A Moral Quandry

Pollan approaches eat eating from various perspectives. He examines it from the industrial perspective, the organic perspective, the moral perspective and the nutritional perspective. I most identify with the moral perspective of meat eating. The moral perspective is based upon Singer’s concept of “speciesism.” This is an amplified concept of racism that rests upon the fact that “the differences between black and whites are trivial compared to the differences between [a boy] and [a] chimp” (Singer). Singer is basically saying that eating animals is a form of discrimination because it requires that humans view the animals as lesser beings. As a result, it is justifiable for humans to consume animals in prodigious amounts guilt and shame free.

I identify with this perspective because I have similar opinions about the consumption of meat. Furthermore, those opinions have driven me to become a vegetarian- a recent and very difficult life choice, particularly so because chicken and fish are my preferred entrees. I recently found myself wrestling with this issue of speciesism when I was trying to determine whether or not I found it conscionable to still consume fish. Pollan meets this difficulty with a rather sarcastic justification “I’m also willing to eat animals without faces, such as mollusks, on the theory that they’re not sufficiently sentient to suffer.” I used similar reasoning to justify my own consumption of fish for quite some time, only to realize that this too was a form of speciesism- I didn’t formulate the thought with quite the same terminology in mind, but the basic idea was the same.

STOP! Don't eat those tomatoes!

Pollan described his experience with the Omnivore’s Dilemma as the moment when he “passed the point of being able to enjoy [his] putative chantrelle without anxiety, so [he] threw it out.” This experience can be alternatively described as the situation in which a person finds themselves uncertain about whether or not the food they have gathered is edible. It provides commentary on the concept of being uncertain about the origns of ones food. What is interesting about this, however, is that this uncertainty extend beyond the realm of “hunters and gatherers” and into the modern realm of grocery store shopping. The simple fact that the packaging tells us the ingredients of our food is not enough to impart true knowledge about what is contained in that magnificently leafy head of lettuce. While it tells the consumer the farm from which it was harvested, the label remains mum about the fertilizers and pesticides the food has been treated with, in addition to the preservatives used to keep the food fresh when it is out of season. The Omnivore’s Dilemma kicks in when a normally nonchalant shopper, say a parent, takes a moment to ponder the true source of their lettuce and then puts it back due to uncertainly about pesticides and out of concern for their child’s health.

I have had a bit of personally experience with this dilemma. During the summer’s when the West Nile virus was a big deal, planes and trucks would spray pesticides from overhead and along streets to kill the potentially virus carrying mosquitoes. While the spray prevented the spread of West Nile Virus, it increased lung sensitivity for those with the lung disease Asthma. I only have mild asthma, so this was not the particular problem for me. The problem was the varied vegetables and fruits my dad had grown in the backyard. It was just about time to pick the peaches, tomatoes, blackberries, strawberries and carrots… but you can bet there was a lot of hesitancy about whether or not they were safe to eat due to the new chemical in the air. Needless to say, we succumbed to the omnivore’s dilemma and threw the fruit away.