In Joel Salatin's 'Declare Your Independence' he makes a strong argument
that the people in America are oblivious that they are slaves to the food system and
how unhealthy that is. He calls us to declare our independence and start eating
better. Using logos, ethos, and pathos Salatin grabs our attention and keep us
listening to what he has to say. Salatin gets on our level and tells us what we are
are being blind to without being obscure or just informing us about the topic of
food.

Using deductive reasoning, Salatin starts out right off the bat to tell us what
he is arguing and what he wants us to do about it. Only brief y describing his topic
at the beginning, Salatin gets into further details and specif ic stories as we read on.
He does this so we will have in the back of our mind what his point is. He def ines
the classes so that we know what he is talking about and aren't lost in his
argument. He writes this essay assuming we don't know a lot about what is really
going on with our food and how negatively it impacts our society.

I never knew that pigs could genetically altered to take out the stress gene in
order to be in close quarters with out eating each other or being sick. Salatin does
a good job of using pathos and tying in ethos by using our emotions to get us to
feel for the pigs and then questioning whether or not it is ethical to genetically
change their general nature for our benef it. 'Today's industrial food system views
pigs as merely intimate piles of protoplasmic molecular structure to be manipulated
with' ' (Salatin 190). Now whether or not the reader sympathizes with animals or
not could play a big part in whether or not that will mean anything to them. I, on
one hand, really care about animals so that was effective on me.

Salatin also uses logos when talking about how, Americans especially, have
(accidentally) developed diseases with our 'assault on biological dignity' (Salatin
191). It's a fact that these diseases have developed over the last couple of decades,
about the time period that Americans have been altering their food. I really took
interest in this, I had never made the connection between the two before and I think
that if this doesn't impact the reader then they might as well just stop reading. This
is very effective in calling attention to how messed up out food system is.

Mainly using Pathos and Logos (scientif ic reasoning predominantly), and
then tacking on Ethos to question our morals, Salatin gets across his message. I
think using scientif ic facts to make his point is extremely effective. If he were to
try and present his opinion and tie it in with what 'most' of society thinks, he
would miserably fail because no one would see him as a reliable source. His use of
our emotional soft spots helps us to sympathize with his cause and if we don't, he
questions our morals. Maybe the reader is more subject to logic that emotion;
which is why Salatin does a good job of using all three.

Salatin uses relevant and well known information for us to understand and
relate to, throughout his argument. He tells us that we are oblivious slaves to our
food system and we stand back and watch when there are obvious solutions. 'If the
land devoted to that production (grains that feed herbivores, and herbivores don't
eat grains in nature) are converted to perennial prairie polycultures' it would
topple the grain cartel and reduce petroleum usage, chemical usage, machinery
manufacture, and bovine pharmaceuticals' (Salatin 191). Salatin uses freedom, the
one concept that all Americans can agree on, and our lack of using it in this
situation, to get our blood boiling by saying we are slaves and controlled by our
food system. All americans feel the urge to break free from that control and Salatin
knows this and draws our emotion from it. He knows his audience and how to
work the crowd for his benefit.

'If you just eliminated every product that would have been available in
1900, almost everything would be gone' ' (Salatin 187-188). Salatin tries open
our eyes so that we can see our food system is not normal. And if we don't take his
word for it, he uses ethos to further his credibility. He assures us that safety of our
food is a subjective matter and just because he says something doesn't make it true.
'In our society, the decisions are made by the same type of people who decided in
the Dred Scott ruling that slaves were not human beings' (Salatin 189). Salatin is
a smart guy and understands where we are coming from and our doubts about
believing him so he uses scientif ic logos to back himself up throughout his essay.

Salatin is successful in bringing me to his perspective and keeping my
attention as I read this essay. I think that his topic is worthwhile, but his call to
action might be raising the bar too high, plus it would take mass amounts of people
to take action for it to even make the slightest difference. He has a very strong
argument and backs his ideas up with inf uential facts, but it is very diff icult to
make someone care about something they don't already care about. I think it is
awesome that he feels so passionate about something to try and persuade people to
help him but unless he get elected president or into some high off ice or something,
I don't think he will have success in making the entirety of our food system
healthy.
