An Animal's Place

An Animal's Place ~ Michael Pollan - The New York Times Magazine

Author, activist, and professor of journalism at the University of California, Michael Pollan, has written a voluminous collection of articles and books on agricultural sustainability and the dangers of modern day food production. In his 2002 essay, titled, "An Animal's Place," Pollan argues that meat eating has become an ethical issue in the face of what are now very common, but undeniably brutal, farming practices. He writes, "The industrialization-and dehumanization-of American animal farming is a relatively new, evitable and local phenomenon: no other country raises and slaughters its food animals quite as intensively or as brutally as we do." In this article, Pollan struggles to find an ethical solution in which his love of meat can coexist with his conscience.