South Park: Fun With Veal

During this semester, we discussed many interesting topics that touched directly the main direction of locavores. The concept of locavores is relatively new and the food industry and represents the values of local food that are a healthy food for our society. I was interested in an interesting article called “Locavores, Feminism, and the Question of Meat” by Kathy Rudy. This article discusses the relationship of feminism with locavorism and how this feminist approach relates to meat. Opinions about meat are distributed; many believe that meat should not be present in our diet, while others believe that meat satisfies the demand of buyers. That is, opinions about meat are always divided into 2 categories; this is also how to divide people into meat eaters and vegetarians. As I understand, the feminists in turn very much approve and absolutely support local food and especially local meat. Let us return to what is local food for us and how important it is for us. Local food comes from a variety of activities, such as environmental sustainability and nutritional value of taste. Local food pushes people back to start cooking and enjoying labor, as well as participating in home food.

We researched extensively about food and how it is researching our plates. It was while doing this that I read more and more discussions on veganism and vegetarianism. While I found veganism very appealing ethics-wise I realised I couldn't actually implement it. The vegan substitutes were very costly and rarely available where I lived. The only real problem I had with vegetarianism was dairy farms and how they treated the animals. So, I found a simpler solution; Instead of trying to convince my ultra-conservative parents (whom I live with) to change their lifestyles so drastically, I could simply request them to buy the milk we need from local farmers who were known to treat their animals well. This made me feel better about having milk products and it was a step forward to making my life as violence free as

From the food we eat, to the foods we are believed we should it, and the way people of different genders interact with food production and food industry itself depends on whether the individual is a male or female. Sobal (2005) discusses that our society genders the foods we eat; foods like meat, potatoes, pizza, burgers, and beer are often coded as masculine foods while foods like salad, yogurt, fruit, and chocolate are viewed as feminine foods. Meat is so engrained as a man's food that when a man decides to go vegetarian he is often seen as less of a man in society, with fathers often being concerned about their son's decision to go vegetarian (Sobal 2005). Judging and critiquing the vegetarian man disempowers a normally powerful person. Counihan (1999) addresses the way the genders eat and are told to eat; men being told to heartedly and a lot, women daintily and sparingly. Counihan (1999) also expresses that for women, eating is a way to exhibit control, with many women saying that eating in front of the opposite sex makes them nervous because they don't want to look like pigs; this is not a new phenomenon however. In one of his articles, Michael Owen Jones (2007) tells an anecdote of a young woman in the 1950s that ate steak before her dates so that she was able to eat daintily when she was on her date, saying that even though she had a healthy appetite, she didn't want to scare

​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.

She is the Meat Made Manifest: ample, robust, yet never tough or hard to digest” (Ozeki 1). Essentially Jane and her film crew are seeking out healthy American women in a country where a majority of the meat that is produced is unsafe for consumption. As the novel unravels, Jane begins to see the bigger picture behind the American meat industry that Ozeki has painted for readers--not only are people consuming unsafe, antibiotic/hormone fed meat, but they are also consuming a gendered idea of women’s role in the home and a media shaped standard of what a “real” American lifestyle is, and what constitutes as a “good, wholesome” wife. This leads to the notion that women are often viewed as resources of pleasure and nourishment for their male counterparts, similar in the way that cows are treated by their owners. However, women are much more than just resources and have their own identity outside the life of a

Morally, one may feel obligated to exercise Vegetarianism due to the inhumane treatment of animals throughout the farming process. The issue is that roughly ten billion animals are raised for United States food consumption alone. Animals such as cows, fish, chickens, pigs, and turkeys are subjected to

In the critical theory The Sexual Politics of Meat, Carol J. Adams argues that the appearance of the monster reinforces the reality of unethical meat consumption to humanity (110). She identifies the justifications for eating animal flesh as the “absent referent,” which she defines as “anything whose original meaning is undercut as it is absorbed into a different hierarchy of meaning” (42). The absent referent is an individual’s attempt to ignore the fact that meat is the flesh of a dead animal, and the process of murder the animal has to encounter to become food. The correlation between Percy Shelley’s “A Vindication of Natural Diet” and Mary Shelley’s description of the monster support Adam’s theory that the creation restores the absent referent. Percy Shelley states that humanity lacks “distinct and pointed teeth to tear the living fibre” (13).

Portrayal of animal exploitation as one demonstration of a brutal, white patriarchal culture has been explored in the book by Carol J. Adams Neither Man nor Beast: Feminism and the Defense of Animals. Adams claims that factory farming is only one part in a whole system of domination and violence against women perpetuated by the system of exploitation. The use of animals only as means to serve as our personal gain is equivalent to men’s objectification of women, and minorities alike. Drawing on historical and literary similarities between feminist and vegetarian movements Adams details the interrelationships between meat eating and male dominance. With powerful words she allows us to draw our own conclusions, but shows us how she made her own through personal experiences and descriptive storytelling.

Growing up, I was the kid that threw the mac and cheese and chicken fingers of the kids menu to the side and ordered a medium rare filet mignon. My dad joked I was “cows’ worst enemy” when I devoured cheeseburgers two meals a day and stacked my plate with more meatballs than spaghetti. Had anyone told me that I would go vegan, I would have told them they were insane. Now, I have gone just over three years without my formerly cherished steak, and it has been an experience that has taught me more than I could have ever imagined. Living in a house where I am the only vegan presents many challenges every meal. In the beginning, I spent weeks exploring the “vegan meal” boards of pinterest, finding recipes that fit into the strict diet guidelines

The articles from Carol J. Adams and Cathryn Bailey articulate the idea that meat is masculine and elitist. Adam writes about the patriarchal system that says that animals are seen as weak feminine figures. He also mentions that meat is sexualized and consumed predominantly by men. As well as, Bailey (2007) mentions, “...no moral theory of any substance could escape charges of being dogmatically judgmental, elitist, or worse.” (p. 55) This explains that theories will always be heard in the heteronormative way as that is what is seen as ‘moral’ within traditional cultures. However, she says for many poor women that were non-westerners had a hidden privilege of being able to eat vegetables which were their ethical choice. (Bailey, 2007, p. 52)

An intense, aggressive moral scrutiny has sparked interest in the meat eating community. Eating is an activity that we as humans do frequently, and the variety of food is immense. We decide what we are about to eat and how it will affect our bodies. In different societies, controversy has arisen over the morality of eating meat from animals. However, the moral and ethical arguments of eating meat is not a new debate. Roger Scruton’s essay, “A Carnivore’s Credo”, addresses both carnivores and vegetarians by using an appeal to pathos and ethos to persuade people of the need to “remoralize” eating meat, and extrapolating that to mean that human beings have the conscious ability to choose and stand up for moral right and wrong.

I have been a vegetarian for fifteen years. During the last eighteen months, I worked in two restaurants. One

I had been thinking about trying veganism for a while when I came across an Instagram post stating that watching three documentaries in a row would make [nearly] anyone go vegan. I was already vegetarian for health reasons, and I figured it would be the push I needed - so I watched them. These three documentaries, in order, were Forks Over Knives, Cowspiracy, and Earthlings. Forks Over Knives is a documentary that discusses how veganism can help our health, and can even treat or prevent illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease, while Cowspiracy explains how veganism can help to better our planet. These two documentaries had me convinced, but the one that really pushed me was Earthlings. This documentary shows what happens to animals in the meat and dairy industry, as well as the fur industry, zoos, and even circuses. Seeing those poor animals, and the

When I was two years old, I decided to become a vegetarian because I “didn’t want to eat anything with a face or a mother.”

My diet, for most of my life, has strictly been vegetarian. I was raised vegetarian and am currently still vegetarian. While I believe it works well for me, in the past I didn’t have a very balanced and healthy diet. When I was younger, I used to eat a lot of carbohydrates and fats. I have three younger brothers, and I was accustomed to eating the same amounts of food as they did, even though I am a girl and don’t require as much calories as they do. I had no limits, and would eat until I was stuffed. An example of a lunch I would have eaten back then would be a big bowl of macaroni and cheese with apples coated with heavy peanut butter and a huge glass of milk. I ate this way until I was about 14 years old, and realized that I had