Ryan DeLuca
Dr. Drown
English 122
September 23, 2018
Endless Conversation
In the article An Animals Place, there is one-person named Michael Pollan and another who wrote a different article Michael Pollan is reading while eating at a Steak House. The author of that article is Peter Singer. Peter is on the side of animal rights and thinks that everyone should stop eating animals altogether. Michael Pollan is reading this article with the mind-set that he is still going to eat meat when he is done with Peters Singers article, Michael Pollen doesn’t know what to think of the article, so he jumps into reading the article with an open mind. Open mind meaning he is open to an unfamiliar perspective that might be portrayed throughout the article. One the ideas of Peter Singers article that I am going to focus on is, weather the happiness or welfare of animals matters.
Michael Pollen started talking about pain and suffering after he read another article about animal’s ability to feel pain and suffering, written by one of Peter Singers allies Daniel C. Dennett, a philosopher, he believes animals contain the ability to feel pain but not all contain the ability to suffer. Daniel C. Dennett compares human’s ability to feel pain and suffering but he says only a few animal’s have enough self-consciousness to know suffering. Michael Pollen goes on to use examples of chickens and pigs because on page twenty at the beginning of paragraph thirty-eight of Michael’s article, Michael says “From what I’ve read, egg and hog operations are the worst.” Continuing his argument by sharing facts from what he has read “And broiler chickens, although they do get their beaks snipped off with a hot knife to keep them from cannibalizing one another under the stress of their confinement, at least don’t spend their eight-week lives in cages too small to ever stretch a wing.” In paragraph thirty-eight Michael him-self writes more about how brutal the chicken industry is, “That fate is reserved for the American laying hen, who passes her brief span piled together with half-dozen other hens in wire cage whose floor a single page of this magazine could carpet.” Michael Pollan has an argument for the egg laying chickens, he thinks they can feel pain and suffrage. Another example he uses to promote his argument is on paragraph thirty-eight “Every natural instinct of this animal is thwarted, leading to a range of behavioral “vices” that can include cannibalizing her cage mates and rubbing her body against the wire mesh until it is featherless and bleeding.” The point Michael is trying make is, maybe chickens have a sense of pain and suffering, maybe chickens aren’t as mindless as society might want you to think.
The pigs don’t have it any better according to Michael Pollan in the article An Animals Place, “piglets are weaned from their mothers 10 days after birth.” This would negatively affect the pig in the following ways, the pig will go through a teething phase that the animal will never grow out of. Michael Pollan writes in his article “This premature weaning leaves pigs with a lifelong craving to suck and chew, a desire they gratify in confinement by biting the tail of the animal in front of them.” This results in infections in the tail and can lead to the sick pigs being, according to Michael “Clubbed to death”. The pigs also develop depression from the way they are treated, in the article Michael uses the term “helplessness” to describe depression in pigs.
The owner of Poly Face Farm seems to think other-wise. Joel Salatin uses his belief in god to justify killing his animals. “People have a soul; animals don’t, it’s a bedrock belief of mine,” Joel goes on and says, “Unlike us, animals are not created in God’s image, so when they die, they just die.” This is a good argument to justify killing a chicken but, if a chicken lives its life on Poly Face Farm like they do, then it is okay to kill the chicken because the chicken was raised with respect and was not abused or mistreated. Joel Salitan has a sustaining eco system, where every animal has a role to play on the farm. The cows eat the grass and create compost, then the chickens spread the compost around and eat the parasites and bugs out of the area and then the sheep come in and eat the newly grown grass. Then the process repeats. One day on Poly Face Farm there was a vegan that showed up looking to change is perspective on eating meat. The man had been a vegan for sixteen years and the only way that he would eat meat again is if he killed the animal him-self. Joel Salatin describes the mans reaction to killing a chicken, “He slit the bird’s throat and watched it die. He saw that the animal did not look at him accusingly, didn’t do a Disney double take. The animal had been treated with respect when it was alive, and he saw that it could also have a respectful death…” The way the animal is treated has a lot to say about the animals death, if the animal wasn’t treated with respect when it was alive then the animal probably won’t have a respectful or peaceful death.
If an animal doesn’t have natural feed, then the animal won’t be happy and produce a good-product. So, the question I asked earlier, does the happiness or welfare matter? I think both matter, I think if an animal isn’t happy with its way of life, that brings down the taste of the animal, it also shortens the animal’s life span. Using chickens as an example, Michael Pollan writes “Whatever you want to call what’s going on in those cages, the 10 percent or so of hens that can’t bear it and simply die is built into the cost of production.” If the chicken was treated better it wouldn’t have died from stress, also it is much more humane to kill animals if they were raised in a natural habitat and treated with respect. On Poly Face Farm, the animals are treated with respect.
Sept 19, 2018
Ryan DeLuca
Dr. Drown
Essay
Endless Conversation
In the article An Animals Place, there is one-person named Michael Pollan and another who wrote a different article Michael Pollan is reading while eating at a Steak House. The author of that article is Peter Singer. Peter is on the side of animal rights and thinks that everyone should stop eating animals altogether. Michael Pollan is reading this article with the mind-set that he is still going to eat meat when he is done with Peters Singers article, Michael Pollen doesn’t know what to think of the article, so he jumps into reading the article with an open mind. Open mind meaning he is open to new ideas that might be portrayed throughout the article. One the ideas of Peter Singers article that I am going to focus on is, weather the happiness or welfare of animals matters.
Michael Pollen started talking about pain and suffering after he read another article about animal’s ability to feel pain and suffering, written by one of Peter Singers allies Daniel C. Dennett is a philosopher, he believes animals contain the ability to feel pain but not all contain the ability to suffer. Daniel C. Dennett compares human’s ability to feel pain and suffering but he says only a few animal’s have enough self-consciousness to know suffering. Michael Pollen goes on to use examples of chickens and pigs because on page twenty at the beginning of paragraph thirty-eight of Michael’s article, Michael says “From what I’ve read, egg and hog operations are the worst.” Continuing his argument by sharing facts from what he has read “And broiler chickens, although they do get their beaks snipped off with a hot knife to keep them from cannibalizing one another under the stress of their confinement, at least don’t spend their eight-week lives in cages too small to ever stretch a wing.” In paragraph thirty-eight Michael him-self writes more about how brutal the chicken industry is, “That fate is reserved for the American laying hen, who passes her brief span piled together with half-dozen other hens in wire cage whose floor a single page of this magazine could carpet.” Michael Pollan has an argument for the egg laying chickens, he thinks they can feel pain and suffrage. Another example he uses to promote his argument is on paragraph thirty-eight “Every natural instinct of this animal is thwarted, leading to a range of behavioral “vices” that can include cannibalizing her cage mates and rubbing her body against the wire mesh until it is featherless and bleeding.” The point Michael is trying make is, maybe chickens have a sense of pain and suffering, maybe chickens aren’t as mindless as society might want you to think.
If an animal doesn’t have natural feed, then the animal won’t be happy and produce a good-product. So, the question I asked earlier, does the happiness or welfare matter? I think both matter, I think if an animal isn’t happy with its way of life, that brings down the taste of the animal, it also shortens the animal’s life span. Continuing with chickens, Michael Pollan writes “Whatever you want to call what’s going on in those cages, the 10 percent or so of hens that can’t bear it and simply die is built into the cost of production.” The chickens develop stress and like I said in the previous paragraph the chicken start self-molting and die from it.
The pigs don’t have it any better according to Michael Pollan in the article An Animals Place, “piglets are weaned from their mothers 10 days after birth.” This would negatively affect the pig in the following ways, the pig will go through a teething phase that the animal will never grow out of. Michael Pollan writes in his article “This premature weaning leaves pigs with a lifelong craving to suck and chew, a desire they gratify in confinement by biting the tail of the animal in front of them.” This results in infections in the tail and can lead to the sick pigs being, according to Michael “Clubbed to death”. The pigs also develop depression from the way they are treated, in the article Michael uses the term “helplessness” to describe depression in pigs.
Before I read this article I’ve always thought that these animals should be treated better, even though I knew that these animals were being mistreated I still ate them. I still ate them because I had the thought that they died for a reason. To feed me. I wasn’t going to just let the Steak or chicken sit on my plate and have them die for nothing.
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Sept 17, 2018
Ryan DeLuca
Dr. Drown
Essay
Word Count: 575
Endless Conversation
In the article An Animals Place, there is one-person named Michel Pollan and another who wrote a different article Michel Pollan is reading while eating at a stake house. The author of that article is Peter Singer. Peter Singer is on the side of animal rights and thinks that everyone should stop eating animals altogether. One aspect of An Animals Place that I would like to discuss is weather the happiness or welfare of animals matters.
If an animal isn’t happy the animal isn’t going to give you a good tasting egg or stake. Also, if an animal is placed in a CAFO filled with chickens that can according to Michel Pollan an America chicken “, who passes her brief span piled together with half-dozen other hens in wire cage whose floor a single page of this magazine could carpet.” A grain fed chicken isn’t going to produce a great tasting egg that is why they must be out roaming the pasture. As said by Joel Salatin “A diet of grubs and grass makes for exceptionally tasty eggs and contented chickens and their nitrogenous manure feeds the pasture.” Not only does the chicken diet make “exceptionally tasty eggs” but the manure from the chicken fertilizes the pasture making the grass grow back “Lush” as Joel put it. This is good for the sheep that come in after the chicken leave the pasture. The sheep eat the new grass along with the weeds that have now grown.
If an animal doesn’t have natural feed then the animal won’t be happy and produce a good-product. So, the question I asked earlier, does the happiness or welfare matter? I think both matter, I think if an animal isn’t happy with its way of life that brings down the taste of the animal, it also shortens the animal’s life span. Let us use a pig for example, in the article it says, “piglets are weaned from their mothers 10 days after birth.” This would negatively affect the pig in the following ways, the pig will go through a teething phase that it will never grow out of. Michel Pollan says in his article “This premature weaning leaves pigs with a lifelong craving to suck and chew, a desire they gratify in confinement by biting the tail of the animal in front of them.” This results in infections in the tail and can lead to the sick pigs being, according to Michel “Clubbed to death”.
Going back to the chickens, the industrial farm chickens when put into their wire cages Pollan says in his article when the hens are put into their wire cages cause the hens “stress” and develop bad behaviors such as “cannibalizing her cage mates and rubbing her body against the wire mesh until it is featherless and bleeding.” Michel also adds, 10 percent of the hens die in these wire cages because they “can’t bear it” he also says the deaths of these 10 percent are “built into the cost of production”.
Before I read this article I’ve always thought that these animals should be treated better, even though I knew that these animals were being mistreated I still ate them. I still ate them because I had the thought that they died for a reason. To feed me. I wasn’t going to just let the stake or chicken sit on my plate and have them die for nothing.