Course Reflection

The readings over the course of this semester have definitely expanded my appreciation for animals and opened my eyes to the unethical treatment they experience. I usually never have to sit and consider how the food I eat gets to my plate or the processes that take place in order for animals to reproduce basic products like eggs and milk, of which I partake every single day. I did not realize the environmental effects that eating animals cause. Before reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, I just knew that I liked food, including animals like the chicken served at KFC. I didn't know that "if you packed those chickens body to body, they would blanket Manhattan from river to river and spill from the windows of the higher floors of office buildings...(Foer 67). Visions like that disturb me. They tell me that something isn't right about the country we live in, a country that not only eats animals, but treats them brutally from birth until the time they are killed. The Animal Ethics Reader made me question why I thought the way I do about animals. The power humans have in this world is abused, and treating animals unfairly is one way that humans are abusing that power. The reality is, however, that "chickens can do many things, but they cannot make sophisticated deals with humans (Foer 101)." Because of this, we are a long step away from seeing physical changes in animal treatment, but the spread of awareness of animal ethic issues is making that step a little closer.