Dialectical Notebook: Glenn

Before You Read:

3.) I believe that many of the farms that supply meat to grocery stores treat animals in an inhumane way. They figure that the general public will never see the process in which they slaughter animals. Many just feed them until they get big enough to slaughter and don't care about the ethics of raising the animal.

Summary:

In Cathy Glenn's article, she talks about farms treat animals before they are processed, slaughtered and sent to the supermarkets. Glenn talks about the discourse and doublespeak that the companies use to disguise what is really going on behind the curtain. Companies use clever advertising to mask the truth and to deceive buyers. Glenn does an excellent job of covering both sides of the argument. She talks of the advantages and disadvantages of doublespeak. She directs this article towards buyers of animal products.

Synthesis:

When reading this article I thought of McCloud and how the use of images and symbols make us see things that aren't really there. This relates to the companies and how they use clever ads to deceive buyers. Another similar author that related to Glenn was Porter. Both authors discuss discourse community and how they influence the population.

Response	Quotation
This quote describes how important the environment really is and how we should learn to take care of it. Everything we create has some involvement with the environment, in one way or another. Much of what we do affects the environment around us.	“The environment plays an active role in cultural representation, political discourse, and national identity” (Glenn 145).
This is just a simple way of how companies disguise the ugly truth of the meat industry. When I read this whole article I thought of the book The Jungle and how much of what goes on behind the scenes is hidden from the public.	“Most of us understand that the terms beef, veal, pork, and poultry are euphemisms employed by the industry to designate flesh from cows, calves, pigs, and birds such as chickens and turkeys. We recognize that such euphemisms are employed mainly for marketing purposes, and for the most part, we accept the practice without necessarily questioning its ethics” (Glenn 147).
This quote made me think of how PETA shouldn’t be the only people addressing this issue. Companies should have to be honest and should represent the actual ways in which they treat animals in their factories.	“What PETA argues in its lawsuit (and Dunayer has demonstrated in her research) is that these depictions do not reflect the actual conditions of animals confined on factory farms” (Glenn 151).
I liked this quote because it shows how our society in constantly changing. A lot of what we do now shows how we have forgotten the morals that we used to hold on to.	“Fox reminds us that we are in an age of cloning and of technology that can radically change the way we relate to the environment and other animals” (Glenn 151).
This quote explains how language is very influential to us as humans. When we see an ad of an animal talking, we usually don’t think twice and just accept the message that the company is trying to convey to us, without looking into a deeper meaning of why they decided to use that form of advertisement in the first place.	“We trust these speaking subjects because they use the same tools to communicate that we do: words” (Glenn 152).

Questions for Discussion:

1.) The main characteristic of the factory farm discourse is the use of doublespeak in advertising. They use it to mask what is really going on behind the scenes, this in turn "sanitizes" the process of factory farming. This is not ethical because it is deceiving the public.

Thoughts:

I really believe that companies should have to tell the public how their food is being made. Many people would probably change the way they eat if they knew the truth. Personally, I feel that the animals should be treated with some respect before slaughtering, just because of the moral aspect of things. We should definitely reevaluate the situation of the farming and meat processing industry.