Blog Post 7

These three reading provide different views into American food processing, an industry that is often under-regulated and over looked by consumers. Pollan’s piece was by far the most interesting owing to his awesome writing style and uncanny ability to relate his topic to the reader. “An Animal’s Place” traces the domestication and production of animals through the lens of our morality. The article was styled as a constant tug and pull between Pollan, taking the chair of an average American consumer, and the philosophical book by Peter Singer ''Animal Liberation”. As with any philosophical argument Singler’s ideas are subject to criticism from many people who do not share his moral agenda.

The idea of equality for animals was one of the most noteworthy and defining themes of this piece. Pollan posed the question; will future generations judge us with the same severity as we impose on slavers and the third reich? There is no doubt the idea of equality is rapidly gaining ground, in the past 200 years it has been extended to African Americans, women, and homosexuals. As the liberation movement moves forward will animals be the next group to gain the same rights that us humans enjoy?

Estabrook’s Tomatoland was more grounded in fact, absent the moral philosophizing of “An Animals Place”. One of the most interesting facts is that tomatoes today are actually much less healthy than they were in the 1960s. The author described the dirty secrets behind a seemingly healthy harmless and “wholesomely grown” tomato. In fact many of our supermarket tomatoes have been bloated full of pesticides and other synthetic ingratiates. They are harvested by minimum wage immigrants, essentially indentured servants, who are locked into work by economic and social conditions instead of unpaid debt.

The infographic by Cook describes the same hardships for workers in the poultry industry. Disease and workplace injury are rampant and many of the immigrant workers have no union or insurance plan for protection. The thing I liked most about this piece is that it was short and to the point, without the literary styling’s of Estabrook and Pollan.

Tomatoland also asserts a theme that was present in all three of the readings, many of the negative aspects of the food industry can be traced back to a capitalist economy. The need to achieve maximum production with minimal cost is why poulty and pigs live disgusting, imprisoned lives and their slaughterers are paid so little for dangerous and degrading work. Neither article insists that socialism is the answer, instead Pollan asserts, “Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to do it this way.”