Blog entry #3

Throughout chapter 12 and 13 (and the rest of his book) Pollan brings up good points about how people do not regularly view their food. Along with these good points he seems to continuously bring up the same complaints with Wal-mart or McDonalds over and over and over again….. I suppose this is an effective way to force us not to miss his point but this is becoming a pet peeve of mine while reading this book. With that out of my system, chapter 12 goes on to talk about the slaughtering of chickens and of how “ignorance is bliss.” It seems likely that if everyone were to actually watch a slaughter house in action, at least some people would completely change the way they look at meat. Since this would be an economic disaster for the food industry, they try to avoid these sights from the faint of heart. One part of this chapter that slightly worried me was about the workers reactions to slaughtering like this routinely. Pollan said that jobs in slaughterhouses were dehumanizing and it was “not uncommon for full-time slaughterhouse workers to become sadistic.” This effect on one’s nature seems quite disturbing when it is pointed out like this.