In the modern world it is no longer necessary to use animals for food, clothing or medicine. To what extent do you agree or disagree? Give reasons for your answer and include examples from your own experience.

The exploitation of animals has been an unavoidable aspect of human life for most of our history. We have raised and hunted animals for food, used their fur and skin for protection from the elements, and even used their body parts for their supposed medicinal benefits. However, as society advances we need to consider our effect on other living things, and it seems that we should try to limit or even eliminate our reliance on animal products. Like all living things, humans need a source of food and protection from the surrounding environment. When we lived as hunter-gatherers and in early agricultural societies, animals were an essential part in our survival, providing us with protein and keeping us warm. Conversely, in a modern context there is minimal need for this. We can get adequate nutrition from vegetarian sources and food scientists are developing lab-grown meat that will soon be indistinguishable from real meat. When we add in the suffering that animals experience in factory farms or in battery cages and the devastating environmental effects of intensive farming, it seems extremely difficult to justify using animals for meat and clothing. The other major use of animals has been in medicine. Before the advent of modern medical science, people relied on traditional doctors who often used various animal parts to allegedly cure different maladies. Nevertheless, we now live in a brighter world where we not only have better alternatives, but we can demonstrate that these traditional animal-derived treatments are absolutely ineffective. Users and promoters of these types of medicine highlight the worst aspects of human nature as their stubbornness and selfishness leads to the extinction of many of the most majestic animals that have ever walked the earth. Broadly speaking, in a historical context, the use of animals as a food, clothing, and medicine seems understandable. However, in a supposedly enlightened modern society such practices highlight that many of us still think and act like we are nothing more than hairless apes.