Course Reflection

Before I entered into this course I was already somewhat aware of the destructive nature of the factory farming industry. I began eating a vegetarian diet fairly recently in November of 2009. My reasons for starting a vegetarian and then later a vegan diet was that I realized that there are alternatives available to eating meat and that I did not have to kill animals to sustain myself. So faced with the options of surviving by killing animals or not killing animals I chose the later.

As I have continued to learn more and more about the factory farming industry I have become quite secure with the fact that not eating animals is the best decision for me. Although at the same time the amount of destructive impact caused by factory farming has been shocking and very horrible. When I started reading Jonathan Foer's eating animals at the Beginning of the semester and finding out more specific information from that text especially from the sections on the devastation being conducted in the worlds oceans which occupy about 66% of the earths landmass. The fact that we are able to conduct such devastation on such a large vast area of the world driving so many of the species living in the ocean to points of near extinction is insanely horrible. I also learned during this coarse through my own research when we were covering companion animals about trap neuter release which is the best method to control the pet population and it also does not involve killing stray cats and dogs through euthanasia. I found that the best explanation of TNR on the saveagatto website. The information I learned about TNR was positive though and I have recently started helping with the process in Philadelphia by helping to foster stray cats and ultimately find good homes for them.