In Michael Pollan’s article, he addresses the topic as to whether or not it is morally right to consume animals. Pollan’s opinion towards consuming animals is quite explicit in the beginning. He started out be seeing no harm in consuming animals, but his opinion started to change after reading Peter Singer’s book, “Animal Liberation”. While reading through the book, Pollan learned that eating animals, wearing animals, experimenting on animals, and killing animals for entertainment are all viewed as “speciesism”. He quotes, “speciesism”- a neologism I had encountered before only in jokes- as a form of discrimination as indefensible as racism or anti-Semitism”. (Pollan 361) Through this quote Pollan is explaining that he had only come across …show more content…
There is a copious amount of animal rights activists who feel that animals should be included in the circle of moral consideration along with the white male, the women, the homosexuals, the Transgenders, and the African Americans. Pollan notes, “For at the same time, many people seem eager to extend the circle of our moral consideration to animals, in our factory farms and laboratories, we are inflicting more suffering on more animals than at any time in history”. By this he means that the animal right activists want to expand the circle of moral consideration towards the animals for the reason being that in today’s world more animals are suffering due to the fact that they are being killed and tested to benefit humans. Pollan’s opinion towards this statement is that animals cannot have the same moral consideration as humans because unlike human animals do not feel nor comprehend pain. An argument called A.M.C is linked to the topic of moral consideration throughout the article. A.M.C stands for “argument from marginal …show more content…
As Pollan continues to read into the argument of A.M.C his opinion towards speciesism starts to change. He no longer sees it as a joke, but as a topic that animal rights advocates take seriously and want to demolish. He states, “If I believe in equality, and equality is based on interest rather than characteristics, then either I have to take the interests of the steer I’m eating into account or concede that I am a speciesist”. (Pollan 364) By this Pollan means that if equality is more than just characteristics, then he should consider changing his eating habits and have more consideration towards animal’s interest or he should simply accept the fact that he is a speciesist and continue eating meat. The last source that modified Pollan’s opinion about consuming meat was his visit to Polyface farm, which is an open air organic farm. There Pollan witness the eye contact between people and animals. He becomes aware that an animal's only interest in life is to live out in the open and do as it