Week 7-Dani Reed

A moment in chapter 6 of Eating Animals that stood out to me was on pages 181-182. These two pages described some of the horrible treatment that animals go through from immature factory employees. Two of the examples that really made me cringe were how farmers were, “bludgeoning pregnant sows with a wrench and ramming an iron pole a foot deep into mother pigs’ rectums and vaginas” (Foer, 181). Foer also described what undercover video cameras caught workers doing such as workers sawing off pigs’ legs and skinning them while they were still conscious. Foer listed these inhumane treatments of animals to attract the readers’ emotion using pathos. The thing that got me was that the places treating these animals this way are the largest meat producers such as Tyson Foods. It is extremely nauseating thinking that I have ate something that has been through those types of conditions. Foer has mentioned this terrible treatment before but after reading most of this book and hearing how some farmers give their pigs a better way of life with good food and freedom to run in exchange for their life later on is so much more ethical. My beliefs and way of thinking should not let me eat animals that have gone through this. I became a vegetarian before and it lasted two years. Something else Foer mentions in his book is the socialization of food and that is exactly what led me back to a non-vegetarian life. It is hard to be a vegetarian and go to your friends’ house for a meal or not eat the turkey on Thanksgiving and miss traditions such as that. I chose to skip those traditions before and live a vegetarian life but two years later, I slowly went back. This book is making me second guess that decision now that I am once again reading what I discovered before about the inhuman treatment of animals.