Foer is the award-winning author of two novels, "Everything Is Illuminated", and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"; this is his first non-fiction book.
I didn’t want to write about this until I’d actually spent a few days eating vegetarian food….but now it’s been eight days, and I’m still alive. Eight days? Without any meat at all? What happened? I read a book, and it changed my life. A week ago I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals
I didn’t write about those first few days because I wasn’t positive I’d feel so sure of my convictions after a day or so of not eating my usual chicken or turkey. I imagined myself caving after 48 hours, driving (a little too fast) to Jack in the Box and shouting “CHICKEN SANDWICH” into the drive-thru intercom, with the desperation of someone who’d just spent a week in the Sahara without water and had suddenly found an oasis. I imagined writing to you all, “OH HI YEAH I’M A VEGETARIAN AGAIN,” and then a few days later announcing, “Oh hi yeah, uh, scratch that, I’m going back to moderation; hand me that burger.”
But the thing is, every time I’m hungry and I don’t know what to eat, and I’m freaking out because I have no idea how to get myself some good protein, the idea of going out and getting some chicken just makes me sick. The idea that I might need some factory-farmed chicken, the cooked carcass of a creature that spent it’s short life in abject pain and misery, cruelly slaughtered after a life of suffering and confusion, just because I like the taste of chicken and I’m not sure what else to eat right now, seems like the stupidest thing in the world. Hand me the beans.
I want you to read Foer’s book, I want everyone in the world to read Foer’s book, but what cinched it for me wasn’t even something he wrote; it was a letter he published in the chapter Hiding/Seeking, written by the woman who snuck him into a turkey operation in the middle of the night. She wrote what is probably the most eloquent case for animal rights I’ve ever read. A couple excerpts:
….This [factory farms] isn’t animal experimentation, where you can imagine some proportionate good at the other end of the suffering. This is what we feel like eating. Tell me something: Why is taste, the crudest of our senses, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses? Why doesn’t a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry person does to killing and eating it? It’s easy to dismiss that question but hard to respond to it. And how would you judge an artist who mutilated animals in a gallery because it was visually arresting? How riveting would the sound of a tortured animal need to be to make you want to hear it that badly? Try to imagine any end other than taste for which it would be justifiable to do what we do to farmed animals.
…Before child labor laws, there were businesses that treated their ten-year-old employees well. Society didn’t ban child labor because it’s impossible to imagine children working in a good environment, but because when you give that much power to businesses over powerless individuals, it’s corrupting. When we walk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than an animal has a right to live without suffering, it’s corrupting. I’m not speculating. This is our reality. Look at what factory farming is. Look at what we as a society have done to the animals as soon as we had the technological power. Look at what we actually do in the name of “animal welfare” and “humaneness”, then decide if you still believe in eating meat.
(Emphasis mine.)
What Foer’s book makes you do is look. He makes you look, because he looks, and he doesn’t just stop after he discovers the gruesome reality of a slaughterhouse kill floor (where cows are frequently stunned instead of killed, and eviscerated while hanging from one leg, still alive).
He delves into the history of factory farming, he asks why we don’t eat our pets (making a case for why eating Fido makes a lot of good sense), he interviews people who own and run ranches, he asks if it’s possible to raise animals for eating humanely, he searches out sources of “humane” meat, he traces the history of the factory farm, and he asks what this entire industry is doing to us; as consumers, as people who live on the earth that factory farms are destroying (you can’t eat factory farmed meat and call yourself an environmentalist anymore than you can financially support the exploits of a rapist and call yourself a feminist), and as human beings – it’s impossible to make the case that delivering regular violence to animals doesn’t negatively affect a person.
We don’t want to look at what we’re eating, at least not too closely, and I refuse to excuse myself from this anymore. I’m not willing to support an industry that condones cruelty and suffering on this incredible scale, for what? Because I like chicken? Because it’s hard to find vegetarian options I like? Because I don’t like the taste of vegetables that much? I’LL GET OVER IT. Do you know what “thumping” is? It’s the common practice of picking up a runt piglet, one that won’t grow fast enough to make a buck, by it’s hind legs, and beating it to death on the concrete floor. Would you take a runt puppy and beat it to death on your floor? What if you walked in and saw your child doing that to a kitten? How is a piglet’s suffering any different than a cat or dog’s?
Animal agriculture makes a 40% greater contribution to climate change than all transportation in the world combined; do you know how stupid I feel driving my Prius to go pick up a cheeseburger? How can I go pick up my daughter’s asthma medicine, and then go buy a pork sandwich, when I know that children raised near factory farms are twice as likely to develop asthma? I’m condemning a child to illness with my lunch.
Communities living near factory farms have problems with persistent nosebleeds, earaches, chronic diarrhea, and burning lungs – how can I possibly eat factory farmed meat knowing that my dollars are going to make communities of families sick, torment animals for nothing but a taste preference, support probably the worst labor practices in the United States, destroy the earth I love, and likely make it so that any future antibiotics I might need to take to make me healthy won’t work so well?
I’m done pretending none of this exists. It does. We all know it does. Make fun of PETA and the crazy hippies all you want, pretend that you “need” to eat factory farmed meat; but just try for a minute to think about where it comes from. I have, and Foer’s book put it into a perspective that just brought it all home, I can’t live with myself if I continue eating this way. I just can’t. I’m not the person I want to be if I pretend this isn’t happening, if I pretend that I’m not a part of it.
I’m terrified to say this – not because I’m afraid I’ll change my mind about the cost of human, animal, and environmental suffering – but because I have this probably ridiculous fear that my body won’t work as a vegetarian, that I’ll somehow get sick and shrivel up, and then what? Would I support the industry to stay alive? Would it really come to that? Am I maybe experiencing the tiniest bit of irrational fear here? I guess we’ll see, won’t we?
Moderation is a great thing, and I’m happy that I’ve been working on accomplishing goals slowly instead overnight. I didn’t mean for this book to fall into my lap, and I didn’t mean to feel this strongly about it. It just did, and I just do. I’m still eating some dairy products sometimes. Mostly stuff like the occasional slice of cheese pizza when everyone else has ordered meat, or when I can’t avoid meat in a restaurant without eating something with dairy – my preference is to avoid the meat first, and slowly work on the transition to veganism over time. If I try to switch over too quickly, I probably will get sick. So I guess in that, there is some moderation – as well as my willingness to eat eggs from my friend’s humanely raised backyard chickens. Factory farmed meat, though, in any form, is pretty repellent to me.
I have no doubt this will make life harder. I can’t think of a single friend or family member that I eat with regularly that’s vegetarian. Foer says, “It’s a classic dilemma. How much do I value creating a socially comfortable situation, and how much do I value acting socially responsible?” I’m not sure yet how I’ll manage this, although friends are already used to be being a picky eater so certainly that will be nothing new.
But picky about vegetables AND unwilling to eat meat? What am I going to subsist on? Brown rice and Clif bars? I guess that remains to be seen!
For further reading about the book:
- Jonathan Safron Foer’s New Book Asks Why We Don’t Eat Pets? by Rabbi David Wolpe
- ‘Eating Animals’ by Jonathan Safran Foer. A plea against cruelty to animals draws on the author’s family history and personal circumstances as a young father. By Susan Salter Reynolds (LA Times).
- Flesh of Your Flesh - Should you eat meat? by Elizabeth Kolbert (New Yorker).
- Eating animals is making us sick. By Jonathan Safran Foer, Special to CNN
- Eating Animals: Jonathan Safran Foer Talks To Ellen About His New Book (VIDEO)
- Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals Turned Me Vegan. By Natalie Portman
Way to go, lady.
I read the passage of Safran Foer’s book that was excerpted in the New York Times, and it was incredibly powerful. I don’t want to read the whole book since I’m already veggie and reading descriptions of factory farms seems like an unnecessary form of torture to me. I’m sure it’s awesome though!
I tend to think that there ARE sources of humane meat (I almost wrote “human meat!”) – the farm I buy milk from comes to mind – but they are few and far between and usually VERY small. And there’s absolutely no way we could sustain the world’s current level of meat consumption using farms like those.
Good luck with your new diet! I think it’s awesome!
Yeah, I agree that there are humane sources of meat (human meat! heh), and Foer does too. But he points out, like you do, that we couldn’t feed many people on it. In fact it turns out that if you took all the humanely raised meat in the whole country, you could feed Staten Island. That’s it.
Unfortunately, those farmers that are doing it right aren’t getting a chance to do it much – they’re getting squeezed out of the industry left and right. I think we need to support those people when we find them. While I don’t think I’ll be eating any meat again soon, I would happily support a farm where I could find good eggs and milk and cheese, if I knew the animals were well cared for and were living normal lives. I’m so glad you have one of those! There must be some near Seattle, right? :)
Congrats and yay for you for deciding to take a stand!!! I’ve been vegan for almost a year and it’s actually been a LOT easier then I thought it would be. It’s challenged me to be creative in the kitchen and Ive grown to love cooking and where veggies used to be an afterthought they’re now the center of attention! roasted brussel sprouts w/ olive oil and a sprinkling of brown sugar. i’ve been eating this every day and i never get tired of it. tofu and tempeh are great protein staples. I will say eating out can sometimes be difficult but you can manage to make it work. Foer’s book is going in my amazon cart. I’ve spent this year reading a lot about food and it’s been a great reinforcement that I’m making the right decision every time I’m tired and hungry and I want chicken fingers. Congrats again and umm…YAY!!!
Did they get into what happens to male chicks in an egg ranch? Yeah. It’s lovely. They used to gas them, now they throw them into what amounts to a giant garbage disposal because supposedly it’s “more humane.” (I know which I’d pick!) And my chicken mailing list had a big discussion about transportation of chickens not too long ago, revealing that even among chicken afficionados, there’s a desperate lack of actual knowledge of how chickens are treated in large scale operations. (One guy actually insisted that chickens don’t die in transit because it wouldn’t be cost effective. Dude, the normal DOA rate is around 2%.) It’s awful.
I don’t know about Seattle, but it’s not super hard to eat locally grown, humanely-raised food in my area if you cook at home. There are locals who raise grass-fed, humanely slaughtered cows, grain-fed and humanely slaughtered pigs, and a TON of chicken farmers who toss their chickens treats and cluck at them lovingly and then eat them or offer them up for sale as food. Several of our local CSA’s have meat shares like that, or dairy or eggs (the drawback being that you often have to buy a half a cow at a time…) One CSA makes awesome cheeses from their very spoiled goats. Obviously I have my chickens, and the travesty that is factory egg farming is a large part of the reason I got them (it wasn’t cause it’s cheap, cuz it ain’t!) I would eat the chickens I raise, actually, if I had enough room to raise enough or a convenient way to slaughter and process them. Next year I might try raising some broiler chicks (they have a genetically programmed lifespan of 8 weeks or so…I try not to think about the manipulations they did to past generations to MAKE that happen…) and then going in with some of the other locals on a “group processing” deal at a local meat processor they’ve worked with in the past.
The whole focus on factory animal conditions and large-scale food farming of any kind is what got me into the CSA gig and raising and canning so much of my own food, and cooking a lot more at home in the first place. I loathe the term “Slow Food Movement”, but that’s kinda the idea. Big agriculture isn’t so wonderful either, though their transgressions are different. I haven’t read this book yet, but several folks on my mailing lists have read it and really liked it, and have kicked of discussions about humane sources of food and eating locally from small farms that way.
One of the reasons I support Burgerville, despite their high prices, is their sourcing of humanely raised and killed beef, and ethically sourced fish. They actually went without their salmon offerings for a while because their source was found to have some shady practices, and I respect that. There are other restaurants that do similar things. I imagine it’s a large reason their prices *are* higher than other fast food chains.
I am not opposed to eating meat just on principle; I have canines for a reason, and my body requires B12 which is very difficult to get from plant matter, and therefore means my body evolved to eat meat. I am not horrified when one animal eats another, and I see no reason to be any more horrified at a human animal eating another animal. However, as humans we can choose not to be brutal and horrible about it, and yet the Almighty Dollar has taken precedence. Cheap, unhealthy, nasty-tasting food is the American Way, and it’s killing us and the planet too. I realize many people are opposed to killing in any form, and that’s cool, I’m just not one of them. (Hey, as a Buddhist, aren’t you supposed to be vegetarian anyway? Like not harming any living critter or something? I always thought that was part of it, but I’ve never really looked into it that hard.)
I’ve eaten cows whose name I knew, so I disagree with the idea that we never eat our pets. Our culture simply doesn’t support the idea of eating *certain* pets, and I would argue that it’s based on the Cute And Fluffy principle. Pigs are as smart as dogs, and yet Not Cute And Fluffy. Other countries do eat dogs, and horses, and grubs, and all kinds of things we wouldn’t ordinarily consume. City folk aren’t used to caring for an animal and then eating it, but country folk usually are, and are generally pragmatic about it. Even then, you typically don’t eat an animal that shares your bed or your house, just the ones that live in your yard. And I can understand that!
One thing to explore if you are concerned about the raising and slaughtering of animals is Kosher meat. It’s not a perfect answer, but organic and Kosher *should* be more humane, if they are genuinely adhering to the rules. http://www.kosherblog.net/2006/11/02/faq-is-kosher-meat-better/ Doesn’t help the carbon imprint, but does help some of the ethical questions.
Have you ever read anything by Temple Grandin? She’s an autistic woman who is one of the foremost authorities in the world on the humane treatment of animals during the slaughtering process. She’s done a lot for the practice, though it’s an uphill battle.
Have you read Fast Food Nation? Yeah, it’ll turn your stomach in whole new ways too. Ew.
Turns out I don’t actually eat all that much meat anyway, after I started really paying attention to it. Well, at least not compared to the general population (I want to know who’s eating my annual share of hot dogs, cuz it sure isn’t me!) Todd, on the other hand, eats his share, my share, and someone else’s share. Which I do find troubling, more on the basis that meat is terrible for the environment than on the basis that it’s wrong to eat meat. The planet would be better off if we’d all curtail our meat eating a huge amount, regardless of how we feel about raising and slaughtering animals.
Hooray for you for your change of heart… (and diet). Thankfully there is abundant info on the web on protein substitutes and an endless variety of fabulous vegan recipes!
About the dairy issue though… It is said that there is more suffering in a glass of milk then in a steak. The reason for this is that dairy cows are “used” for a longer time before they go to slaughter (usually at about 4 years old). But during their time on this earth they will have had 4 or 5 calves – Each one will be taken from her within hours or days. Anyone who has experienced the maternal bond could see the agony they go through with the loss of their young. The young females may get returned to the milking herd in about 8 months — or like the males, they may be sent to slaughter (with umbilical cords still attached). Can you imagine? Slitting a baby’s throat while it tries desperately to suckle? Too much to ever ignore once you know…
And the idea of “humane” slaughter — Well, I doubt seriously that this is ever the case. What can be “humane” in killing a sentient being when it’s not necessary? And surely, unless one is living in the bush or is an Inuit – There are always better choices to killing without “need”.
Thriving on a plant based diet addresses all the woes in our world from the environmental impact, human health issues, meat industry worker abuses and of course it supports the kind treatment to Others… just like we were taught to do from the very start.
Good luck! I think you’re making a wonderful decision! :)
Check out this informative and inspiring video on why people choose vegan: http://veganvideo.org/
Also see Gary Yourofsky: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bagt5L9wXGo
This is one of the reasons that we buy our ground beef from one of the farms up on Lopez… and that’s it. We don’t buy it from the regular grocery stores.
If you’re interested in buying meat at all, I suggest checking the University Farmers’ Market (year-round) and looking for one of the small organic farms that sell meat there.
Our friends M and I and R get a quarter cow from one of the local “humane” farms, as well.
We still eat chicken. Hope that doesn’t make you not want to be friends or something.
Yes, I was just going to say what Llyra just said — you can VERY easily get meat, dairy, and eggs from humane sources here in Seattle. All the farmer’s markets I’ve been to have the dairy and eggs for sure, and most of the small, local butchers have humanely-raised meat as well.
But I do think it’s important to keep in mind that people don’t just not-think about the origins of their food because they’re in moral denial. It’s much more complicated than that. For many people, it simply comes down to cost. A gallon of free-range, humanely-acquired milk can cost upwards of $8. You can’t buy it at your local grocery store — you have to have the extra time, money, and transportation required to go track it down and get it. Same problem with organic produce. I think many people would LOVE to eat organic fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy, eggs, etc., but those foods can cost twice as much or more than their commercial equivalents. Something needs to be done to make it more profitable to treat your animals well than it is to treat them badly. So that those animal products can then be sold at prices that compete with the bad guys. Until that happens, I think it’s pretty unlikely that the industry is going to change much.
I found your blog originally through VeganMoFo, and added it to my feed. This really hit home – a pitch-perfect description of how I felt a few years ago, when I secretly went vegetarian, and waited three months before telling anybody. My convictions were so strong, but so delicate at the same time – I had to figure it out for myself to a certain degree before I could let anyone else in on the conversation.
I rarely get into ethical discussions about veganism (I switched over to it eventually) because I really do think it’s an intensely personal and private decision, somewhat similar to spiritual leanings. But I’m starting to think that perhaps animal welfare is the next civil rights movement waiting to happen – that two hundred years from now, we might be appalled at what was normal in this current day and age.
And even though it’s true that we were designed to be omnivorous (canines, etc), we were also designed to be brutal to each other – to rape, kill, steal. Carrying off women by their hair and whatnot. For the most part, we’ve mastered those impulses with the help of societal norms (thou shalt not, etc). But we’ve always eaten meat, because until recently, we didn’t have the option of being healthy and NOT eating meat. Now, though, we do.
At my most optimistic, I think there are two sides in every person – the emotional caveman, and the logical brain – and both have benefits and drawbacks. And perhaps we can put our fancy technology towards things like designing vegan cheeses that are tasty and making lovely things out of soy, instead of designing antibiotics for cows.
Anyway! Fear not! You can totally be healthy, I promise! The thing I had to get used to, being a vegetarian, is that I couldn’t eat empty carbs anymore. Otherwise, since I needed to eat a fair amount of beans, brown rice, quinoa, nuts, etc, my diet would be completely made up of them! So I cut way down on things like bread, potatoes, white rice, sugar, and pasta, and started eating more things that were green. And I started getting fewer headaches and feeling much more cheerful.
And with strict veganism, you gotta think about iron, B-vitamins, and in the winter, vitamin D. Iron and B-vitamins (get a “b complex” bottle of pills) help each other out, so take them together with food. Take Vitamin D in the winter if you’re not getting enough sun. (It also helps out a lot with winter sugar cravings!)
Anyway, I totally agree that it’s good to slide into vegetarianism/veganism slowly. Find lots of things you like to cook! Do you have any of Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s books? (If not, Vegan with a Vengeance is absolutely necessary. Veganomicon is even bigger.)
Just wanted to chime in to say I loved your comments, Anna! I like the idea of thinking of vegetarianism/veganism as the next civil rights movement. That’s a really good way to think about it. Not to mention the concept of it as being a somewhat spiritual journey. Huh. Love it. Thanks!! And thanks, Hollie, for the book recommendation! I picked up a copy today!
I have some concerns.
I admire anyone who takes a difficult stand on something as fundamental as to the food they eat, on a consistent basis. It is these changes that can move the marketplace. Every time I go to our farmer’s market (fortunately, the U-District is only a mile away), I see all these people making a vote for a better agriculture. These are political and ethical concerns, and vegetarianism and vegans make courageous stands against a troubling and unsustainable system. I haven’t gotten that far yet, but my choices are becoming incrementally better. (It is convenient to have a deep freezer for all that humane meat.)
That said, we eat for other reasons, too. I know you are also making food changes for reasons of health, and I wonder if by focusing on more extreme solutions, you may be missing the mark. Ultimately, I suspect you aren’t really buying into this whole moderation thing.
If you want to go extreme, how about cooking for a full week–no junk food, no eating out, no pizza. Just make a commitment to knowing your food intimately by handling all the ingredients yourself? You’ve probably done this already, but how about trying it in a more decadent manner–don’t go for low calorie, healthy foods, just cook, bake, get closer to your food. This could begin a love affair with food this is better for you and the community.
Or if you really want to challenge yourself, just start eating more vegetables. NOW. Try them ALL. NO FEAR. Even if they make you want to puke. Just eat them. Add cheese or butter to them if it makes them more palatable to you. See how much cheese sauce a steamed bit of broccoli requires in order for you to get it down your throat. You are strong, you can do it.
Sorry to be so cruel, but I have a couple extremely unhealthy “junkitarian” friends out there who don’t eat meat, but they certainly don’t eat produce, either. I think it’s a bad place to be, and not where you want to challenge yourself.
Again, I know I’m being very judgmental, but I really think you need to try more expansion of your menu than contraction. If it were cruel to eat cookies, would it be easier to give them up? I’m not down on vegetarianism, I just don’t know if that is the path you should be going into right now, at least not until you’ve really explored the world of vegetables that you’ve been avoiding. Would a parsnip really kill you?
I’m not sure how many times I can emphasize it before it’s clear; I eat a ton of produce. I eat bananas and oranges and apples every day, and I green smoothies, which is likely more greens that most omnivores get in a week.
The thing is, I don’t think of going veg as extreme at all. Eating the crap that factory farms produce, supporting that system; that’s extreme. It isn’t something I can do anymore. I realize that seems extreme to a lot of people, but it truly doesn’t to me. Something shifted inside, I can’t just go eat a chicken leg when I know where it came from and how it lived and died, especially when beans are so good, and so plentiful, and so cheap. If there literally were no other sources of good protein, that would certainly make a non-protein diet “extreme”! If I really couldn’t meet my nutritional needs without factory farmed meat, then heck, it’s not like I’d let myself die. It’d eat it! I’d eat it, and I’d work on changing the system as best I could.
But that isn’t the case. Vegetarians have so many options, I just don’t hae any excuse for eating factory farmed meat except for taste, and that isn’t good enough for me. I realize that your perception of me is that I down bowls of candy every day and now I’ve just taken away the only ostensibly nutritious source of calories I have – that isn’t true, although I realize it’s probably fruitless to argue that here. I’ll try to be more conscious about what I post, and maybe share more of what I’m eating, to allay fears.
hollie – You are absolutely right about what is extreme and what is not… Ever since living on a plant based diet I eat twice as much variety as I did before… It’s not about elimination or denial, it’s about opening up to new and different ways. It’s all good! :)