Overconsumption of Meat in Our Society

As humanity becomes more civilized, many of us perceive that eating livestock is morally incorrect, but aren’t we are designed to be an omnivore? Our teeth and digestive system serve the purpose of breaking down animal and plant foods and to bring these important nutrients to every part of the body. Despite the fact that, in 2011, U.S. meat and poultry production reached more than 92.3 billion pounds, the ethic of killing and eating animals as well as the concern of the environmental burden caused by the production of meats is debatable. However, animal based diet is necessary for the human body to function properly and we can choose the meat produced from environmentally sustainable farms to avoid the moral ambiguity.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma, written by Michael Pollan, gives light to the question, “What should we have for dinner?” that he thinks Americans today cannot answer simply due to the fact that there are too many food options. This book serves as an eye-opener to challenge readers to be more aware and accountable of what is consumed daily. In order to understand fully where our food comes from, we must follow it back to the very beginning. Pollan goes on to discuss three different modern food chains in which we get our food: the industrial, the organic, and the hunter-gatherer. By tracing our food back to the beginning, we can understand that most of the nutritional and health problems America is going through today can be found on the farms that make our food and the government that can decide what happens. America deals with many food related illness such as, heart disease, obesity, and type II diabetes. Majority of a human and animals diet consists of being corn-fed leading to a high cause of obesity in the United States these are just some of the many diseases that come with over processed foods and diets we are unaware of. In this study, we will highlight the environmental and health issues and impacts related with modern agriculture and how these systems can be made more sustainable.

Throughout the US there has been the big concern of where the food we eat comes from and if it is healthy. Everyone wants healthy food, yet we fail to eat the healthy food that is right in front of us, instead we eat industrial made food that causes the death of thousands of people each year. In the Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, you explore the pros and cons of our five main food chains; industrial,industrial organic, organic, sustainable, and hunter gatherer. In all ways, the sustainable food chain is the best food chain to feed the US. Animals and plants are developed naturally without any chemicals or pesticides and all of the produce is grown and sold locally and harvested by hand.

The demand for meat in America is on the rise while the number of family owned farms is declining. The farming industry has had to change century old practices like free-range grazing to keep up with the mass amounts of meat that Americans and other cultures have become accustomed to. A process known as factory farming is controlling the farming industry worldwide. Factory farming is an unnatural and inhuman way to raise mass amounts of livestock. Unfortunately to keep up with demand, small farmers around the world are struggling to survive and are being pressured to work for large corporations raising animals using theses factory farming strategies rather than the natural alternative. As described by Wenonah

One reason for this is because we have too much choice. Pollan explains all throughout the book about how food companies and the industrial food industry tend to modify their products to seem more appealing to the modern omnivore. They slap on labels that say organic, or cage-free. They also modify the food so that it says reduced fat, or gluten-free. But in reality, they are taking out vital nutrients and other things that we depend on to survive.

The world has a need for meat, and it is almost obsessive. Most cultures typically consume some sort of domesticated animal in agriculture. Whether it is cows, chicken, lamb, deer, turkey, or fish, many people are not educated to the fact that the alternative diets are better for their health. There are different animal products for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Hundreds if not thousands of diverse chain restaurants dedicated to meat consumption.There are also many different holidays around the world such as Thanksgiving and Christmas where meat is consumed. With affordable prices and an acquired taste, it is likely to be a lifelong habit. There are vast miles of subsidized agricultural land dedicated to the cultivation of animals. According to Amir Khan, staff writer for U.S.News, reporting on the American Meat Institute, Americans consume, “57 pounds more meat than they were in the 1950s”(Khan).

​In conducting a rhetorical analysis of the two articles, "Joel Salatin: How to Eat Animals and Respect Them, Too" by Madeline Ostrander and "Humane Meat? No Such Thing" by Sunaura Taylor, both articles stand in stark contrast in terms of the viewpoints of meat that they present. In order to gain a better understanding of these viewpoints, it's important to understand the persuasive techniques that both authors use in the article for the reader. More specifically, the ethos, pathos, and logos that they employ, as well the way in which the evidence and support is presented will further elucidate upon the arguments that appear in both articles.

In the article published on The New York Times, "The Myth of Sustainable Meat," by James E. McWilliams, a history professor who specializes in environmental history at Texas State University--San Marcos, tries to prove the alternatives to factory farms that practice natural ways of raising animals for food production isn’t such a satisfying alternative than what we perceive it to be (par. 2). McWilliams presents excellent examples and reasons to support his thesis. He appropriately used important societal issues in regards to animal production to broaden his audience and provide strong support towards his claim. Even though McWilliams provides strong reasons to establish his claim, the use of expert opinions and dishonest statistics and facts

After reading both articles, I have to say I am compelled to believe Joel Salatin’s response to “Myth of Sustainable Meats” written by James E. McWilliams. I think Joel Salatin uses many more pieces of evidence in his argument, and also does a very good job using facts to prove McWilliam’s statements are false. It seems that every statement he makes is backed up by a fact. It also seems that Salatin is extremely offended by McWilliam’s claims and even writes “apparently if you lie often and big enough, some people will believe it” (Salatin). I think Salatin is offended because McWilliams makes it seem that every company does everything wrong, when some companies are actually doing things the right way. McWilliams generalizes too often

“Less meat, less junk food and more plants” that’s the main slogan of Mark Bittman’s talk. According to him, eating habits of modern society dramatically differs from earlier times: people found convenient buying prepared food (fast food, frozen food), that doesn’t need much time and effort, which, consequently, harms our health and contributes to disease can cause diabetes, cancer and heart diseases. Moreover, as he said meat is not that healthy to our organism as it believed to be. Firstly, cattle are mostly forced to eat can and soy, in place of natural grass to stay alive longer. Secondly, even if they’re called organic and packed tightly, it does not mean that they save freshness and will be good as they were at first, because they travel

A common one from this is that humans have eaten meat for thousands of years, so why should we stop? Taking it as far as we can with facts, our ancestors didn’t eat nearly the amount of meat we did and depended on vegetation when hunting failed. We now also kill massively more animals being estimated at 56 billion a year, not including fish or sea creatures according to Animal Equality. With this large scale massacre not only are the animals being hurt, but our air, water, and soil are being ruined by these large-scale farms only looking for profit. If we took the ten pounds of grain consumed by an animal just to produce one pound of meat, we could feed many more starving people. Studies from Cornell University found that if we took that grain used in US Livestock farming and gave it to the starving worldwide; we could feed eight hundred million people. Due to the ratio of meat to vegetation consumption, the human species has evolved to a body more fit towards a vegetarian diet as well supported by vegetarian.procon.org by saying that “Humans do not have the large mouth or long, pointed teeth of carnivores. Human teeth are short and flat for chewing fibrous food. Carnivores have short intestines (3-6 times body length) while human intestines are long (10-11 times body length) to allow slower digestion of plant foods. The liver of a carnivore can detoxify the excess vitamin A absorbed from a meat-based diet. The human liver cannot detoxify excess vitamin A” (2). With humans only having four “carnivorous” teeth, it’s suggested that they could easily also be for fleshy fruits, seen also in many apes that are strictly

In “Animal, Vegetable, Miserable,” Gary Steiner argues against the eating, or using, of animals and animal products. Steiner is the author of multiple books on topics similar to this, and a dedicated vegan of fifteen years at the time of this article. The author begins with an allusion to the recent outcries for the humane treatment of animals being raised for food. However, he points out, no one seems to be concerned about the animals being slaughtered, merely that they were not abused beforehand. Steiner then goes on to explain the two main

For human, to master agriculture and trade about 10,000 years ago widely expanded their food options that enable modern human to become a vegetarian (Corliss). A vegetarian does not eat meat not only because it tastes bad, but also it means something to him or her. The more one has faith in vegetarianism, the more one restricts one’s food choice in reality. Henry David Thoreau, who is known as one of the first environmental writers of the 20th century in the U.S. and had lived in woods alone, writes in his essay Walden that hunting and eating animals had bothered him because it seemed as it degraded himself to a beast. For him, eating animals is “not agreeable to [his] imagination” (Thoreau 169) as Thoreau strongly believed that “to leave off eating animals” is “a part of the destiny of the human race” (Thoreau 170). While his belief and the reality he faced had conflicted each other, he tried his best to find a way to live without relying much on meat. Even in a wild, what drove Thoreau was anthropocentric thinking that human can control nature. This dilemma in food choice that bothered Thoreau is what Michael Pollan calls the omnivore’s dilemma. He puts it in his same-titled book in this way: “When you can eat just about anything nature has to offer,

Consumption of meat by humans creates several problems. First and foremost, raising animals for food compromises the environment. For example, it takes a large amount of natural resources to sustain the meat industry. The use of water, land, and food to raise animals for human consumption is not an efficient use of our limited resources. In contrast, it is more efficient to feed humans directly than to use land, food, and water to feed animals to be used as food. There are shortages of fertile land, clean water, and food in several third world countries. Many of these countries’ resources are allocated to produce feed for animals in developed countries around the world. As a result, the citizens of these countries are stricken with water and food shortages, while their crops are feeding cattle from across the globe. However, this problem can be solved by adopting a vegan diet. The vegan diet will allow a more efficient use of resources that in turn can be used to feed starving men, women, and children throughout the world. Consequently, more people in the world could be fed if the land used to grow feed for animals was used to grow food for humans.

You are what you eat is an age-old saying that has been around for centuries in many societies around the globe. For a long time, people have taken this saying lightly, but recent research, as well as trends, indicates that people are beginning to agree that the saying holds some truth. Food is an important aspect of life for all organisms on earth, and the same also applies to human beings. Before agricultural revolution, survival and life for all human societies revolved around the search for food. In those days, the only concern people had from morning to evening was searching for food either through hunting or gathering. Gradually as societies began to emerge and people began farming and domesticating livestock, the resulting improvement in food security enabled people to start concentrating on other aspects of life apart from the search of food. This contributed to the emergence and development of the civilization we see in the modern times. Since the first wave of European immigrants began arriving in the east coast of America in the 15th century, agriculture has been an important industry in the United States. Today, the United States has grown to one of the world leading producer and market for food in the world market. The United States produces various plant and animal food both for export and local consumption. The country also imports various foods from different countries around the globe. Unsurprising, the issue