Omnivore's Dilemma: The Ethics of Eating Animals (chapter 17)

This chapter deals with the philosophical aspects of eating animals.  Various ideas are discussed both from the animal rightist groups perspectives and from the meat eater perspectives. The chapter starts off by questioning why we start questioning the animal industry. Maybe it is because our civilization is moving toward a higher plane of consciousness, where we now realizing the terrible barbarity that we are doing towards animals.  In the present time, this barbarity is often hidden by the fact that the packaged meat looks as little from parts of animals as possible.  The morality of inflicting pain is then investigated. Since we all agree that animals, from humans to pigs, will try to avoid pain, why would it be right to inflict pain on animals and not humans? This view of discriminating against animals that are not humans is know as "speciesism''. However, one could argue that human suffering is amplified by the distinctly human emotions such as regret, self-pity, shame, humiliation, and dread.

I found this chapter to be quite thought provoking. Some of the ideas discussed actually made me want to stop eating meat since they were so direct and profound. I almost feel like my possible refusal to eat meat would make myself rise to a more informed and wise level in society. I always thought that turning vegetarian or vegan would solve every problem created by meat consumption such as animal cruelty, pollution, ressources used ect. I was however surprised to read some of Pollan's counterarguments about this subject. He concludes that killing animals is probably unavoidable no matter what we chose to eat, supporting this idea with the fact that field mice ends up in combines. I agree with this statement but I still think that not directly eating meat would greatly help the case. His next point is that vegan utopia would make people import all their from distant places in some areas since their are many places where the best, if not the only, way to obtain food from the land is by grazing animals on it. His last point was that the food chain would be even more dependent on fossil fuels and chemical fertilizers, since food would need to travel even farther and fertility, in the form of manure, would be short supply. I however disagree with this point because it was been shown that raising meat requires way more crop and thus everything associated with raising it, than eating greens directly. This chapter confused me a lot since many ideas are discussed but no obvious answers are apparent.

Questions raised:

Is turning vegetarian/vegan as great as we often hear about in solving the problems associated with meat consumption?

Is it even possible to cut our meat consumption to zero as a society? (Pollan is doubtful that you could build a genuinely sustainable agriculture without animals to cycle nutrients and support local food production)

Omnivore's Dilemma: The Animals (chapter 11)

In this chapter, Pollen experiences Joel's farm at Polyface, where a half dozen animal species are raised together in an intensive rotational dance on the theme of symbiosis. Every animal has a specific job and contributes to the overall success of the far. As Joel mentions, "Animals do the work here" and "I'm just the orchestra conductor, making sure everybody's in the right place at the right time".  Pollan then experiences how animals are used in this farm. For example, chickens are brought on the pasture and are known as the sanitation crew. They eat the fly larvae in manure on a four day cycle. This gives them prodigious amounts of protein which creates eggs that are unusually rich and tasty. All in all, Joel uses his cattle's waste to grow high-protein chicken feed for free. This is only one example of the many little cycles on his farm. Joel takes advantage of each species in a way that benefits them but also other animals. His practice makes him buy next to nothing for his farm. He finds that he has little need for machinery, fertilizers, and even chemicals. He also finds that he has no sanitation problem or any diseases coming from raising one animal from monocultures. As Pollen mentions, "this is perhaps the greatest efficiency of a farm treated as biological system: health".

It is very interesting to learn how a farm can be run this way. Everything just seems to work adequately with everything else in this farm, just like an ecosystem. Pollan, in this chapter, is trying to show us how you don't specifically need an industrialized farm to be successful in today's world. Although Joel farm seems to be ideal from this piece of writing, I don't think it can be seen as a solution for our farming methods in the U.S. I don't think everyone could be successful in achieving what Joel has created and I'm also doubting the fact that farming is his only source of income. His farming almost seems like a pastime instead of production for basic survival. Overall, I think his farming method is great and it should be a model for other local small-scale farming around the U.S but this would not replace big industrialized farms because his output does not seem to be efficient enough to provide for the population. However, I think it would be great if big-scale farms could use some of his ecological methods.

Questions:
Could big-scale farms use some of his methods of using animals to do work or is this only restricted to small-scale farming?

Omnivore's Dilemma: Big Organic (chapter 9)

Summary:
In this chapter Pollan investigates what the organic industry truly is.  He finds out that after analyzing a couple products at Whole Foods, what really makes this food special is its evocative prose. For example, milk from cows that live "free from unnecessary fear and distress" and wild salmon caught by Native Americans in Yakutat, Alaska.  The word organic has become one of the most powerful words in the supermarket and the organic industry has now become the fastest growing sector of the food economy. Pollan's eventually finds out that most of the small local produces at Whole Foods are now gone because of the grocery industry's standard regional distribution system, which makes small farms impractical.  The organic industry has been taken over by some industrial organic companies like Earthbound Farm and Grimmway Farms.  As Pollan stated in the chapter, the real question is what does the word "organic" truly means? According to Pollan, a long debate has taken place over the years, and the word "organic'' as we might think, did not survive the federal ruling process in 1997 by the USDA.

Analysis:
I found this chapter to really be unveiling in terms of what organic is and what it means. I guess the people in the organic industry do not really want to population to know about this.  Although Pollan might try to persuade the reader that this industrialized organic industry is full of lies, I agree that in today's world, it would almost be impossible to go back to the 1800's method of farming in order to supply for the U.S increasing population.  It would just not be feasible to be successful in the market without utilizing some sort of industrialization. I see this industrialized organic market as a transition between full-blown industrialized agriculture and the true meaning of the word "organic".

Questions:
Could we possibly have a defined set of rules regarding what organic produces should be?
Would the government regulating what's actually said on those organic produces ameliorate the situation?

Omnivore's Dilemma: The Feedlot (chapter 4)

After seeing where and how corn was growned, Pollan's brings us to one of the main application of corn, the meat industry. About 60% of it goes to feeding livestock.  However, ruminants are made to graze grass and this radical shift to corn in this new industrialization era are causing many problems to the animals, the environment and in the end, us. When animals used to live on farms (now they are sent to massive feeding stations) waste ceased to exist. A closed ecological loop was in place. Nowadays, feeding lots are breaking this loop and are creating new problems. We now have fertility problems that we're trying to solve with chemical fertilizers and also pollution problems that we're not really addressing.

Ruminants would not be able to survive for more than 150 days if it wasn't for the enormous amount of antibiotics like Rumensin and Tylosin that are blended in the cows meal in addition to the liquefied fat (coming from other animals) and protein supplements. These additives cause manure to contain levels of nitrogen and phosphorus that are so high that it would kill crops if it was sprayed on them. This toxic waste ends up in streams and is concerning problems for the environment.

These corn-fed animals also end up being less healthy to humans because it contains more saturated fats and less omega-3 acids than the grass-fed cows.



In reading this chapter, I was able to see that Pollan wanted to display a major head to head comparison between grass-fed and corn-fed cows for us to realize how the farming industry changed for the worse. I feel sickened to know that these cows are getting so manipulated for efficiency that they barely are natural anymore. The fact that they would not live if it was not for the antiobiotics should be alarming to us. It means that we really need to change the way we treat those animals because we are barely keeping them alive. I personally think it should be considered animal cruelty.

We are also poisoning ourselves by poisoning what we eat. We might have the luxury as Americans to eat meat 3 times a day if we want, but the quality of this meat is now so bad that we are slowly killing ourselves. No wonder so many Americans have health problems.

So what are the incentives again of feeding those animal corn if it is causing so many problems around us? Corn offers the cheapest calories around and the excess that we have needs to be consumed. Cows raised on corn also reach slaughter weight faster that cows raised on grass. It is all about efficiency and money. Big companies are profiting while the cows, farmers, the environment and us are being affected negatively. I feel like if more people would be informed about these things, change could happen to save our planet and mankind because right now we are slowly destroying it.

Questions raised:

Would it ever be possible to go back and feed cows with grass like we used to? What would be the impact on our economy? 

How many problems would it solve if we would completely stop eating meat?

Omnivore's Dilemma: Corn Conquest (chapter 1-3)

This first chapter of Micheal Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma is about a produce that its derivation are ubiquitous around us: corn. The most interesting aspect is that most of our society is not even informed about the extensive use of this plant. Pollan reveals that on the the forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket, more than a quarter of them now contain corn. From feeding animals like chicken, beef, pig and now salmon, while being a constituent of eggs and most dairy products, corn is everywhere. Through some historical analysis of how corn was first used by the Maya's, Pollen explains why corn is such a powerful crop and how it's use was transferred to the white colonists. The fact that corn is a C-4 plant gives it an advantage to grow where water is scare and temperature high. It also contains significantly more energy that similar crop which makes it very tempting to feed humans and animals.

In chapter two, Pollan tells us about his experience on a corn farm. By interacting with George Naylor, a corn farmer, we get more insights about how corn changed farming and landscapes in Iowa. What once used to be verdant fields of varied produces, now became a desert of corn. Even the livestock which used to be present has no use since it was replaced by machinery.  The mentality of farmers has also changed. Now everything is about yield per acre, not its quality and size like it used to. The more corn is produced, the lower the price it sells for, the more corn has to be produced for the farmer to survive. This is the vicious circle of corn.

Chapter three is about the grain elevator which to Pollen's eyes lowers the value of this vegetable which was once praised by Mayan's. "An immense pile of corn left out in the rain". We then learn that big companies like ADM and Cargill are the ones who control the corn's obscure stages from elevators to feedlots.


I was very absorbed by this book from the start especially when Pollen revealed how much corn is around us.  I knew that high fructose corn syrop was present in many products but I never knew that modified or unmodified starch, maltodextrin, ascorbic acid, lecithin, dextrose, lactic acid, lysine, maltose, caramel color and xanthum gum all came from corn! I find it also shocking that most of us do not know what we are actually eating. I wonder how many percent of Americans know what xanthum gum is. I feel like we should not be eating so much of one product and that we are losing the variety of products that are civilization used to live on for thousands of years.

Questions that I am raising:

Pollen's writing seems to indicate that the corn revolution is harmful for our society. How so? Isn't corn healthy for us since it is a grain?