Lee on Pollan on Vegetarianism
Given Amanda’s recent post on the subject, I thought I’d share these thoughtful posts from “A Thinking Reed” blog.
In order of appearance:
Pollan on the Ethics of Meat Eating
More on Pollan and Vegetarianism: Vegetarianism as Vocation
A quote:
Pollan makes the interesting suggestion that one of the reasons we’re so confused in our attitudes toward animals, veering from sentimentality to extreme brutality, is that the mechanization of animal husbandry has rendered unnecessary the cultural framework that helped pre-modern people negotiate relations with their non-human fellows. “[I]t was the ritual–the cultural rules and norms–that allowed them to look, and then to eat. We no longer have any rituals governing either the slaughter or eating of animals, which perhaps helps explain why we find ourselves in this dilemma, in a place where we feel our only choice is either to look away or give up meat” (pp. 331-2).
A more transparent process of raising and slaughtering food animals, he thinks, would force us to come to terms with what we’re doing in ways analogous to our ancestors’ rituals. Factory farms are invisible and inaccessible to most people, who likely don’t give much thought to the precise process by which that neatly wrapped package of meat ends up in the supermarket. But if we saw what was going on, we would have to make changes.”