Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (author of the novels Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) is one of the hardest books I have ever read. And I recommend it to everyone I know. I found myself reading it in small doses like medicine. Medicine for the accommodating, don't-make-anything-special-for-me, vegetarian. I'm still so overwhelmed with feelings and information that I can hardly express what I feel. But one thing is for sure: I don't want to be an accommodating vegetarian any more. I don't want to let my own morals slip for the sake of others' comfort. I don't want to be party to the incredibly wrong treatment of animals.
Foer shares his personal journey of oscillating between being a vegetarian and a meat-eater throughout his life. On the brink of fatherhood he wants to find clarity about food and he goes all out: he visits (sneaks into) factory farms and slaughter-houses, interviews factory farm workers, ranchers, PETA members, and old-style farmers. He lets them speak in their own voices in his book.
I love what the most ethical turkey farmer says. He raises turkeys from old stock. They roam the fields all day, they can fly and they can reproduce by themselves (which factory farmed animals cannot do). He believes factory farming is deeply wrong. Not just for the inhuman way the animals are kept penned up and often beaten or almost killed (that's right - not killed, almost killed) before they are skinned and gutted, but also because of all the "preventative" antibiotics given which are undermining our nation's strides towards better health by making diseases mutate so fast that we can't keep up with the multiple antibiotic-resistant strains. Anyway, he says, "I don't want people to live up to my standards, I just want them to live up to their own standards."
I love this quote because most people would agree that they do not want animals to be tortured with electric prods, beaten with iron bars or mutilated by having beaks and claws cut off. And yet every time we buy meat at the grocery store we are voting with our dollars that we DO want this for animals, that we DO support the horrors of factory farming, and that taste trumps compassion.
I wish that Foer had talked about dairy cattle in his book. I so want them to be treated better than the meat cattle. I love cheese. I just bought some rice-cheese and it sucks. I am all confused about how I feel about diary now. I've always eaten cheese - it's my fall back snack/meal. I don't eat many eggs and when I do I usually get them from my mom's chickens. I don't drink milk and rarely eat any other dairy products (except cheese). I know I have some more research to do and some more feelings to sort out but in the mean time I ask that everyone read Eating Animals and think about what you want to support with your dollars.
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