From Conception to Consumption

Most people are completely ambivalent about meat. They like to eat meat, yet they do not like to know exactly how the food found its way to the dinner plate. Lovenheim’s “Portrait of a Burger as a Young Calf” portrays Loveinheim as both a narrator and moral actor as he follows the lives of two beef calves on a dairy farm and experiences what exactly happens from birth to death. Americans have a strong disconnect about where food comes from and make critical judgments about farming, but in actuality, the farming industry is necessary because it feeds the entire nation. Many situations in the book stood out and left an impact on how food is actually prepared before being sent to the supermarket and what exactly we are eating. Promotional toys sold at fast food chains, the treatment of calves once they are born, and raising calves for the sole purpose of food are significant perspectives in the book that left lingering thoughts and perplexed ideas about the whole cattle industr...