Animal rights

The growing consciousness of the public on the way animals are turned into food is starting a sort of culture shift among many Americans and people in other countries as well. I had never put too much thought into how a pig is turned into my bacon or how a baby cow is made into veal chops until I read Michael Pollan's essay "An Animal's Place". It has certainly changed the way I look at processed meat. I gathered that his overall point was that the animals whose meat fills our supermarket shelves most likely had a horribly miserable existence, died a horrible death, and was given no dignity whatsoever through it's whole life. This is true in the majority of the meat industry. Pollan believes that even if animals are raised to be killed for their meat they still can and should lead happy, dignified lives until it is time for them to be killed. I agree one hundred percent with him but the changes that would have to be made are huge and I don't know if the U.S. is ready for such a drastic shift.
In his essay Pollan describes Confined Animal Feeding Operations and tail docking of pigs, but what really made me cringe was the way Pollan went into severe detail describing the torture chickens go through in most egg laying operations. "…that fate is reserved for the American laying hen, who passes her brief span piled together with a half-dozen other hens in a wire cage whose floor a single page of this magazine could carpet. Every natural instinct of this animal is thwarted, leading to a range of behavioral "vices" that can include cannibalizing her cagemates and rubbing her body against the wire mesh until it is featherless and bleeding. Pain? Suffering? Madness?" (Pollan, An Animal's Place) When the hens stop producing as many eggs, they are force molted and starved of food and water to induce another batch of eggs before they die. The example of the hens was only one of the disturbing realities Pollan went into but whether its cattle or pigs or chickens, there is an almost mechanical procedure that these meat factories operate by. In no way do they take the well being of the animals into account. The level of pain and suffering is not a factor in their equation.
One of the highlights in Pollans argument was a place called Polyface farms. It is a farm where cattle, chickens, pigs, rabbits, and sheep are raised and slaughtered. But this farm does it with respect and dignity paid towards the animals. The animals live stress free lives outdoors and basically live the way they would on a farm sixty years ago. They seem happy and content with their lives, which makes it a lot easier to eat them in my eyes. But these special farms are very small scale and there are far too few of them to satisfy the demand for meat in America. If there were about a fifty times more of these farms in America then we could do away with the disgusting way the meat industry operates.
Personally this essay changed the way I'm going to buy eggs and shop for meat. When I go to stop and shop I'll be looking for the "Free Farmed" labels on my steaks. But can Pollan's essay change the public as a whole? I doubt the country is ready to accept higher meat prices while staring at the face of an economic crisis. The value of the dollar is dropping rapidly and a lot of people are going to be pressed for cash. I don't think the first thing on their minds will be "I wonder if the pig this bacon came from had a miserable life."

Sources

Pollan, Michael. "An Animal's Place" The New York Times. November 10, 2002