NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
... on their feet. Third, as mentioned above, this would free up valuable land for farming which would, in turn, provide more food to feed the hungry here in our own country. Assuming that two-thirds of the people who die are buried instead of cremated, that means we need to use 2, 500 acres of land each day for graves. While most of this land is in areas already designated as cemeteries, over the next decade we will need to create approximately 5, 000 more cemeteries, with that number increasing exponentially as the population and the number of dead increase (U. S.
Census Bureau 275). That means giving up and wasting valuable farmland that could be used to grow crops or to feed cattle. Those 2, 500 acres could be used to grow 6000 bushels of corn (U. S. Census Bureau 462).
Instead of wasting our resources to "care" for the "dearly departed" we are obligated to get the most out of this land and use it to provide food for the hungry. Fourth, it would cut down on funeral expenses for the families of the dead. The average funeral in the United States costs $ 64, 337. 29 (U. S. Census Bureau 189).
This is an expense that most families, even with insurance, cannot afford. Many people wish to spare their families this expense and choose to be cremated, but this too is expensive. The average cremation costs $ 12, 458. 73 (U. S.
Census Bureau 189). For a family living paycheck to paycheck, this is no more affordable than the cost of a full funeral. The savings to these families would be twice as meaningful because the loss of a loved one is, in most cases, leaving them shy one breadwinner. The loss of that person's income should not be augmented by the necessity of paying for an unnecessary funeral. Thus, it would appear that besides supplying food for the world's starving children, using cadavers for food would also solve many social problems. Not only would processing the dead for food eliminate starvation, but we would have the added benefits of freeing up valuable farm land and of not subjecting financially and emotionally distraught families to additional monetary burdens.
The health benefits alone would make this solution worthwhile. But not everyone will agree, and there are several objections which can be raised. However, these objections ultimately fail because the potential benefits far outweigh the perceived indignities and immorality. Obviously, many people will reject this solution on religious grounds. The Judeo- Christian tradition will find it especially vile. But should they?
There is no specific scripture in the Bible against eating human flesh, and humans do not fit the constraints within Jewish law on what one cannot eat. In fact, there is a tradition within Christianity which seems to support the eating of flesh. Most, if not all, Christians believe in the miracle of transubstantiation, the transformation of the bread and wine used in communion to the body and blood of Christ. The usual interpretation of this transformation is that the bread and wine really do become flesh and blood. Thus, Christians are in a sense cannibals.
They justify this behavior by saying it is to "save their immortal souls. " It would seem that if it is okay to eat human flesh, even if it accomplished through a miracle, to save one's eternal life, it would be okay to eat human flesh to save one's mortal, physical life. Christians who don't believe that the transformation is a literal one are also unable to object because the spirit of eating the "flesh" is the same, to save one's eternal life. How could eating the flesh to survive (physically) not be acceptable as well. So long as the body is given up voluntarily and the person dies of natural causes, there can be no objection on Christian grounds. Furthermore, many people would argue, on non-religious grounds, that eating human flesh is immoral. Generally, that may be the case, but even if we accept that eating flesh may be immoral, we do not have to accept that it is in every case.
For example, the case of the Peruvian soccer team was mentioned above. While we in the "more civilized countries" find this repulsive, few rational people would say that they are immoral for eating what they had available in order to survive. Most people admit that put in the same circumstances, they would have done the same thing (Rogers C 35). The need to survive combined with the availability of the corpses of the crash victims overrode the moral obligation not to eat another human being.
The situation would be very different than if they had actually killed someone to dine on. Feeding starving children is a similar situation; their survival depends on the availability of nutritious food. Cadavers provide that food source, so eating them cannot be immoral. Another possible objection is the cost involved in shipping cadavers to third world countries.
Currently each C- 130 (a large military airplane) shipment of food sent to third world countries costs an average of $ 150, 000. That cost includes only the fuel, the crew, the storage, and the visas and tariffs for getting the food into the country; the cost of the food is not included because it is donated (Frege 222). Besides these costs, cadavers would require refrigeration or freezing for them to be edible when they arrive at their destination. However, this objection fails to take into account the option of processing the meat prior to shipment. If the meat were high quality beef eaten as steaks by snobbish upper-crust socialites, then seeing that it arrived unprocessed and ready for cooking would be a concern. In the case of starving people, the main problem is to get them food that is edible, not food that they may used to create gourmet meals.
It is relatively inexpensive to cook and can meat to prepare it for shipping. Libby's Manufacturing reports that it costs approximately 13 per pound to cook, process, and can Spam (Libby's 35). Canned human remains would cost less because the meat would be donated, and we would not have to deal with the refrigeration issue. Also, shipping canned food would be more cost efficient because, in comparison to the grain shipped now, we would be able to ship more food per shipment.
Canned food takes up much less space than the burlap bags or wooden barrels of grain (Quine 12). A more pragmatic objection is that the American public would never give permission for their bodies to be used as food. The lack of organ donors would support this view. Currently we do not have enough people donating minor parts of their bodies after they die. How, then, can we expect the public to donate their bodies as meals for the less privileged?
The answer is simple. Education and economic incentives will entice people to make this small sacrifice. By educating people about the plight of children in third world countries, the expense and hardship of feeding them, and the benefits of feeding them human flesh, the public will see that morality, the drive to be a good person, demands that they donate their bodies. Education is the key to solving the organ donation problem and would work for this problem as well. For those who remain unconvinced economic incentives will provide motivation to participate.
By offering tax breaks, rebates, or some other monetary encouragement, the stragglers could be brought to the program. In modern American society people often do things that they find objectionable for minimal gain. Why should we expect that selling their bodies after death would be any different? Even if people remain unconvinced in the viability of this option for feeding the world's dying children, the morality of the solution cannot be denied. We are obligated to help if we can. The overabundance of cadavers and the potential problems dealing with them offer the best possible solution to the problem of world hunger.
Human dead provide us with a virtually unlimited source of nutritious food, which is cheaper and healthier than the current meals provided to the hungry. The religious and nonreligious objections fail to outweigh the benefits of feeding starving children in this manner. We have a solution to the problem which also eliminates the additional problem of disposing of our increasing dead. How can we ignore our obvious obligation? We must use the resources available to us and immediately begin solving the problem of world hunger by processing and shipping our dead to the dinner tables of starving children around the world. Bibliography: Works Cited Food and Drug Administration. "A Comparison of the Nutritional Value of Types of Meat, " The Effects of Human Remains in Commercial Foodstuffs. (Washington, D.
C. ; 1991). Foucault, M. "Cannibalism: Diets of Human Flesh, " Journal for the Anthropological Study of Nutrition. (V. 41, N. 3; Autumn 1943) pp. 147 - 183. Frege, G. "Too Many People, Too Little Food, " Newsweek. (Vol. 54; No. 13; January 15, 1999) pp. 219 - 222. Libby's Manufacturing. "Appendix C: Preparation and Processing Costs per Unit by Product, " Annual Report 1999. (St. Louis; 1999). Quine, W.
V. O. The New Holocaust: Hungry Children Around the World, 8 e. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 2000). Rogers, Karl. "Soccer Players Eat Smart and Survive, " New York Times. (V. 185, N. 8; February 27, 1972) pp. C 34 - 35. Russell, Bertrand.
Proximity and the Poor. (New York: Blackwell; 1987). U. S. Census Bureau. Concise Guide to Facts & Numbers from the 2000 Census. (Washington, D. C. ; 2000).
U. S. Department of Welfare. Charitable Resources and the Fight to End Poverty in the United States. (Washington, D. C. ; 1998). Wittgenstein, Ludwig.
Physiology and Anatomy of Homo Sapiens. (New York: Gable Press; 1986).
Free research essays on topics related to: bread and wine, u s census bureau, washington d c, human flesh, third world countries
Research essay sample on U S Census Bureau Third World Countries
