This book was assigned the one week that I missed class because I had to go home and get two crowns, which took four hours under the drill, very fun. I just forgot about making this post but I did read the book and I liked it a whole lot, but it has not made me any less of a carnivore than I have always been. I already try to eat as much “organic” meat as i possibly can because it tastes a lot better. Steaks from Whole Foods, yes I know that whole foods is the Wal-mart of the organic foods business but I still like it, are so much better than steaks from Kroger, they have just the right amount of marbling and are so good. While all of the discussion of the horrors of the factory farmed meats were a bit disturbing, they did not really change my mind about how to eat. I did like the way that he tried to get the perspectives from all sides of the argument, rather than coming right out and attacking these factory farms for all of their faults.
Another part of this book that I really liked was when he talked about the eating of dogs in so many other parts of the world. This was a pretty funny piece that talks about how the United States and Canada are some of the few places where the eating of dog meat is considered very taboo. So why is this true here? There is the whole companionship thing in this country about dogs being man’s best friend and all of that but pigs can be much better pets than dogs, they are smarter, just as loyal, and just as lovable yet Americans consume millions of pigs every year. I guess for each, his own on this matter, I do not look down on anyone for eating dogs, you gotta do what you gotta do.
I also liked all the talk about the evils of factory farming and things that it has caused, such as the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, which had a swine and avian influence that is widely believed to have come from the meat farms of this time. This part of the book blew my mind just talking about this pandemic, which is very rarely talked about, yet, which killed more people in one year than all four years of the First World War. I did like hearing all of the horror stories about how the animals are treated and all of that and I have actually seen this firsthand. My family owns some interest in a slaughterhouse in East Tennessee and I went on a tour of this facility sometime in high school. It was hard to watch then and was hard to read about in this book, yet it never changed my constant hunger for animal flesh. If this means that I can not call myself a true environmentalist, as the author suggested, then so be it. I will continue to enjoy my beef, pork, venison, chicken and most other meats.
