In this product made by Cabot Creamery, found right in Lower Farinon, the message of what the conditions the animals used in this product endure is misleading. This stick of butter depicts 4 cows, in seemingly good health, mindlessly able to graze throughout the thousands of acres of fresh green grass on the traditional farm setting that is available to them. The front of the package is labeled “Natural Creamery” in distinguishable lettering, being able to be clearly seen through its green font, trying to show people that their product is “natural”. Although many people still view this type of farm setting as the normal setting for most farmers, this is sadly not the case. This is a smart way of advertising the butter product this company is trying to sell due to the trickery this image uses. Many people actually want the animals that they eat or the animals that are used in the process of producing their food to live a happy and healthy life, and for many, this simple picture will satisfy their desires. These types of advertisements are purely a way of setting a peace to the mind of the users, and many will not think about where their food really comes from, just if the product says that these animals used were happy and healthy.

This image exploits what John Berger would describe as “animals of the mind”. Berger, would argue that we view animals in our mind, and then it is these expectations that our mind creates that dictate how we view animals,  not due to how animals truly are in their nature; “They are objects of our ever-extending knowledge” (Berger, 16). The typical image that people would associate with cows/making butter is a farmer manually milking a cow out on his ranch, and churning the butter manually. Therefore, the advertisement that this company utilizes wants to mimic the imagery most people associate with butter, not only so that they will associate this product to butter, but also because they want their food to be made from happy natural animals. People imagine what animals are generally like in their head, creating these grand images and depictions of “animals of the mind”, but once the people actually see the reality of these animals, they will be utterly disappointed. Most of these cows live an unhappy and sick life, living to only fractions of their wild life expectancy, and most are never exposed to the green grass that is depicted in this picture.

Jonathan Safran Foer would want us to look directly at the natural setting that is depicted in this image, and know right away that the “natural” that is company proclaims isn’t really even a plausible thing. Factory animals, as he says, “In a narrow sense it is a system of industrialized and intensive agriculture in which animals — often housed by the tens or even hundreds of thousands — are genetically engineered, restricted in mobility, and fed unnatural diets (which almost always include various drugs, like antimicrobials). Globally, roughly 450 billion land animals are now factory farmed every year. (There is no tally of fish.) Ninety-nine percent of all land animals eaten or used to produce milk and eggs in the United States are factory farmed. So although there are important exceptions, to speak about eating animals today is to speak about factory farming” (Foer, 34). Natural, as he says, isn’t even a defined term, how can you define something as natural, when 99% of the farming done in the United States is done in a factory setting? He would reminisce on how only 2 generations, virtually all farms were family farms, and would think about how all of those farms have been replaced with factory farms that have no legal laws on the treatment of animals. Foer would want us to see this tactic that the advertising is trying to exploit and understand that the cows’ lives are not like how they are portrayed, so we can become more conscience consumers.

Works Cited:

Berger, John. “Why Look at Animals?” About Looking. New York: Pantheon, 1980. 3-28. Print.

Foer, Jonathan Safran. Eating Animals. New York: Little, Brown, 2009. Print.

In case anyone needed a (free) online version!

http://literatori.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/jonathan-safran-foer-eating-animals.pdf

This video is something I watched when I was studying animal behavior back in high school. The video displays two Capuchin Monkeys, both being fed a different food. The monkey on the left is given cucumber, while the monkey on the right is given grapes. As the video progresses you begin to see a sense of jealousy develop in the monkey on the left. He hits his hands against the floor, shakes the cage, and throws his food back our of his cage. The questions raised by this video address the implications of emotions we generally assume to be human. Mating in nature exists and causes conflicts, based on primal urges and physical instincts, but this example displays a sense of true jealousy. He wants what he cannot have and that in turn angers the monkey, causing him to physically display his distress. It gets you wondering, if monkeys can conceive of ideas such as desire based on observation, what other instances is this mechanism evidenced in? Besides all of the interesting thoughts that this video raises, it’s also a human controlled environment, and has artificial influence. In nature I wonder if this same scenario would unfold, or does the human interaction drive this animistic representation of “jealousy.”

Of all the animal subjects of human anthropomorphism, cats are among some of the most blatantly personified.  We see in cats a human sassy-ness and individuality that isn’t really obvious in too many other day to day creatures, as dogs, for example, seem to possess qualities more along the lines of eagerness to please and loyalty to group or a family.  While there are certainly instances in which cats are stripped of what Alice Walker might choose call their “catness,” there are also moments in which they are portrayed almost unintentionally equally to humans, but in a distinctly cat-ish way.  The example that I would like to use is one of many animal videos on youtube labeled “Funny cat compilation” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmnyORo_slM.  Give it a quick watch.

At a first glance, this could seem to many as a demeaning representation of cats.  These cats are doing things that are downright stupid for the most part.  Pouncing on things that aren’t alive, trying to play a guitar, etc.  With the wrong point of view, it could seem as though the objective of this video was to further hoist ourselves as humans onto an even higher pedestal than the one we already seem to occupy above animals.  I would argue, however, that this video is in many respects one of the truest examples of a human appreciation of cats for exactly the animals that they are, just expressed in the context of a human habitat.

The age old characteristics of cats that we have objectively known to be true, such as curiosity, physical balance, and slyness are seen to fail in some way. Yet, in spite of this failure, what is really happening when we choose to laugh at videos such as these is a deep appreciation for an animal that we have dared to consider one of our greatest companions as a race over the years. Without really bestowing our own characteristics on the cat, we watch it try and fail to do cat things. There really is a whole lot of good in what I would call a symbiotic relationship between humans and domesticated pets. I would go as far as to say it’s a pretty beautiful thing at times. However naive that may seem, I wasn’t feeling cynical today.

Hello everyone, I’m Brian O’Neill and I’m a Junior from Wayland, Massachusetts.  I’m a film and media studies major with Spanish minor, and I also write for The Lafayette sports section.  Writing has always been my favorite academic activity at school considering I’m god awful at math and wouldn’t last 30 seconds as any major that required computing of any sort.  So here I am, doing my best to represent animals with the rest of you!

As for my relationship with animals, well, let’s just say that I’ve always wanted a dog, and probably would have one if not for a set of crippling factors.  I myself am allergic to dogs, and cats, and some other fluffy or furry animals with dander of some sort, including (but not limited to) horses and donkeys and what not.  My allergy to cats is much worse than my allergy to dogs, and the outcome of being too close to a cat can end with a few frantic inhaler hits and an eye drop in each eye.  My issue with dogs is much more subtle, but all the more frustrating.  It would seem for a time that being near a dog, or even just in the same house as a dog, is fine, and often times I’m led into a false sense of security thinking that I’m safe from the impending misery that will soon catch up to me.  This doesn’t even come close to stopping me from playing with dogs though – I will always give a happy puppy a treat and a head scratch and just deal with the consequences.  As a matter of fact, I frequent videos such as these https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY9Vs7dnQPM in order to explore my hypoallergenic options.

Beyond animals, I am a huge sports fan, and I adamantly follow both Soccer and Football.  I write for the Men’s Soccer team here at Lafayette.