Reflection Part Three on The Omnivore's Dilemma

I've been a little behind in getting posts up of my reading responses due to the fact that one of my best friends has been visiting me from England (yes, his accent really is amazing), but I'm hoping to use this weekend to catch up. In the meantime, here is my final reflection for The Omnivore's Dilemma:

The last section of the book, in which Pollan prepares a meal entirely from ingredients that he has hunted, gathered, and/or grown himself, was both the most and least interesting portion of the book for me. As I stated before, this is my second time reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and I remember from last time that the end of the book was a little over-the-top for me. Don’t get me wrong – I love local food, and think cooking your own meal is superior to fast food. That being said, there was something about the way he waxed poetically over every part of the meal that rubbed me (an admitted cynic) the wrong way. To be fair, this is the part of the book where Pollan really gets to indulge in his feelings, and I shouldn’t begrudge him that.

The chapter that I found most interesting was the one entitled “The Ethics of Eating Animals” since this is something that I, as a mostly-vegetarian, struggle with. Pollan sums up the state of meat eating in America well when he says, “there’s a schizoid quality to our relationship with animals today in which sentiment and brutality exist side by side” (306). I know people who lavishly indulge their pets, yet think nothing of buying Foster Farms chicken nuggets (which definitely come from factory farmed birds). It seems that as a society we have decided that select members of select species (there are far more adoptable animals than people willing to adopt them) get to be loved, while the rest are left to a cruel fate. This happens because we don’t actually have to look at the animals we’re killing. When you go to the store the meat that you buy doesn’t look anything like the animal it came from. You don’t have to look at the factory farms and slaughterhouses where that meat was raised and killed. If you did, you might make a different decision. As Pollan says, “nowadays it seems we either look away or become vegetarians” (307).

So here’s the question – can you look and still eat meat? Can you understand what you’re doing, take responsibility for it, but do it anyway? The conclusion Pollan comes to is yes. I want to agree with him, but I think it is incredibly hard to only eat ethically raised/sourced meat, dairy, and eggs in America, which is what you have to do if you don’t want to look away or become vegetarian. I’m not saying that if you’re default is to eat meat ethically, but you slip up and have a burger at a friend’s barbeque you’re automatically a horrible person, but it seems to me that scenario (sliding from eating ethical to non-ethical meat) is more likely to happen if you’re not a vegetarian. I am not trying to preach vegetarianism here, because admittedly I do eat (ethically raised) meat from time to time. However, I did find it frustrating that Pollan was unwilling to condemn slaughtering animals on an industrial scale. He says, “so is it possible to slaughter animals on an industrial scale without causing them to suffer? ...For my part, I can’t be sure, because I haven’t been able to see for myself” (330). I understand that he hasn’t actually been inside a slaughterhouse, but there is enough literature out there to make it very clear that killing 400 animals an hour means some of the animals will suffer.

I would say that I agree with Pollan’s statement “what’s wrong with eating animals is the practice, not the principle” (328). Veganism isn’t a viable option for many people. I would like to see Americans eat less meat that’s better quality.