Outline, “An Animal’s Place”

Michael Pollan, NY Times Magazine 1/4/03

1.      OVERVIEW                                                      

2.      Reason animals used for food are so mistreated is because we have lost everyday contact with animals and taken their raising and slaughtering out of public view

3.      Wants to recover a tradition of both honoring and eating animals

4.      DEFENSES OF MEAT EATING AND RESPONSES THAT POLLAN CONSIDERS

5.      Animals on farm never known any other life

6.      “They do it too” defense of meat eating (animals eat animals)

7.      POLLAN ON ANIMAL PAIN/SUFFERING

8.      Higher animals wired much like we are and for same evolutionary reasons

9.      Human and animal pain differ greatly in some respects

10.    POLLAN ON FACTORY FARMING

11.    Modern confined animal feeding operation treats animals as machines incapable of feeling pain.

12.    People who work there have to “suspend their beliefs” and the rest of us have to “avert our eyes”

13.    Details of animal production (Page 8)

14.    Role of Capitalism: Mistreatment of animals in factory farms is a nightmare of unfettered capitalism (capitalism unconstrained by morality or regulation)

15.    DESCRIPTION OF HUMANE AND ECOLOGICALLY SOUND FARM

16.    Polyface Farm is a family farm where six different food animals raised in a way that is ecologically sound and humane

17.    Here animals are happy; a sentimental conceit to see it as death camp (as say animal rightists)

18.    POLLAN’S VIEW OF DOMESTICATION AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS AS A MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL EXCHANGE

19.    The good life for domesticated (food) animals can’t be achieved apart from humans, thus farms, thus meat eating

20.    In principle, animal agriculture is mutualism, not exploitation

21.    Domestication an evolutionary development by which certain species evolved to survive and prosper in alliance with humans

22.    FOR ANIMALS, ALLIANCE WITH HUMANS HAS BEEN A GREAT SUCCESS (AT LEAST UNTIL OUR TIME)

23.    One: Domestic animals have survived and in greater numbers that wild counterparts

24.    Two: If we didn’t eat them, many of these animals would not exist

25.    Three: Domesticated animals are (could be) happier and flourish more than their wild counterparts.

26.    Issue: What relevance is what happens in nature for human morality toward animals?

27.    Here Pollan seems to be using the way nature treats animals as a standard or justification for the way humans should treat them

28.    Nature not a moral guide for culture and cultural ethics not a moral guide for nature

29.    VEGETARIANS KILL ANIMALS TOO (AND PERHAPS MORE THAN MEAT EATERS)

30.    P. 12: Makes Kerasote point that eating vegetables kills animals too as they die in the production of vegetables (pesticides, tractors kill field mice and wood chucks)

31.    Oregon State Univ. animal scientist says strict veggie diet would INCREASE animals killed, as animal pasture gave way to row crops

32.    To kill as few animals as possible, eat largest animal possible that can live on least intensively cultivated land (grass fed beef )

33.    EATING MEET ESSENTIAL TO HUMAN ANIMALITY

34.    Eating meat part of human evolutionary heritage, reflected in design of our teeth and structure of our digestion

35.    MEAT EATING IS NO MORE A TRIVIAL DESIRE THAN IS OUR SEXUAL DESIRE

36.    Desire to eat meat is not a trivial matter, no mere “gastronomic preference”

37.    Might as well call sex (also no longer technically necessary) a mere recreational preference

38.    Our meat eating is something very deep indeed.

39.    Poor analogy; better analogy would be between desire to eat and desire for sex (not desire to eat meat and desire for sex)

40.    POLLAN ON VALUE OF ANIMAL LIFE AND NECESSITY OF RESPECTFUL KILLING

41.    Taking a life is momentous

42.    Slaughter does not preclude respect (can kill w/o treating animal as a “pile of protoplasm”)

43.    Ceremony/rituals is what can make killing animals okay

44.    GLASS ANIMAL AGRICULTURE SOLUTION

45.    What is needed to redeem animal agriculture in this country is to require glass in the confined animal facilities and slaughterhouses

46.    ONE CAN FIND MEAT HUMANELY GOWN

47.    Pollan has found it entirely possible to limit meat eating to nonindustrial animals

48.    MISCELLANEOUS

49.    Animal activists have trouble with existence of predation in nature

50.    Animal rights only survive in a world where humans lost contact with nature, where animals no longer a threat, and where no serious clash between human and animal interests

51.    For bioregions that can’t grow crops but can graze animals, vegetarianism would require more transportation of food (which is ecologically bad)

52.    Pollan’s Email exchange with Peter Singer

53.    What does he think of a farm where animals live according to their natures and do not appear to suffer

54.    Singer:

55.    Pollan thinks Singer’s views are consistent with Pollan’s main point: