<em>The Island News encourages all our readers to share their thoughts, reactions, and concerns with us about what we publish or the larger world around us and we will share the appropriate ones with you. Ms. Wells is concerned about, not GMO issues that are challenging food companies today, but the ethical treatment of animals that also make their way to our tables and barbeques. If more people felt as passionately about anything as Ms. Wells demonstrates with her letter, think what a better world it would be.</em>
<p style="padding-left: 300px;"><em>         - Molly Ingram, Editor</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 300px;"></p>
Dear Ms. Ingram,

My name is Megan Wells and I attend Lowcountry Montessori School. I am a huge lover of animals and feel very strongly about the way they are treated in the food industry.

I’ve contacted you today in hopes that you’ll help me raise awareness regarding the abuse that happens before animals are sent to the slaughterhouse.

Chickens are kept in tightly packed warehouses where they are fed chemicals that make them gain weight at unhealthy rates. So much so that they cannot hold up their own body weight.

Pigs that are too sick to be put into our food are thrown head first on the ground until they die. Eighty percent of our antibiotics go to
farm animals.

This is happening in almost all the grocery stores across the nation.

I am asking you to help me spread the word across the Lowcountry. If more people know and care, they may stop buying the product and the company will realize how wrong it is.
<p style="padding-left: 330px;">Sincerely,
Megan M. Wells
Grade 7</p>