Innocence Lost: How Children's Literature Can Provide an Ethical Education on Factory Farming
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Northern Kentucky University
Abstract
Factory farms are the high- speed mass production and slaughter of animals for the meat and dairy industry. In order to raise awareness of factory farms, also known as industrial farm animal production, parents and educators should utilize children’s literature to inform future generations about the individual impact they have on farm animals. Raising awareness in children and teenagers will lead to more advocates for the animals bred, raised, and slaughtered in factory farms while also giving the children the truth about what’s on their plates and going in their bodies. Sheltering children from the knowledge of what happens to their food when it is still an animal takes away choices that could lead them to decide what kind of ethical human they want to be. The next generation will inherit the world with the knowledge passed onto them, they should be taught early on the impact they have on the world around them so that they may make informed choices every day. It is society’s ethical duty to raise morally conscious children, if children are not told the truth then they will not be given the full extent of their choices. Choices that will impact their health, moral consciousness, and their personal values during key developmental years.
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2021 Celebration of Student Research and Creativity presentation
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Presentation
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Factory farms Study and teaching, Factory farms Moral and ethical aspects, Children's literature