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Jasmin Canchola

1st Period

September 29, 2016

Letter to the Editor

According to Rifkins article, A Change of Heart about Animals, he believes we should

think about and reflect on how we treat animals. He gives us his reasons for his beliefs and he

tries to convince us to think the same way using ethos, pathos and logos. He tries to help other

people reading his article become more aware of how animals are being mistreated and how hed

like to see them being treated with more respect. Rifkin had some strong arguments and claims

about this topic in his article, in which i agreed with, however there were also a few that I

disagreed with because i believed were inadequate. There were a couple that he needed to

elaborate and go more in depth with.

In his piece of writing, he claims that animals are capable of learning new information

and skills and are even able to feel emotions just like humans. studies on pigs have found that

they crave attention and are easily depressed if isolated or denied playtime with each other,

(paragraph 4). In this statement he used pathos by reminding us about our own feelings and how

weve experienced them in the same way pigs do. Weve all experienced some type of

depression or sadness and we crave attention. Some people may crave it more than others.. Or

some people only crave attention from one person, and that person can even be you giving

yourself all this attention. Also, its one that can be easily proven. Theres no denying that

animals have feelings. You just have to go up to your pet or someone elses and you just know
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that theres emotion when you interact with them. While the emotions may not be on the same

exact level as humans, nevertheless emotion is definitely there. Another quote from Rifkins

work was, Tool-making and the development of sophisticated language skills are just two of the

many attributes we thought were exclusive to our species, (paragraph 9). He uses logos in this

part of his article because he found some research about experiments with animals and them

learning social skills. This is also proof that animals are capable of gaining new information and

expand their minds. They might not be able to speak like human beings but the fact that theyre

able to understand is amazing itself.

Now what i disagreed with was him wanting the human race to start living this

vegan/vegetarian lifestyle. In the next quote im going to provide, he uses pathos again by trying

to make us feel like murderers and really guilty for just simply eating. ...the millions of

domestic animals raised under the most inhuman conditions and destined for slaughter and

human consumption, (paragraph 15). I believe people should be able to live the way they want,

eat what they want and shouldnt feel bad about it. So while i do strongly believe people should

treat animals better, it doesnt mean we should change the lifestyle weve been living like for

centuries. We just need to not mistreat them while theyre alive, give them more love and

attention, not use them for fashion and only for food because its something we need in order to

survive. So just because animals are destined for human consumption, they should still be able

to live a good life.