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cantaloupe's picture

the human race

Pollan's findings about the Whole Foods supermarket and so-called "organic" products didn't surprise me.  Did we really believe that somewhere there were chickens roaming freely?  Of course our meat comes from animals that are confined; we are in the 21st century.  We have evolved into this crazy, brutal society in which the main priority is to further our race.  It is natural for humans to do anything possible to benefit themselves; we are inherently greedy.  It is natural for any species to do so.

 

As I read the chapter on the ethics of eating animals, I expected myself to be rooting more for animal rights.  When I was a kid I used to hate it when my brother killed bugs.  I used to get really upset and ask him how he would feel if he was a bug.  He always responded that he wasn't a bug, so he didn't have to worry about it.  That logic used to really bother me because I wanted to know how he would feel if he was a bug being killed for no reason.  Now, I have more trust in the natural flow of things.  People will argue that our industrial food chain is not natural; that we are, in fact, disrupting nature.  My thought is that we are nature.  What we do in this world is part of nature.  How come we have separated ourselves from it and anything we do industrially is considered bad?

 

We are carnivores; we are meant to eat meat.  Therefore, we are meant to kill animals.  I know that some vegetarians don’t eat meat because of the way meat is slaughtered in America.  I respect their decision; I don’t condemn people for being vegetarian.  I just personally wouldn’t be.  I don’t think anyone, including animal rights people, will get America to change back into what it used to be.  We are too used to cheap meat.  The slaughterhouses will stay the same and I’m okay with that.  I believe humans have an obligation to help their own species before they help something else.  What do animal rights activists have to say about all the human suffering?

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