An Animal's Place By Michael Pollan

The human population “loves” animals. But what we love the most our the animals we can make pets.We buy cats, dogs, and birds, bring them home and give them all our love. We are constantly watching cute videos all over the internet, and we cry when we see new born puppies. Abuse to dogs and kittens is one of the saddest things we can think of, but most people don’t see farm animals as the same way. Society doesn’t get worked up over how adorable newborn chickens are. These animals are only seen as meat. No one seems to get worked up when these animals abused and mistreated throughout their lives. Even though their purpose might not change, how they live while waiting for their future should. Living conditions for these animals must be more
Most people don't. We gloss over terrible things, if it means we benefit can from the outcome. Unfortunately, because of our glossing over, most people are unaware of the horrors of what truly happens to animals in the meat industry, even before the animals die. What actually goes on within the walls of these so called slaughter houses? Sure there are a wide variety of films depicting such places, but sometimes it difficult to convince oneself that they're eyes are no deceiving them. In Michael Pollan's article An Animal's Place, he goes on to state the horrible conditions that these animals are placed in, the worst of all, he says, is the American laying hen, “who passes her brief life span with a half a dozen other hens in a wire cage….cannibalizing her cagemates and rubbing her body against the wire mesh until it is featherless and bleeding.” He even continues to state that they “force-molt” the hens by not giving them necessities such as food, light, and water for multiple days, all for the stimulation of more eggs. The abuse of this animal is particularly disgusting and rigorous, so much that many of these animals die in their harsh conditions before even making it into the slaughter house. Matthew Scully the author of Dominion adequately calls these types of farms “our own worst
Pollan speaks of a different kind of farm in his article. This one is called Polyface Farms, here their is more than enough wide space for the animals to live and roam, about 550 acres worth. Here the big difference is ‘chickens live like chickens, cows like cows; pigs like pigs.” No animal is shoved in a pen and abused. Places such as this, even though they still eventually kill the animals, treat them with respect and allow the animals there to live healthy nice lives. Pollan goes on to say that the happiness of the animals is very apparent. So why can’t more of our slaughterhouses be like this? It is believed that these companies are driven mainly off profit, meaning the more the production they have the more income the make and the bigger they grow. This kind of thought process is made way more important the health and lives of the farm animals in which they make their profit off