Activity 3: Write an assertion and counterclaim about the excerpt below then cite the
strongest piece of textual evidence to support your assertion and counterclaim. The textual
evidence should be found in the excerpt.


An excerpt of Meat Culture
By Steve Pavlina
When I see a piece of flesh on someone's plate, I also see the processes that brought it
to their plate. Some people argue that plants may be harmed by being eaten. I happen to
agree. If we care about minimizing harm to plants, then we'll do much less harm by eating
them directly as opposed to grinding them up, feeding them to animals and then grinding up
and eating the animals. If we stopped growing crops to feed to animals and fed those crops to
people directly, it's estimated that we'd have enough food to feed the whole planet five times
over. So, if you do actually care about plants, then you can greatly reduce your plant harm by
eating plants directly. Another way to reduce harm to plants is to favor fruits that can be eaten
without killing the plants. You can eat a wide variety of fruits, both sweet and non-sweet,
without seriously hurting the plant that spawned it. And that same plant will often continue to
bear even more fruit. I think a more sensible and realistic approach is to keep leaning towards
a more conscious, compassionate, and ecologically sound way of eating.


If you want to argue that we should model predators' diets to justify meat culture. I
encourage you to go ahead and try being a truly predatory person for a while. Do it
consciously. Prey on the weak. See where that takes you.



A. Write your assertion with textual evidence.

B. Write your counterclaim with textual evidence.​