Chapter 17 of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma is a part of a bigger section called The Forest. In this section of the book, Pollan plans to search for his own food as the hunter-gatherers did before the invention agriculture. However, before hunting for his food, Pollan had to consider the implications of hunting and eating meat in general. He took on the challenge of becoming a temporary vegetarian in and this mindset, he developed his own view of the ethics of eating animals. Pollan cites many vegetarians and animal rights activist to explain the problem vegetarians face eating meat. Pollan says this growing trend of vegetarians has changed the society’s eating habits as a whole and redefined our culture. Pollan argues that although humans have been omnivores for several thousands of years, more and more people are becoming conscious about animal suffering and animal happiness. Pollan brings up an important distinction between human and animal suffering. He provides one side of the argument about “specicism” which is having more moral consideration for the human race than animals. Pollan came to the conclusion that what’s wrong with eating animals is the practice, not the principle. Pollan believes that watching the killing process of an animal will help people decide whether they should become vegetarians or if they can still handle eating meat. This look into animal agriculture will hopefully improve animal treatment and thus people can eat meat with a clear conscience and be more respectful towards their food.
Although I have no problems with vegetarians, I believe this lifestyle choice isn’t for everyone. I would like to think that the meat I’m eating comes from an animal that was humanely treated and killed, but this isn’t always true. Because of this, I would sometimes rather not think too much about how the animal was killed which might make me ignorant and thus make ill informed decisions about my eating habits. However, it would drive me crazy if I had a devil on my shoulder making my conscience guilty everytime I ate meat. I believe that Pollan is right about the complicated but dependent relationship between humans and animals. Therefore, eating meat should not be condemned, but omnivores should respect the animal that gave them the food.
Questions:
Will more vegetarians be willing to convert if animals were treated more humanly?
Do animals suffer more in their natural habitats or under human confinement?
I still think that vegetarians are not healthy enough.Even though it shows that they care a lot about the animals in general, we still have to follow the natural order. The society has to be developed. That is something we cannot change.
ReplyDeleteI also think what Pollan said about eating animals with the respect they deserve is extremely important. We as a society take eating meat completely for granted- putting meat that wasn't prepared with much thought into pretty much every meal we eat. Sure meat would be more expensive and we would eat less but that would make the times that we did eat meat more special and memorable.
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