Today's Sunday New York Times has an interesting article by Michael Pollan on animal rights. I suspect that it has to do with the publicity around "Dominion", Matthew Scully's book on animals from a Christian conservative perspective. Pollan takes an "animal welfare" perspective -- that the current treatment of animals in the food production system is unconscionable; rather than a vegan or pure animal rights view. More interestingly, he believes that factory farming is an expression of capitalism at its unfettered worst, efficiency of production with no other moral boundaries. In this, he agrees with Scully -- one of the Achilles' heels of contemporary conservatism: can you support free market capitalism if it generates a completely amoral production system?


He supports "free farming" as an alternative. I can't say I agree with everything he says, but it is a decent article for a change. Maybe it will do some good.

yours, Peter T.