February 22, 2010

In chapter 16 of the Omnivore's dilemma, the author, Michael Pollan describes how and why humans are omnivore's due to the ability of our brain to mentally understand what we are eating and how our digestive track has adapted to the wide variety of food being put into our body. Pollan also goes on to explain that our ability to be omnivores is also somewhat evolutionary, such as rats. He states that "the rat and the human can live just about anywhere on earth and when their familiar foods are in short supply, there's always another they can try". This is very interesting to me because it has never occurred to me that humans really do have the ability to consume a wide variety of food compared to other, less sophisticated life forms.

In chapter 17, Pollan addresses the ethics in which we consume animals in a chapter appropriately named "The Ethics Of Eating Animals". In this chapter, Pollan quotes animal rights activist and philosophers such as Singer, who goes as far as comparing animals being owned by people in the same way that white farmers owned african american slaves. I find this a bit ridiculous and extreme and is my personal belief that the two cannot be compared on the same level because livestock are not the same as humans. The chapter also talks about animal cruelty in so called "death camps". However, I believe that the animals on these farms most likely live behind a veil of ignorance in that they don't realize that there is a better life outside the walls of farm because they have no knowledge of that life. And when addressing the issue of whether the way in which the animals are killed, the result is the same no matter how its done.