Final Argumentation Essay: In Support of Meat
More than ten years after the essay in our textbook, “For Environmental Balance, Pick up a Rifle,” first appeared in the NY Times, the author, Nickolas Kristof, continues to write for the NY Times as a columnist. This long-term relationship with The Gray Lady is quite an achievement for a writer in a tough market of New York readers. The original essay needed aggressive wording to grab attention of readers who peruse the paper while crowded into buses and trains. It is engaging, humorous, and compellingly holds the readers’ attention right through to the end. Kristof is correct in his claim that the solution to the deer over-population lies in thinning out the herds through hunting. Alternate methods of deer population management do not exist in the suburbs. We certainly do not want to restore the natural predators of deer, because humans would be on these predators’ menu, too. Deer food laced with contraceptives has limited effectiveness because deer migrate regularly over an area of up to 25 square miles. Therefore, the deer who ate the contraceptive might not be the deer who winter over in that area and give birth in spring. Once the medicinally-laced food is put out, no guarantee exists that deer would be the only ones to eat it.
Another significant problem caused by the over-population of white-tailed deer is the prevalence of auto accidents involving deer. Each November, deer become more active, especially around sunset, for the mating season. This coincides with suburban commuter hour and with shorter daylight hours that come with fall. Collisions with deer cost the insurance industry in excess of one billion dollars annually and kill approximately 200 people. Over one...
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...eer Management Alliance. CT. March 5, 2005, WEB. Apr. 30, 2014
Kristof, Nicholas D. “For Environmental Balance, Pick up a Rifle”. New York Times. Rpt. in Current Issues and Enduring Questions. Barnet, Sylvia and Hugo Bedau. Boston. Bedford/St.Martins. 2011. Print. 183-185.
McBroom, Patricia, “Meat-eating Was Essential for Human Evolution.” UC Berkeley. University of California at Berkeley. CA. Jun 14, 1999. Web. 28 Apr.
Soller, Ken, “Head to Hoof: Inside the New Meat Movement,” Newsweek. Newsweek L.L.C., NY, Jan. 7, 2009. Web. 25 Apr. 2014.
Taylor, Alexander and Sunaura Taylor, “Is It Possible to Be a Conscientious Meat Eater?” Rpt in Current Issues and Enduring Questions. Barnet, Sylvia and Hugo Bedau. Boston: Bedford/St.Martins. 2011. Print. 199-204.
“U.S. Meat Production,” PSR, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Washington, D.C. 2014. Print. Web 1 Apr. 2014.
Jonathan Safran Foer wrote “Eating Animals” for his son; although, when he started writing it was not meant to be a book (Foer). More specifically to decide whether he would raise his son as a vegetarian or meat eater and to decide what stories to tell his son (Foer). The book was meant to answer his question of what meat is and how we get it s well as many other questions. Since the book is a quest for knowledge about the meat we eat, the audience for this book is anyone that consumes food. This is book is filled with research that allows the audience to question if we wish to continue to eat meat or not and provide answers as to why. Throughout the book Foer uses healthy doses of logos and pathos to effectively cause his readers to question if they will eat meat at their next meal and meals that follow. Foer ends his book with a call to action that states “Consistency is not required, but engagement with the problem is.” when dealing with the problem of factory farming (Foer).
There are too many deer in the Wesselman Woods. The deer have eaten all the flowers and other flora. There have also been 8 car crashes involving deer, this imposes a dangerous threat to the civilians of Evansville. The deer have been invading people’s yards and eating their gardens. The deer are causing many problems that can’t be solved until the deer population is reduced.
Niman, Nicolette H. "The Carnivore's Dilemma." Food. Ed. Brooke Rollins and Lee Bauknight. 1st ed. Southlake, TX: Fountainhead, 2010. 169-73. Print.
For as long as there have been horse slaughterhouses in the United States, they have been an issue of controversy (Associated Press State and Local Wire, 8/7/01). Currently, only two slaughterhouses that produce horse meat intended...
When people talk about deer, they are commonly talking about the North American Whitetail. That is because they are so prevalent in this country. They can be found in every state in the US. The only place where you will not find any whitetails is in parts of Arizona and California. In most states the whitetail is very prevalent, especially in the northeast. They are one of the most hunted animals in this area, particularly in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Despite the amount they are hunted, both in and out of season, you can not drive more than a few miles out of the towns without seeing one that was hit by a car. The deer population in this area just keeps growing. It is unclear what should be done to stop the over population of this beautiful creature. Perhaps different hunting seasons or longer seasons are the answer. Possibly we should focus more on the development of birth control for the female deer, or maybe repopulating wolves into the areas where the deer population is too great. Something has to be done.
The author provides information describing the deer population in parts of New Jersey; yet, he does not include any data regarding the population in the rest of the United States, nor does he include any sources of where this information was obtained. A reader may be more
In the last decade, from the Rockies to New England and the Deep South, rural and suburban areas have been beset by white-tailed deer gnawing shrubbery and crops, spreading disease and causing hundreds of thousands of auto wrecks. But the deer problem has proved even more profound, biologists say. Fast-multiplying herds are altering the ecology of forests, stripping them of native vegetation and eliminating niches for other wildlife. ' 'I don 't want to paint deer as Eastern devils, ' ' said Dr. McShea, a wildlife biologist associated with the National Zoo in Washington, ' 'but this is indicative of what happens when an ecosystem is out of whack. ' ' The damage is worse than anyone expected, he and other scientists say. Higher deer densities have affected growth, survival, and reproduction of many plant species which have aesthetic, economic or ecological value. In some cases, many species of trees have also been shown to have reduced growth as a result of high deer density (Environmental Benefits of Hunting, 1). Deer prefer certain plant species over others and frequently feed on economically valuable tree species. For example, they prefer oak and sugar maple seedlings, as well as acorns, over less palatable species like American Beech and striped maple. Thus, less marketable species are more likely to survive to maturity,
Thesis: The population of white-tail deer in Alabama has drastically increased over the past century causing significant damage to property and homeowners, caused by hunters being less active.
White tailed deer are the largest game animal in North America. This is due to their over abundance and annoyance to farmers. An average of 300000 deer are hunted down each year. A tragedy has been another 3000 are hit by cars every year. Many human efforts have been made to prevent these accidents, such as fencing and deer repellents near freeways, but many seem to think that hunting and controlling the population is the best way.
Environmentalists call this problem the Urban Deer Dilemma. This exists when the number of deer exceeds the ability of the environment to support the deer (2). During the 1600s, when Jamestown’s first settlers arrived, there were between 24 and 31 million white-tailed deer in North America (4). As settlers pioneered farther west, the deer population steadily decreased until a dramatic drop in the 19th century. By the end of the century, less than half-a-million deer were left. In some parts of the United States, there were none. In 1886, the US Supreme Court forced hunters to get licenses and follow certain restrictions. Conservationists urged hunters kill bucks instead of does. Because of these precautions, by the 1940s, 30 states in the United States had deer herds large enough to starve themselves (4).
Deer overpopulation leads to an abundance of complications. Deer damage the small gardens and lawns of many homeowners and for those living inside the city limits the only feasible response is spraying chemical deterrents, a painstaking process that decreases in
According to statistics from State Farm Insurance, “an estimated 1.5 million vehicles collide with deer every year in the United States, causing 1.1 billion in property damage,” as stated by Dave Roos, author of “Does Deer Hunting Reduce Car Accidents” as published on How Stuff Works website. This statistic is too high, meaning that the people of the United States need to do something about the deer population in our country. Many people do not like the deer because things like this happen. Although the deer in this world have rights, they are overpopulated and need to be hunted more and more because the deer cause car accidents, put food on the table, and hunting is a real sport that can be fun.
The deer population has seen a dramatic increase since the late 1800s. Before that time, the deer census had been threatened. In the 1900s the deer population rebounded from about 20,000 to more than 1 million. This drastic increase can be attributed to changes in habitat, including reverting abandoned farm fields to forests, and migrations in human population to rural and suburban areas. Both of these progressions created open and forested habitats preferred by deer. In addition, landowners have excluded hunters out of many areas, subsequently, deer populations have increased. “Although the recovery of deer populations from only about 500,000 nationwide in the early 1900s to more than 15 million today is considered a wildlife management
Furthermore, the white-tail deer is destroying the environment day by day. They eat crops that humans need for survival. They eat all of the food in their area, so they have to come to our crops. In fact, several years ago, authorities passed the Buck Law, which was meant to stop hunting so many deer. Thanks to such strongly restricted laws, deer populations expanded rapidly but ended by causing serious damage to crops. The Buck Law was soon useless.3 A group of farmers in North Texas stated, “Each year, we lose more and more money because of those stupid white-tail deer. We can’t keep them away from our crops.
Walters, Kerry S, and Lisa Portmess. Ethical Vegetarianism: From Pythagoras to Peter Singer. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. Print.