*Why I Am Not Vegetarian*

I love vegetables, most of the time, I choose vegetarian meals instead of meals with meat. However, I am not a vegetarian, nor will I ever become a vegetarian. In Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, he discusses how industrialized animals are fed a corn/grain diet, a diet that they are not made for just to be made bigger in a shorter amount of time. Along with a diet that they should not be eating, the animals are treated in abysmal ways, they are often cooped up in small places with tons of other animals. While Pollan was not able to see the slaughter of the animals in industrialized slaughter houses, it's a good guess that the animals are killed in a non-favorable method.
Unlike industrialized farms, Pollan describes the method, a local farmer, Salatin uses on his farm. In Salatin's farm, the animals are happy, they are treated the way animals should be treated, in short, the animals do what the animals were made to do. For example, the pigs on his farms spent most of their times being happy running around in mud and manure, the cows spent most of their times out in the pastures, and the chickens were out and about in the fields picking out worms. Pollan even described the slaughter of the chickens, one in which he was directly involved in, the chickens were slaughtered in a glass like building where customers were able to see the slaughter of the chickens, to see that the chickens are killed in a respectable way.
Despite any of the descriptions by Pollan, none of it really affected me. While the way the animals were treated did disgust me for a while, it did not affect on my decision to eat animals. In fact, I love eating meat, Korean meat dishes especially. I was raised eating Korean meat dishes like bulgogi and kalbi, so while I don't have an ethical reason on why I am eating meat it is more of a cultural reason.