BLA. a response.

For my BLA project, my group read the book 'Eating Animals' by Jonathan Foer (a very informative book, I do indeed recommend it), and watched the short documentary 'Meet Your Meat.'

'Eating Animals' was a shockingly eye-opening book. There was a great amount of information as well as personal anecdotes given by the author all about factory farms and the food industry. Foer balanced both of these out, giving enough information to fill the reader in on the subject he was mentioning while bringing in his experiences to also keep the reader interested. He also did an interesting thing in having extra perspectives written in the book. This definitely encouraged his ethos, seeing as he was including other opinions into his writing, making him not appear biased if he'd been so. He did do his best not to sound biased most of the time, but when he came through with his opinion in the end, it was already clear what position he would take on it. Certainly almost all the information he brought to the table was negative toward the factory farms, but he demonstrated that it's hard to make this a two-sided issue.

'Meet Your Meat' was a very explicit video by PETA to strongly encourage people to take up vegetarianism. It mainly focused on the treatment of the animals and some health hazards that come with the bad treatment of the creatures. The video was a stream of different undercover clips taken in areas where animals are kept until they are slaughtered; they were only ones of bad occurrences, not to say that there are only ever bad things happening, but to imprint the terrible images into the viewer's mind. Piglets smashed against the floor, cows chained in a stall, and chickens beaten with rods were some of the shocking videos shown. There was a narrator giving out facts and describing the conditions in more detail, slightly monotone but strong. This makes it a little bit more boring, but the clips that show make up for it. It was likely done that way to not overwhelm the viewer.

They both maintained about the same argument: factory farms are poopy and evil, but the documentary goes a step further in proposing a change in diet (vegetarianism) to help eliminate the cruelties and health hazards. The video was definitely more biased, but that is very understandable because it is by an organization whose whole purpose is to improve animal rights while the author of the book was just trying to find out where his food came from for his son. Reading Foer's book alone gave me reason enough to act and lo and behold, I am now a vegetarian and have been for almost a month. After being exposed to the wealth of information as well as images portrayed in the video, it's clear to me that there needs to be change among the factory farm food industry. This is all a mix of the horrendous treatment of the animals, a personal discomfort I feel when eating an animal, the health hazards and disgusting conditions everything is put under, and the troubles it is causing for the country (health, land, CO2 emissions, etc.). People should not be forced to live under my ideals, but their own, and I doubt most anyone would agree that what has been described and seen to happen in the factory farms is acceptable to their standards.