Anyone care to help on my animal rights persuasive speech?

[PMA]

I decided to pick animal rights as my topic for my persuasive speech for my public speaking class. I'm looking for ideas, topics, issues, statistics, anything that can help me move the class with emotion, and hopefully have them consider try out a veg diet.

 

I'm having trouble coming up with a revelance statement (Why should we care?). It should be 2-5 simple sentences, I'm just trying to make it as informative and educational as possible.

 

The speech is split into three categories: Problems, Cause, and Solutions (2 sub categories each)

For problems I'm thinking animal agriculture and I need another topic.

Causes, hm I can probably go with greed and people not being as alerted.

Solutions, I'm going with a veg diet and maybe donating to animal campaigns.

 

Hope to hear some of your ideas, like I mentioned, I want to make it as educational as possible and moving, something that will have a huge impact on the audience.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Fallen_Horse]

Above all, make sure you include logic arguments but also appeal to emotion. Some people respond better to either option, so you want to cover your entire audience.

 

As for problems, I would go with environmental, health, and moral.

Causes are greed, ignorance (unintentional and intentional), Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs, and taste desire.

Solutions are the encouraging of eating less meat, removing food subsidies, and educating people.

[moveon1]

I'd like to hear a clear problem statement--I'm not sure from your post what you say the problem is. The problem must be crystal clear in your mind or it will clear as mud in your listeners mind.

 

I would go easy on using "greed" as a cause. Sure, it is part of the cause of the problem but even the most greedy among us do not believe we are greedy. So if you say "greed" is a problem, you may get nods and agreement but you have separated your audience from the cause. In most folks minds the conversation goes like this: "I'm not greedy therefore I'm not part of the problem" If people think they are not part of the problem, then they are uninvolved. Uninvolved people do not take action. (I like Fallen_Horse's idea about emotional involvement.)

 

Your problems, causes and solutions need to link together. If greed is a cause, you'll need to address it with a solution. So what are you going to do about greedy people? There's not much to go on there for solutions. Greed is indeed a cause but I would not use it to move someone to action.

[Vegan Joe]

Here is an idea or thought that I like.

I wish i could express myself better but let me try to present some thoughts and see if you can use anything. And it goes something like this:

 

OK, we humans are so great, right?

We are the top of the food chain, the top of the brain chain, etc..

You can look at this from a religious or non-religious view.

So as a person who is so intelligent (not me personally) why is it that we need to perpetuate pain and suffering in the world. Fully knowing how it feels and always tryng to avoid it ourselves. I mean we are smarter than all the animals that we use for food. they are without a doubt at our mercy. So why when we can eat other things do we need to continue treating animals this way. Even if you can try to make a compelling argument for vivisection, How can you justify eating animals when there are other choices that as time goes by, it is being proven these are healthier for you. I mean doesn't this just come in line with the evolution of the consciousness of the human being.

Isn't compassion a great and higher state of consciousness. isn't this our next step in being superior in every way. Hope you can make sense of this.

[Vegan Joe]

I know this point of view is not uniquely mine.

So maybe other could present position in a more eloquent way.

Thank you!

[MartinVegartin]

Another topic in the Problems category could be vivisection. As well as the cruelty it is also holding up discovery of new medicines for humans. Or the fact that the animal agriculture is adding to pollution and the destruction of habitats for grazing and the growing of food for them - which can and does lead to less food, water and land for humans.

 

I would say that the cause is the human belief that we are superior and that other animals are objects that we can use for our benefit. This is a bit like the cause of slavery. It all revolves around beliefs and attitudes.

 

Not quite what you want but this is very moving and powerful:

http://www.peacefulprairie.org/letter.html

[Barb123]

I totally like Vegan Joe's thoughts on this. Also for problems besides agriculture, why not testing (vivisection) and/or so called entertainment like circus etc.

[PMA]

Thanks for all the replies, I'm a bit behind (it's due Thursday), but with all your replies and ideas it's def gonna make it easier and faster.

 

Above all, make sure you include logic arguments but also appeal to emotion. Some people respond better to either option, so you want to cover your entire audience.

 

As for problems, I would go with environmental, health, and moral.

Causes are greed, ignorance (unintentional and intentional), Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs, and taste desire.

Solutions are the encouraging of eating less meat, removing food subsidies, and educating people.

 

I like Maslow's Heirarchy, never heard about it but it def works out as a source to back up my statement, (I forgot to mention, I need sources to backup all my topics).

 

I'd like to hear a clear problem statement--I'm not sure from your post what you say the problem is. The problem must be crystal clear in your mind or it will clear as mud in your listeners mind.

 

I would go easy on using "greed" as a cause. Sure, it is part of the cause of the problem but even the most greedy among us do not believe we are greedy. So if you say "greed" is a problem, you may get nods and agreement but you have separated your audience from the cause. In most folks minds the conversation goes like this: "I'm not greedy therefore I'm not part of the problem" If people think they are not part of the problem, then they are uninvolved. Uninvolved people do not take action. (I like Fallen_Horse's idea about emotional involvement.)

 

Your problems, causes and solutions need to link together. If greed is a cause, you'll need to address it with a solution. So what are you going to do about greedy people? There's not much to go on there for solutions. Greed is indeed a cause but I would not use it to move someone to action.

 

Yeah, you're right it has to be crystal clear. I was just a little bit lost and I didn't even know where to start.

 

I'm picking Animal Agriculture as my topic, animal vivisection also sounds great and thanks for bringing it up, but I'd rather just go with animal agriculture to not get mixed up and keep it short an simple.

 

I was planning on using greed more to describe the food industry, how it's basically them caring for profits and not really on the health of the consumer or environment or the damage they do. The solution could be to think twice where your money goes.

 

 

Here is an idea or thought that I like.

I wish i could express myself better but let me try to present some thoughts and see if you can use anything. And it goes something like this:

 

OK, we humans are so great, right?

We are the top of the food chain, the top of the brain chain, etc..

You can look at this from a religious or non-religious view.

So as a person who is so intelligent (not me personally) why is it that we need to perpetuate pain and suffering in the world. Fully knowing how it feels and always tryng to avoid it ourselves. I mean we are smarter than all the animals that we use for food. they are without a doubt at our mercy. So why when we can eat other things do we need to continue treating animals this way. Even if you can try to make a compelling argument for vivisection, How can you justify eating animals when there are other choices that as time goes by, it is being proven these are healthier for you. I mean doesn't this just come in line with the evolution of the consciousness of the human being.

Isn't compassion a great and higher state of consciousness. isn't this our next step in being superior in every way. Hope you can make sense of this.

 

 

Thanks for sharing, lots of interesting lines, this will def help my intro/attention getter.

[PMA]

I've decided to use environment and health for problems caused by animal agriculture, and leave moral and feelings for the conclusion. I think it's better to use statistics and facts to have a deeper impact on the audience, rather than personal feelings and beliefs.

 

It will look something like this:

Main Point 1: Problems

A. Environment-Explain how the environment is being affected by animal agriculture, less land, global warming

B. Health-Talk about all the diseases consuming meat and diary bring

 

Main Point 2: Cause (This is pretty much were all statics go and good sources to back them up)

A. Environment- Explain the impact animal waste etc. it has on the planet. statistics. Greenhouse gases rising.

B. Health-How many people die a year. statistics.

 

Main Point 3: Solution

A. Environment- awareness

B. Health-consume less meat as possible, (to back up my statement, source, I can also use vegan bodybuilding/fitness, or like the other thread how it's believed that gladiators were vegan. Even though it's not a source I can use it as an example)

 

For my conclusion I'm trying to come up with something that will leave the audience thinking something deep, this is where I can use morality. Something like what Vegan Joe shared would def help.

 

Relevance statement (Why should we care?), and my conclusion is what I'm having trouble with. If anyone can help me come up with something, anything helps.

 

Books, websites, academic journals articles to use for sources are also appreciated.

 

Another thing, does anyone know how many animals are killed in slaughterhouses each year? I'm having trouble finding out how many are killed each year, month, hour, minute. I think sharing this would help my attention getter for my intro.

 

Thanks again, hope to hear from all of you soon.

[Barb123]

According to an article I read recently on http://www.animalliberationfront.com called USDA's official Number of Animals Killed for Food:

 

Cattle:35,507,500

Pigs:116,558,900

Chickens:9,075,261,000

"Layer" hens:69,683,000

"Broiler" chickens:9,005,578,000

Turkeys:271,245,000

 

Sickening, and this doesn't even include fish , sheep, rabbits, or ducks. They also list some other pertinent facts. Hope this helps you. I know it's apalling to me.

[PMA]

According to an article I read recently on http://www.animalliberationfront.com called USDA's official Number of Animals Killed for Food:

 

Cattle:35,507,500

Pigs:116,558,900

Chickens:9,075,261,000

"Layer" hens:69,683,000

"Broiler" chickens:9,005,578,000

Turkeys:271,245,000

 

Sickening, and this doesn't even include fish , sheep, rabbits, or ducks. They also list some other pertinent facts. Hope this helps you. I know it's apalling to me.

 

Thanks for the reply. There was this other site that mentioned how many animals are killed every hour/minute/second which I cannot find anymore, any idea?

[Barb123]

www.vegsource.com states that 660,000 animals are killed per hour in the U.S. for meat.