Eating Animals

It's hard to imagine that I'll read a more important book. Just this morning I asked my wife how much she thought it might cost to buy a crate of this book and give it to every single person I know. I want to be clear about something - the danger of a book like this is simply that it preaches to the choir and will never actually reach the audience it deserves. When repeating several of the facts to my mother-in-law she covered her ears and simply said "I don't want to know". This is not uncommon.

It should be clear that Jonathan Safran Foer didn't write this book to convert people to vegetarianism, although it presents a strong enough argument to do so. What the book's intention is is to shed a light on factory farming - which in North America is 99% of the meat consumed by people. I am a vegetarian, and my reasons for being so align strongly with Foer's. The problem with factory farming isn't just simply to do with the health and welfare of animals, although that's certainly part of it, but to do with the effects it has on the entire planet. Factory farming is a serious problem that most people find it much easier to ignore, but the facts are that is contributes significantly to deforestation, global warming, pollution in general, depletion of oil reserves, not to mention public health. Factory farming isn't about feeding a hungry world - it's about making money. It's about turning food, meat, into a product. And in most industries that makes complete sense - but when the commodity is animals, the factory is the earth, and the product is consumed, then the stakes of that product are not the same, and the thinking behind it can't be either.

Foer is not asking people to stop eating meat. In fact large portions of his book are dedicated to family farmers and suggesting that, with more support and demand, how that way of farming and meat production can return. In truth it's only been a century since we've been doing it that way. In fact, according to the credible sources in this book, we'll eventually have to return to that method eventually anyway. The model in which factory farming exists isn't actually sustainable in the long term, both from an economic and environmental standpoint. The question is how much damage will we do to our planet and ourselves before that happens.

The beauty of Foer's writing is that he understands the important of eating and of food as more than nutrition. We sit at a table with others, and each have different beliefs and opinions. He's not anti-meat so much as he is pro-health and pro-sustainability. What he writes about matters. It's important. And he understands the different points of views and arguments. He's not making statements so much as he is asking questions and gathering information for us to consider.

I can't stress enough the importance of reading this book, and passing it along to others. Will it scare you? Sure, but I think more than anything it will confirm things you feared you already knew. Will it turn you off meat? It may - but it doesn't have to. That's not the point. The point is to realize where food comes from on a large scale, and the options available to you whether you're for or against eating meat. The point is also that there is no need to support factory farming in our day and age, despite how easy it is to do so. Foer originally wrote this book only because he was researching where food came from after his son was born. He wanted to know what he should feed him. And as a writer, once he obtained all of this knowledge he had to do something with it.

Please, please read this book. It's not expensive. It's widely available - I even saw copies at the airport bookstore which only stocks best-sellers. If you buy this book and read the entire thing and you don't find that it changes the way you think about food, If you think it was a waste of your time to read then I will personally purchase it back off of you. That's how strongly I feel about. It would be easier to not read this book. It's easy to not change. It's easier to do what we've always done. But the truth is that nothing great, nothing substantial has ever happened by refusing to act, by refusing to educate yourself with the knowledge available to you. So that's what I'm asking you to do, make an informed decision based on the information available. It's the absolute least you can do for yourself.