Eating Animals - Jonathan Safran Foer - Part 2

Eating Animals -
Jonathan Safran Foer

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 38

 February 7, 2017 

Book 11 - Eating Animals
by Safran Foer (2009)
 Part 2 - Pages 45-122
Reading Time - 1.5 hours

Animal Agriculture is THE leading cause of Climate Change. Yup, you read that right. More than all the vehicles in the world. In the name of meat and eggs and milk... we are cooking the earth. Yup... omnivores contribute 7 times the volume of greenhouse gases than vegans.

We have demanded cheap meat and the farmers and fishermen have obliged us. The thing is... we don't see the cost for our vanity. Kinda like The Hunger Games trilogy. We're living the Capitol, demanding our cheap meat but we don't see where it comes from. We don't see the suffering.

Every time we open a can of tuna, we don't see the 145 species that are regularly killed during a tuna catch - fish, sharks, birds, turtles, dolphins and whales. Every time we thaw out a shrimp ring, we don't see the 26 lbs of other sea animals that died for every 1 lb of shrimp.

The factory farmer (and the author has a letter from one) argues that we created this. We demanded more meat, cheap meat, and they came up with ways to produce it faster, quicker and cheaper. On the other hand, they know that their business model depends on consumers not being able to see (or hear about) what they do. Their business model revolves around how quickly animals can be made to grow, how tightly they can be packed, how much or how little they can eat, how sick can they get without dying.

The agricultural industry figured out that they don't need healthy animals to make a profit. Sick animals are more profitable. The dead and dying are simply incinerated. I read this part and I saw a mirror image... a society that turned a blind eye to the suffering that was going on under their noses. The transport trains. The sickly millions in sheds and behind fences. The dead and dying tossed into incinerators. Except those were humans.

I wonder... a few decades hence... if we will look back on this time with horror. At what we are doing to billions of animals... suffering and sacrificed on the altar of our craving for meat. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a carnivore... I still want meat... but I don't want to eat some poor chicken that had a hellish life. If I'm going to eat meat... I want to know that the chicken I eat had a happy life.

Which leads us back to us eating sick animals... is it any wonder that we are finding all sorts of new diseases popping up - autoimmune illnesses, childhood leukemia. When our food, whether animal or vegetable, is injected, sprayed, fed: pesticides, insecticides, growth hormones, antibiotics, etc.... is it any wonder?

All this makes me realize... going back to a few of the other books I've read recently... that we are out of relationship with our food sources. We don't know the butcher or the farmer who provides us with our food. We have sacrificed relationships for convenience and affordability. Naturally there is a trade-off. But is it a bargain we are willing to continue to make?