Monday, July 23, 2007

With pleasure... and without fatigue


Check out this poster for a sausage maker in Auvergne, in central France. It's got everything I like: a pig, seppuku, and writing I can't comprehend (though the Google translator tells me it means, "Life is cool in Gitmo, seriously.").

On a serious note, it reminds me of The Omnivore's Dilemma, a fascinating book by Michael Pollan that I read on vacation a few weeks ago. One of the interesting arguments of the book confronts the claim by animal rights activists who say we should not slaughter animals because we have to consider the animal's best interest. While an individual animal's interest is certainly to survive, Pollan argues, the best interest of the species is to remain a food source for humans. How many cows would there be today if their meat made us sick? Not many.

Pollan does a much more thorough job of eliciting the argument that I have here, but it's an interesting point. My personal take on the matter can be summed up by a bumper sticker I saw years ago. It read:

"If we're not supposed to eat animals, why are they made out of meat?"

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