An Animals Place

I know this entry is a day late, but I decided to do it just to keep up. The arguments that stuck out to me the most in the essay were the arguments about how we, as people, don't realize where our food comes from. When I was a kid I was at first horrified the first time I saw the cattle pins out by Modesto, CA. I didn't know or care about how the meat appeared in the store. I saw all the cows in the feed lot and asked my grandfather while driving by, "What kind of animals are those and why are they all in that big pin?" I was told a short (when I say short, I mean a story that will last the remainder of the trip) story about how the food we get from the store actually comes from places like that and how when he was a boy on the farm in Iowa they had to do the slaughtering themselves. I was awe-struck. I feel this back story is relevant because I had never known there were people that actually had to carve out their own meat from the cow, goat, or what have you. People have lost the connection between using the animal for food and made that need into yet another part of our consumer culture. If we don't have to look at the animal before consuming it's flesh, then we can remain in the bliss of ignorance while devouring that delicious steak.
Something else that wasn't mentioned in the essay, but mentioned in class that I already had thought about was the poor treatment of the animals could lead to more health concerns for people. The stress the animals are under by living in too tight of areas and could raise heart rates and just make the animal fear which in turn allows for more adrenaline to flow through the animals muscles and other organs. From what I know the adrenaline can make the meat taste tough and might even be bad for one to consume. This would be my argument for making the slaughter house more calm and less stressful for the animal. What if we could make all slaughterhouses and kill floors more like the Polyface farm? It seemed the only thing Joel Salatin was missing from his outdoor chicken slaughter was classical music to keep the chickens at ease until the time of their demise. Maybe that is the trick to making everyone happier; just play some Beethoven.