sound as good as it had before. My dad patted me on the shoulder and told me I did a good job. My dad told me to go home and rest, and I started to make my way towards my house. My thoughts took over, and I quickly started questioning myself. Would I have wanted that to happen to me? Is this all worth it, just for a cup of milk, or some cheese on my sandwich? Surely not. I thought about how I could help prevent this from going on, or at least make it happen less often.

After I got back from the farm, I told my father that I was too tired to work for the rest of the day. I searched to see if it was a normal thing to take away babies. That day on the farm, I learned, wasn’t even the beginning of what they did. I found out many things they do not only to cows, but to other animals. I learned that the first day male chicks are born, they are killed because they don’t lay eggs. Imagine being killed because you weren’t a girl! I searched ways to help decrease the suffering of animals, and I came across veganism. I began cutting out lots of things from my diet, like Doritos, cheese, meat, and poultry. I knew that if I were vegan, I would be helping not only the animals, but also myself. Till this day, I still wish I had saved that calf. Why didn’t I?