An Animal S Place
Anth 68
Day 4
An Animal’s Place In his article, An Animal’s Place, Michael Pollan describes the treatment of animals by contemporary meat-processing industries. He starts out by talking about a movement that concerns with better treatment of animals and mentions a book, Animal Liberations written by Peter Singer. In the book, Singer “demands that you either defend the way you live or change it.” Singer argues along the premise of equality and says “If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit nonhumans for the same purpose?” Pollan proceeds to talk about the idea of pain and brings in the American factory farm to provide examples of mistreatment of animals because of their lack of pain. These factory farms implement cruel techniques onto its animals. For example, pigs are taken away from their mother 10 days after birth, where as it is usually 13 weeks in nature. This leads to the pigs sucking and chewing the tails of other pig and because of this, the tails are cut off into nubs. Pollen says, “The American industrial animal farm offers a nightmarish glimpse of what capitalism can look like in the absence of moral or regulatory constraint.” Pollen concludes his article by not saying that everyone should stop eating meat but saying that we should rather fight for animal welfare. Domestication of animal was an evolutionary process rather than political development. We should try to eliminate the cruel treatment of the animal in the factory farms and provide proper living and killing standard for the animals.
Power Steel In his article, Power Steel, Michael Pollan talks about what he learned of the meat-farming industry through buying a calf and having it go through the process of getting slaughtered. For the calf he bought, No. 534, he writes about modified treatment of claves in order to produce the biggest and meatiest product. Steers were usually 4 or 5
Day 4
An Animal’s Place In his article, An Animal’s Place, Michael Pollan describes the treatment of animals by contemporary meat-processing industries. He starts out by talking about a movement that concerns with better treatment of animals and mentions a book, Animal Liberations written by Peter Singer. In the book, Singer “demands that you either defend the way you live or change it.” Singer argues along the premise of equality and says “If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit nonhumans for the same purpose?” Pollan proceeds to talk about the idea of pain and brings in the American factory farm to provide examples of mistreatment of animals because of their lack of pain. These factory farms implement cruel techniques onto its animals. For example, pigs are taken away from their mother 10 days after birth, where as it is usually 13 weeks in nature. This leads to the pigs sucking and chewing the tails of other pig and because of this, the tails are cut off into nubs. Pollen says, “The American industrial animal farm offers a nightmarish glimpse of what capitalism can look like in the absence of moral or regulatory constraint.” Pollen concludes his article by not saying that everyone should stop eating meat but saying that we should rather fight for animal welfare. Domestication of animal was an evolutionary process rather than political development. We should try to eliminate the cruel treatment of the animal in the factory farms and provide proper living and killing standard for the animals.
Power Steel In his article, Power Steel, Michael Pollan talks about what he learned of the meat-farming industry through buying a calf and having it go through the process of getting slaughtered. For the calf he bought, No. 534, he writes about modified treatment of claves in order to produce the biggest and meatiest product. Steers were usually 4 or 5