The first thing I can recall reading by Michael Pollan was Second Nature, a gardening book, a tattered copy of which still inclines on my bookshelf about a decade later. This was the first gardening book I read all the way through, and only then because it was so thoughtful. I never guessed gardening could be so interesting. Having read it, I started buying other gardening books, only to be disappointed that they weren’t like Michael Pollan’s.
To the best of my knowledge, An Animal’s Place is the second thing I have read by Michael Pollan. A brief article… too brief. And incorrect on some minor points (including the description of “orders of magnitude” as a “qualitative” rather than quantitative difference, and description of a fictional account as a real – corrected at the end of the article).
Despite its brevity and its mistakes, and despite the questionable assertion that “we certainly won’t philosophize our way to an answer,” I am taken with this article. The questions are difficult to answer well, easy (from a cultural standpoint) to dismiss altogether, easy (from a standpoint of self-interest) to answer superficially and simply, and easy (from the standpoint of the moralist or idealist) to answer superfically and radically. I am taken with this writer’s demonstrated willingness to take these hard questions for what they are and think deeply about them.
I took a two or three year tour through vegetarianism in my youth. And today, I cringe every time I pick up a carton of eggs that doesn’t say “free-range” on it. Reading this article makes me cringe again. And I likely will cringe more in the future. The fact is that there is something wrong with the factory farm, and there is something wrong with supporting it, all questions of environment or health aside.
And the further fact is that I have a ways to go before I will be able to satisfy myself that my diet is the best I can do.
Ted Nugent should be anyone’s guide when it comes to guiltless meat eating (well, as guiltless as one can get, I suppose). The guy has never purchased meat in his life & provides for himself in frontier fashion. Say what you will, Nuge walks the walk.
…and then, he shoots it with a compound bow.
Nothing wrong with a compound bow, if you have the skill to hit your mark every time.
Kudos to Ted for eating “free-range” meat. Not the sort of fellow I’d call “thoughtful” though.
Living here in poultry country it is not at all unusual to follow a truck with hundreds of chickens stacked in crates on top of one another headed for the slaughterhouse. Feathers blowing like snow. The sight once made my daughter stop eating at Chick-Fil-A for about 6 months.
My wife often tells the story of how they raised a calf to a cow and when the day of slaughter came the entire family cried. Including her Daddy. How do you eat something that you have given a name?
I am a carnivorous hypocrite. I cannot kill animals. Can’t do it. Killed a squirrel once. Didn’t like the feeling at all.
My daddy used to get so frustrated by the fact that I wanted to throw the fish back after we went fishing. I hated seeing those bastards flop around gasping for air.
But friends I can eat meat of any kind as long as you push it in front of me. Whether it was killed with a compound bow or a sledge hammer never enters my mind.
And a meal without meat is like a day without sunshine.
My first Pollan read was The Botany of Desire, a book about how humans have co-evolved with four crops: potatoes, apples, tulips, and marijuana. He’s a fascinating and entertaining writer.
The newly released Ethical Eating Guide from the Commission on Social Witness lists the article you mention, An Animal’s Place, as a recommended resource – deservedly in my opinion. The three paragraphs in this piece that begin with “From everything I’ve read, egg and hog operations are the worst.” are overwhelming. It’s unbelievable, at least I wish it was.
Another recommended resource in the Ethical Eating Guide challenges some of Pollan’s assertions in An Animal’s Place. Hard To Swallow by B.R. Myers appeared in the September, 2007 Atlantic magazine. It critiques Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The Atlantic does not make this review available online, but Powell’s Books has it printed in its entirety at http://tinyurl.com/2e63gw .
I googled “The Botany of Desire” and it looks like it might be a fine read. Definitely going to check it out. I am seriously interested in the alarming and paradigm-shifting possibilities of genetically engineered potatoes.
That sounds like a snark but honest to God it ain’t.