Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

Be careful reading this book. It could change your life, or at least your eating habits. Jonathan Foer has made a name for himself with his two books, Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and this third book is getting just as much attention, if not more. The book is all about “factory farming”, which is most of the farming done in this country, and the kind of farming that is on the increase in the rest of the world. It all started supposedly when a woman who raised chickens got 500 chicks instead of 50 by mistake but tried raising them indoors and gave them food supplements (this was in 1923) and ended up with a new and different take on animal agriculture. Foer has done a lot of research, and his reportage is delivered with musings on what food is, what animals are, and how we relate to animals.
This book is not making a case for vegetarianism; it’s simply revealing the full fledged massive operations of raising, transporting and killing enormous amounts of animals to supply our restaurants, fast food eateries, and supermarkets. Foer makes a concerted effort to include voices from all sides of the mega meat industry – a factory farmer, meat packing employees, farmers trying to raise and kill animals humanely, slaughter house owners, government inspectors, animal rights activists. He gives you the facts slowly...and each description of how animals are treated (chickens, pigs, cows) is presented as part of an unfolding dialogue on how we can eat meat without sanctioning such cruelty. All that said, I haven’t ever wanted to be a vegetarian – but after reading this book, I just can’t eat meat from anywhere. I did buy some recently from Whole Foods, where I was assured that this meat was humanely raised, but then realized afterward that they couldn’t guarantee humane killing since they had to send the animals to packing plants. If you can’t believe that I’m even thinking along these lines, you should try the book. I’d be really interested to hear what other readers think.