Life’s Flawless Fallacies In today’s society, many of us do not always use our common sense, let alone our imagination in day to day situations. Some people make senseless decisions based off of their own experiences, thoughts, or pride. When you are unsuccessful in realizing the possible dangers and outcomes of certain situations, you could end up in big trouble. In the following paragraphs you will read about a story written in 1910 and how it compares to today’s animal cruelty in the food production industry.
Jack London wrote a short story about pure foolishness and the consequences of failing to snap to reality. The story is called “To Build a Fire”. It is about a nameless man who decides to travel in the subzero climate of the Yukon Trail, which is between Alaska and Canada. He also brings along his wolf dog as his only companion, although they are far from intimate and loving towards each other. As he is traveling along throughout the story, he continues to receive signs that he shouldn’t be out there. For example, right from the start he “…spat again. And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled” (London 107). For any rational person, that would send a flag right up and they’d turn back to civilization until weather permitted them to continue. But not for this man, he knew it was cold and even kept track of the temperature in his head as he walked on. Not only did he ignore his own frostbite, but he also ignored the advice of an old timer who told him he shouldn’t go and if he went, he shouldn’t go alone. But hey, he is a man and men can do anything and everything they put their mind to right? Wrong! Sooner or later his lack of reason led him to fall through the ice and then build a fire under a giant spruce tree covered in a heavy layer of snow. He admits that it was “…easier to pull the twigs from the brush and drop them directly on the fire…each time he had pulled a twig he had communicated a slight agitation to the tree” (London 113). At this point, he’s become desperate because the reality of death is setting into his bones…along with the frost. Unfortunately, he cannot get another fire going so he ends up just running, running until he can’t run anymore, until all feeling in his arms and legs is gone. His journey ends as he lies down in the snow and falls asleep…forever. Hopefully, you’ve realized his folly. He thought he could conquer nature and control it.
When it comes to factory farms, the animals are not always treated as they should be. From birth, any animal should be treated with compassion and respect but unfortunately for factory animals, they get just the opposite. For example, with the beef industry, since there are hundreds and thousands of cows that need to be raised, there isn’t always a sufficient amount of room for all of them. This leads the animals’ lack of muscle growth, increased risk of injury, and shortened lives. Many farms execute operations on the animals without any sort of anesthetic or painkiller. On top of that, they do not receive any veterinarian treatment either. On the ASPCA website, it states that “Over 99% of farm animals in the U.S. are raised in factory farms, which focus on profit and efficiency at the expense of the animals’ welfare.” Basically what that’s saying is that they are going to do whatever it takes to get people the food they want as fast and as cheap as they possibly can. The owners of these companies are either ignoring the damaging consequences, such as risk to not only the animals health but also humans, or are simply too ignorant. While these companies are wasting huge quantities of valuable resources and fossil fuels, they are also contributing to the dangerous pollution to the communities around them from their run off waste. No one is trying to prevent hazardous situations from happening; no one is using their common sense, which brings us back to Jack London’s story. The man’s lack of imagination of death mirrors the company’s lack of imagination of what they’re truly doing to these animals. Also, they are putting consumer health at risk with their unkept, untidy, filthy farm grounds.
Speaking of consumer health, their risk only increases as we go on to talk about what the animals are fed. These companies think they can control the animals’ natural growth and with the “right” feed and hormones, technically they can. Cows are fed an unnatural grain diet, as opposed to their natural diet of grass, to increase their weight, but it is very unhealthy for their bodies causing illness and sometimes death. To avoid an increase in death rates, the animals are fed large amounts of antibiotics but unfortunately, bacteria is rapidly evolving, putting human health in danger. The overuse of antibiotics creates dangerous, drug-resistant strains that can develop and be passed along to people. For example, the whole E.coli or BSE, or So-Called Mad Cow Disease, epidemics weren’t just coincidences. It was caused by poorly kept and filthy conditioned factory farms who refused to take care of their animals. Potential danger is obvious, yet these people are simple okay with it because it’s cheaper and easier. Just like in To Build a Fire, the idea of being in control of the natural world is clear. But in reality, that notion is false and can result in harmful consequences.
It takes a lot of pride and self-confidence to venture through a subzero climate with no one else but a dog with you. It also takes a lot of nerve to treat farm animals poorly and risk their health and the consumers who buy their products. Both situations are trying to reason with nature and control it all at once. The thing is, no person in the world can control nature so why try it? Why put yourself and others at risk? For Jack London’s character, he was stubborn and refused to even think that death could come to him. For factory farms, it is cheaper and easier for business. No one can control this world; you can merely exist inside of it.

Work Cited
ASPCA. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2013. <http://www.aspca.org/Fight-Animal-Cruelty/farm-animal-cruelty/what-is-a-factory-farm>.
London, Jack. “To Build a Fire”. Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 4th ed. New York: Longman, 2012. 106-119. Print