United Poultry Concerns President Karen Davis submitted the following
letter to the New York Times Magazine on November 12 in response to
Michael Pollan's article "An Animal's Place." The letter was not
published.
Letters to the Editor, Magazine
The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036
Dear Editor:
Re: "An Animal's Place" by Michael Pollan (Nov. 10, 2002).
Michael Pollan seems uneasy with the arguments he uses to justify
raising and killing animals for food. In his essay, he guiltily
invokes, and exemplifies, "man's" ability to rationalize unreasonable
desires. It isn't animal advocates who are schizoid and mawkishly
sentimental about the suffering we inflict on animals to satisfy our
appetites; it's him. Pollan's case comes down to a rejection of a
"vegetarian utopia" in favor of a meateater's pipe dream. Besides
intellectual casuistry, what comes across most powerfully in Pollan's
essay is a lack of fellowship with creatures who are not human.
Thus unencumbered, Pollan prates about "respect" for animals one
eats, meanwhile quoting a slaughterer he admires (Joel Salatin), who
says animals have no souls, are not in "God's image," and are nothing
more than "physiology." Pollan sophistically severs human beings from
the rest of the animal kingdom in terms of intellect, morality and
capacity to suffer, even claiming that other creatures can't feel
dread. Yet he insists that we should continue to eat animals and to
prey on them, not from dietary necessity, but to retain our animal
identity. ("Granting rights to animals may lift us up from the brutal
world of predation, but it will entail the sacrifice of part of our
identity-our own animality.")
Pollan says predation is not a matter of morality or politics.
However, that's exactly what predation is as soon as we are conscious
of having a choice. Pollan's own essay is a moral and political
effort to justify human predation and associated violence in the face
of waning, or no, justification. Lacking support, Pollan presents
false arguments, like saying that without slaughterhouses and
meateating, chickens would become extinct. Meanwhile, in the woods of
Florida, South Carolina, and elsewhere, feral chickens raise their
families and thrive as independently as in their native habitat in
Southeast Asia.
Pollan's case for eating animals is refutable point by point. What is
needed is a counter article of comparable length and scope to address
the issues he raises.
Karen Davis, PhD
President
United Poultry Concerns, Inc.
PO Box 150
Machipongo, VA 23405-0150
757-678-7875
FAX: 757-678-5070
www.upc-online.org
(UPC Letter Re: NY Times Magazine Article "An Animal's Place")
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