Argumentative Essay On An Animal's Place

Tristan

Williamson

English 110

Due 9/17/2015

An Animal's Place Argument Essay

Most average, everyday people believe that eating animals is an okay thing to do; however some think otherwise. As for me, personally, I believe that eating animals is fine, just don't overdo it. You see, eating meat every once in a while is perfectly natural, but I don't think we should consume it every day. Once or twice a week in moderation is a normal, healthy amount of meat to eat.

Though, It's not all about how much meat we consume, It's about how the animals are treated before being slaughtered and put into packages for our dinner plates. For example when Pollan states, "Half of the dogs in America will receive Christmas presents this year, yet few of

us pause to consider the miserable life of the pig, an animal easily as intelligent as a dog, that becomes the Christmas ham. We tolerate this disconnect because the life of the pig has moved out of view. When's the last time you saw a pig? Except for our pets, real animals, living and dying no longer figure into our everyday lives. Meat comes from the grocery store, where it is cut and packaged to look as little like parts of animals as possible. The disappearance of animals from our lives has opened a space in which there's no reality check, either on the sentiment or the brutality." (Pollan)
What Pollan says is very true. almost no one thinks about where there food comes from when they sit down to eat that slice of ham or turkey that doesn't even resemble the animal it once was. The way it used to be was that an animal was born and raised on a farm, in a wide open pasture. The animals would be able to graze freely and run around. Now with the rapidly growing population we've had to change those methods to be able to produce enough food for everyone to eat. For example, chicken companies have resorted to "mass producing" chickens, where they're born in a big concrete factory and stuffed in tiny cages, unable to stretch their wings. While they're suffering, the chickens are injected with steroids and other chemicals to make them grow quicker, so they can be slaughtered and sold faster. That is no way for a chicken, let alone any animal to live their already short life.
However some may argue that animals can not feel pain because they do not have souls, therefore it is completely fine to keep treating animals the way they're being treated.

This is not the case however, because research has been done at the University of Liverpool by Biologist Lynne Sneddon stating that "Animals show reflex responses similar to our own. For example, when we accidentally touch a hot iron, we respond almost immediately by retracting our hand. There is a lag period following this when no adverse sensations are felt but, if left untreated, the burn begins to throb and we alter our behavior to guard the affected area. Animals respond to painful damage in a similar way. Their responses comprise sever behavioral and physiological changes: they eat less food, their normal behavior is disrupted, their social behavior is suppressed, and they may adopt unusual behavior patterns, they may emit characteristic distress calls, and they experience respiratory and cardiovascular changes, as well as inflammation and release of stress hormones." (Sneddon). So not only has the "Animals don't feel pain the way humans do" argument been refuted, but it has been proven that animals do feel similar pain to humans.

Another reason we need to stop mass producing animals in this cruel way, is because

Works Cited

Colb, Sherry. "A Response to the Claim That Eating Animals Is Natural." Free From Harm. N.p., 25 July 2013. Web. 16 Sept. 2015.

Pollan, Michael. "An Animal's Place." The Norton Mix: A Custom Publication: Food Writing: A Readymix. Ed. Jeffrey Andelora, Melissa Goldthwaite, Charles Hood, Katharine N. Ings, Angela L. Jones, and Christopher Keller. 13th ed. Vol. 13. New York: W.W. Norton, 2013. 361-77. Print.

Sneddon, Lynne U. "Can Animals Feel Pain?" Can Animals Feel Pain? N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Sept.

2015.