Part One. A Thesis and Essay Outline in Opposition to the Vegetarian Diet
While I concede that there is way too much mindless cruelty in the factory farming of animals, we must not obfuscate the truth, namely, that the vegetarian diet does not provide optimum nutrition. The omnivore diet, which includes meat eating, is defensible from an evolutionary, biological, and nutritional point of view.
Essay’s First Page
Summarize the book’s major arguments that support a vegetarian or vegan diet for animal rights. Since I rotate the books, your book might be Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, The Face On Your Plate by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer or Dominion by Matthew Scully.
Essay’s Second Page
If after reading the book, you are not convinced that you should “convert” to vegetarianism or veganism, you may want to defend an omnivore diet. To write a defense of the omnivore diet (which includes meat eating), one would have to concede that the current system of factory farming needs reform and that the system is changed. Also one would concede that people eat too much meat but that the solution is not the elimination of meat eating but the reduction of it. One will cut down from the national average of meat consumption (200 pounds) to approximately one-third of that (70 pounds). One would concede that that 70 pounds of meat would be as organic and sustainable as much as possible even at the higher costs. This section would take about a page.
Essay’s Final Four Pages In Which You Support Your Thesis Mapping Statements
You would have to argue that the vegan diet is not optimum nutrition and may even be dangerous, especially for pregnant woman and newborns. You might look to Nina Planck in her New York Times article or her book Real Food. Or you might look to Lierre Keith’s book The Vegetarian Myth or her book excerpt from her website.
Part Two. Other Sources That Challenge the Vegan/Vegetarian Diet
Meat Eating Was Essential to Human Evolution
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
How Our Vegan Diet Made Us Ill
Part Three. Journal Entry
How has your reading about animal rights and vegetarianism influenced or affected your eating habits? And how has your reading affected which direction you're going to take your essay? Explain.
Part Four. Remember to Refute Your Opponents' Views
Here again is the link to Common Arguments Against Vegetarianism.
Here again the link to Common Arguments That Support Vegetarianism.
How PETA Answers Or Refutes Its Critics
Part Five. Causes of Speciesism
1. Old Testament in the Bible (186) Man allegedly has dominion over the animals and as such he can do with them as he pleases. This injunction is abused in many ways as animals are treated like commodities to be exploited.
2. Ancient Greek attitudes toward slavery, for both man and animal, encouraged exploitation.
3. For Christ (in the New Testament), to eschew the killing of animals was a sign of stupid superstition according to Augustine.
4. The humanism of the Renaissance did not fare well for animals since they were still lower on The Great Chain of Being.
5. The famous and influential philosopher Descartes looked at animals as unfeeling and fair game for cruel experiments.
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