(Gab­by Esposito)

Hi there! I am Gab­by Espos­i­to and I am a junior jour­nal­ism and phi­los­o­phy stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Connecticut. 

I am a Writ­ten Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Assis­tant for UCon­n’s Mate­ri­als Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment. Dur­ing the sum­mer of 2021, I will be intern­ing with Holdsworth Com­mu­ni­ca­tions as a Pub­lic Rela­tions Specialist. 

I have always had a pas­sion for jour­nal­ism and ethics, though my inter­est in the meat indus­try is fair­ly new. After tak­ing an envi­ron­men­tal ethics course and lis­ten­ing to the episode of the New York Times pod­cast “The Dai­ly,” I became inter­est­ed in this top­ic. The eth­i­cal bat­tle that has been ongo­ing with­in the meat indus­try also became a way for me to com­bine my pas­sion for jour­nal­ism and philosophy. 

I was sur­prised after doing some research months ago that the top­ic has not received more atten­tion. The uptick in plant-based prod­ucts has cer­tain­ly gained trac­tion among con­sumers, but the cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance between the meat we buy and what goes on to get it seemed con­cern­ing to me. 

I end­ed up con­tact­ing sev­er­al sources for diverse per­spec­tives on the con­di­tions of the meat indus­try in 2021. 

The first per­son was Ivana del Valle, a UConn ani­mal sci­ence senior on her way to becom­ing a vet­eri­nar­i­an. She also has a pas­sion for the envi­ron­ment. Though she did not have the years of expe­ri­ence the next sources did, her Zoom inter­view served as a young and pro­gres­sive­ly edu­cat­ed perspective. 

Next, I spoke over the phone with UConn agri­cul­tur­al and ani­mal sci­ence pro­fes­sor as well as expe­ri­enced live­stock spe­cial­ist, Joe Emen­heis­er. As some­one who worked in the meat indus­try, includ­ing slaugh­ter­hous­es his whole life, Emen­heis­er’s per­spec­tive was valuable. 

Final­ly, I got in touch with PETA’s Senior Edu­ca­tion­al Projects Man­ag­er Ken­neth Montville. In a Zoom inter­view, Montville spoke with me about his own pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence work­ing with PETA as well as his per­son­al opin­ions as a life­long ani­mal rights activist. 

I hope you enjoyed this website! 

Con­tact: gabriela.2.esposito@uconn.edu

For more projects of mine, vis­it my port­fo­lio