Session 4 Blog Post for Feb 24

Michael Pollan begins his article, “An Animal’s Place”, with an analysis of the meat eating tendencies of America and its meat processing industries through the lens of species equality.  The author goes on to argue the relevance of not placing nonhuman animals on the same moral plane as humans but to regard animals and animal consumption as intrinsically good aspects of human life on earth as healthy animals and humane treatment and consumption of these animals leads to healthy humans and healthy environmental systems.  Morality is a human mechanism for social interaction, and therefore, unlike the species equality seeking persons of Peter Singer’s persuasion, Pollan looks to symbiosis between species as the answer to the question of the morality of eating meat.  We should rely on the natural system to tell us what is appropriate or not according to Pollan.  With this in mind, how to we begin to incentivize the cessation of industrial practices involving the suffering of animals and promote the seemingly morally appropriate means of raising animals through symbiotic relationships?

My decision to turn to pescetarianism (the consumption of only seafood as a source of meat) as a dietary preference was mainly spurred by the abrupt disgust with the food industry of the United States and its tendency to produce meat products in such a way as to totally ignore, not only the value of the animal and its well being, but the value of the human consuming such a preposterous concoction as an Oscar Mejer Weiner or a McDonald’s Big Mac.  I agree with the author in that the consumption of animal matter is appropriate and conducive of an environment in which human and nonhuman animals live in symbiosis.  And I also agree that this consumption must not be blind to the industrial practices associated with the suffering and devaluing of its animals.  To further this argument, I believe it is necessary to be aware of how our forgetfulness towards this maltreatment is a product of our maltreatment of ourselves.  Industry and our extreme capitalist system has created a society in which, due to the valuing of convenience, we devalue the quality of our food and the quality of life of the nonhuman animals before slaughter and in turn devalue our rights as human animals.  I do not see a relevance in equality for all species because one must be able to enforce or affect his/her own rights to that ownership of value.  However, when have we gone too far in our mechanical treatment of animals as tools? When do we lose our humanity by treating animals in a certain inhumane way?  I feel that as we grow as a society, we will understand more fully the value of not only other animals but the value of human beings and the food that they should be eating.