I loved the writing in this essay but disagree with the conclusion. Let's just say that I doubt that individually wrapped grocery store meats are apex civilization, and no human civilization every thrived without exploiting[1] animals. The exploitation has always been performed across the spectrum of cruelty[2], but the fact of it is incontrovertible. So the essential flaw in the logic, I think, is that, very unusual for DFW, he missed the more important widest context.

My favorite DFW essay (out of oh so many) is "Tense Present"[3]. I bought the Garner because of it. I've read it more than twice, and I very rarely read things more than once. I recommended it to a friend and she came back and said, "That's why you are the way you are, you're a snoot!". I laughed.

[1][4] "exploiting" chosen to make the meaning explicit.

[2] I try hard to minimize the cruelty in my practice; profit based exploitation rarely does. Neither does a pack of African wild dogs, nor the tarantula hawk dragging the much bigger tarantula across my yard.

[3] Possibly unreadable font, might be others out there: https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-...

[4] DFW correctly (yah, that's redundant) used 1 based footnote numbering.