I love eating meat. Steak, hamburger, chicken, turkey, ham, sausage, lamb, etc. you name it, I'll eat it. Reading this chapter of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma opened my eyes to some things. Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to eat meat but I'll probably look at it differently. Pollan presents a fairly unbiased (in my opinion) discussion of the moral dilemmas involved in eating animals. Taking the point of view of an animal rights activist, he talks about how animals are mistreated before we slaughter and eat them. He actually becomes a vegetarian for some time as he contemplates the morality of eating meat. A major reason people give up eating meat is that they learn about how animals are maltreated and brutally slaughtered, and believe that the animals are suffering from this. Pollan explains that while the animals do feel pain, it is uncertain if they suffer.
Looking at individual animals on the farm also can skew the view that some people have on this subject. The chapter discusses that it is likely that these domestic animals would not have survived if it wasn't for humans. Looking at the animals as entire species, we see that humans are allowing these animals to thrive by feeding them and protecting them from predators (other than ourselves). We also provide them with swift and painless deaths. In the wild, animal predators tear apart their prey resulting in a very painful and drawn-out death. Pollan describes these topics, and several others, in great detail but it is ultimately up to the individual consumer to decide whether or not they want to eat meat.
This chapter brings up a myriad of questions, to name a few: Do the animals we eat have souls? Can they suffer or feel happiness? Do they deserve the same rights that humans have? Is speciesism comparable to racism? If the mistreatment of animals in industrial farms is the moral problem, is hunting animals in the wild ethically sound?
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