Blog Post #4: Response to "The Omnivore's Dilemma"

Each person has a very different from another and yet very personal connection with food. In Kazakhstan, most people still are not too far removed from garden full of vegetables and fruits, yellow fields of wheat and villages where many own cattle. I have seen all of those things as I lived there, however I took it for granted. Michael Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemma exposes not only questionable policies applying to farms, but also the distance between food and consumer. Michael Pollan makes a reader question how far removed do you feel comfortable from your own food. He gives an example of Joel as a person who knows what he eats since he grows it. Michael Pollan explains what Joel gets in return for his knowledge, when he states “Joel’s reasons for wanting to do this work here himself are economic, ecological, political, ethical and even spiritual.” During his experience, Michael Pollan questioned if the practices at hand were morally acceptable for him as a meat eater and the person who is extensively removed from his food. He writes, “I don’t know if there is a more humane way to catch three hundred chickens, but I could see why doing it as fast and as surely as possible was best for all concerned.” while he thinks about how humane the procedures should be, Michael Pollan acknowledges that there is hypocrisy when it comes to food. Michael Pollan confesses, “It seemed to me not too much to ask of a meat eater, which I was then and still am, that at least once in his life he take some direct responsibility for the killing on which his meat-eating depends.” As a reader, I was happy to see than he recognized that there is certain falseness in consumer’s behavior when consumer is removed from production.