Week 5-Shepherd

Chapter four of Eating Animals was a very interesting chapter. I really enjoyed that the majority of the chapter was told from other peoples perspectives compared to just Foer’s. It was still in a very easy to read format as well which helped. There was a bit of contradiction to the earlier parts in the book mainly chapter 3 when Foer talked about intelligence in animals and used the example of the pigs opening their gate etcetera. In Chapter 4, “Hiding/ Seeking” in the section titled “The Myth of the Myth” the author states that “species don’t make choices” (Foer 100). This rules out that they are intelligent and can have any sort of say in what happens to them or what they do and do not agree to, thus contradicting his earlier message that animals are smart and intelligent. For surely an intelligent person/animal would be able to make such a simple decision.

There is also a lot of talk about stories in this chapter, which ties back to the first chapter where he talks about stories being such a huge part of what makes a person or a family unique. A lot of these stories are being told by the other authors and about how they came to believe in what they do now because of the experiences they had on factory farms or kill lines and so forth. Names are also mentioned as telling a story in “The First Chicken” section.

I didn’t learn anything particularly new other than that turkey can fly, but the points of how gruesome these factory farms are and all the terror and pain the animals must be going through to become our food were stressed extremely and certainly got across to me.