Humans have been living on Earth for a very long time. But in just the last few thousand years we have become the most superior species on the planet due to our communication and ability to develop cultures of unique formalities. We constantly now keep increasing the advancement of our technologies and have an incredibly large system of obtaining the food required in order to feed the near 8 billion humans on earth. What I think many people overlook is how the animals we use to feed ourselves and even those we experiment with for our greater good as a species are treated before they are put down. Authors David Foster Wallace, Ross Anderson, and Hal Herzog all cover their point of views with their pieces “Consider the Lobster”, “Animals Like Us”, and, “What the Crows Know”. Each one of these authors makes a point that we as a society are unsure of how animals other than ourselves feel anything such as emotions, pain or even sight. Adding to that, since humans have now reached the top of the food chain, does that give us the right to decide the fate of all the other animals on earth? This doesn’t just isolate life and death either, it includes the way we treat them and what type of rights any basic living thing deserves.
The way we treat animals has a lot of grey area whether it is fair or not. David Foster Wallace’s article “Consider the Lobster” tackles this claim by discussing lobsters and the way humans treat them. I have been familiar with lobsters ever since I was a toddler. My grandparent’s house was right on the ocean and we would often go there for family dinners and a lot of the time lobster was the go to dinner. I was a child who would always play with these crustaceans but I always got a little sad when it was time to cook them alive in boiling hot water. This brought about me always wondering why that was the only thing I have eaten that was alive just an hour ago. I love the taste of lobster but do feel terrible when watching them be cooked alive. Wallace adds that “Lobsters can at least exhibit a preference for not being lowered into a pot of boiling water.”(Wallace 1) It is concerning whether or not we have become numb to the lives of anything but ourselves. But, is this different than any other type of way we eat? When we pick out steak, chicken, pork, etc. at the supermarket we are buying something that was euthanized elsewhere in order to be sold. It seems logical that it would make more sense to kill your own food so that is fresh as could be. When others start to question the ethical aspects of this though it becomes a very difficult subject to discuss without bias views.
When it comes to other species, humans seem to defy our concepts of logic. We have commercial farms that’s sole purpose is to breed and kill animals such as cows, pigs, and chickens. But when we look at other cultures we see them use dogs, dolphin, and whales as food and this creates conflict. Why do certain animals hold more of a value to us that it seems unethical to kill them but ok to kill a different type of animal? These concepts are all developed by the cultures we are brought up in. In the United States most would frown upon eating any type of dog meanwhile in Asian country this is a normal practice. Hal Herzog discusses this murkey view on animals by introducing us to Judith who thinks of “herself as a vegetarian, yet still experiences the joys of smoked Copper River salmon and lemon-grilled swordfish.”(Herzog 1) So it seems to me that a lot of people in our world are still unclear about what we consider an animal is. Regardless though, we have hospitals specifically designed to specifically be for animals.
