The Omnivore's Dilemma: Part Three

     "Isn't it natural to give special consideration to one's kind?" asks Pollan.  I would reply with yes, making me a speciesist.  This is not to say that I disregard animals altogether, as I believe that our coexistence with them on this planet is a necessary balance to maintain. When it comes to getting a meal on my plate, I have no problem with the killing of animals for food.  But when it comes to the rights of these animals before they are killed, many problems were presented in The Omnivore's Dilemma.
     While many questions went unsolved, one that became answered in my mind was the act of hunting.  Prior to reading this book, I viewed hunting as a sort of barbaric and backwoods kind of way to obtain your meat.  Most of this comes from my own lack of experience, as no one in my family hunts and that I've never shot a gun before.  However, the way that Pollan described his feral pig hunting trip was fascinating to me.  A statement that stood out was when his hunting companion, Angelo, described a hunted pig as "some very nice prosciutti!"  This statement was remarkable, as the hunter valued the final dish that it would turn into, rather than just killing an animal for the fun of it.  While I'm sure that there are some hunters who do just that, this viewpoint gave me insight as to why many still hunt: it is a way that we can become connected to our ancestry, nature, and the animals that we are going to eat.  I now have a much greater respect for hunting because of this.
     The biggest dilemma (pun intended?) that presented itself was the role of the rights of animals that we eat.  While I believe that us humans have the right to give special consideration to our own interests of food, this is not to say that the way we do this is just.  Most of the meat we consume today is a byproduct of a capitalist system that separates us from what ends up on our dinner table.  Many of us remain happily unaware of how the animals we eat are treated.  If you feel that way, then so be it.  But I believe that the loss of connection between us and the meat we eat is an insult to both the animals and to ourselves.  We fail to acknowledge that the way we are treating animals on farms is not the way that they are supposed to exist.  Cows are not supposed to eat corn and stand up to their knees in shit, and hens are not supposed to be caged with no room to spread their wings or graze.
     So maybe that's the reason why I appreciate hunting much more than I did before.  In a society where factory farms gauge their output on numbers of animals as opposed to quality of meat, the act of seeing an animal and killing it in its natural habitat is very refreshing to me.  I realize that hunting is not a viable option for a majority of people to get their meat, so farms like Joel Salatin's are a way in which we can develop this connection without having to do the dirty work of hunting a wild animal.  If more Americans were aware of factory farm practices and our separation from the whole process, would small farms like Salatin's catch on with the majority of Americans?  I hope to think so.