Eating Animals
Ratings83
Average rating4.2
“Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is?”
This book is absolutely the most well-written, well-researched, and overall compelling argument for vegetarianism on ethical/environmental grounds. The author's argument is so tight, yet undemanding, that it seems irrefutable (I would like to see someone refute it).
Admittedly, reading this was preaching to the choir; I've been vegetarian for years now, vegan for 2 of those. But even I was astonished by what I read, and was given more to ponder about what it means to eat meat, and felt more empowered by my own decision not to.
Could not recommend this book enough, regardless of your current dietary choices, as I assure you it is illuminating.
The short story: DO NOT read this book if you don't want to feel horrifically guilty about eating animals. DO read this book if you want to understand why a celebrity author death match between JSF and Michael Pollan would be epic in the way that would blow UFC title matches out of the water.
The longer story: The three stars are for the book itself (which I thought was good, but not remarkably well-written), not the book's effect on me (it's more of a five-star book in that regard). Anyway, ::obligatory and self-indulgent whining about how grad school really interferes with reading for fun::, so at some point, I put this book down when I felt like Safran Foer was being really preachy (although lord knows he can do no sin when writing novels!), and then didn't return to it for a month or two. I'm not sure whether to attribute my hiatus to needing something lighter to read, or to JSF needing to get to the goddamn point. Either way, once he got there, he convinced me not to eat chicken again, and to contemplate total vegetarianism as well. That's not the hugest leap for me, given that I stopped eating red meat & pork in the third or fourth grade, but it's a leap nonetheless. Every liberal-minded person I know knows that factory farming is an abomination, but very few people I know have actually changed their eating behaviors based on that knowledge, and I'm tired of not being one of the very few (although hopefully not “very few” forever, or even for very long). I guess it's kind of nice when reading inspires change. And props to my roommate for setting an excellent example in both the reading of this book and her switch to vegetarianism.
A favorite quote: “It shouldn't be the consumer's responsibility to figure out what's cruel and what's kind, what's environmentally destructive and what's sustainable. Cruel and destructive food products should be made illegal. We don't need the option of buying children's toys made with lead paint, or aerosols with chlorofluorocarbons, or medicines with unlabelled side effects. And we don't need the option of buying factory-farmed animals.”
Dát boek moet ge eens lezen! Dát is het boek waardoor ik definitief vegetariër ben geworden!
Ik heb niets tegen vegetarisch eten. Verre van – ik weet ook wel dat het niet houdbaar is, de manier waarop er industrieel aan vlees- en visverwerking gedaan wordt. Niet eens alleen ethisch onhoudbaar, maar ook gewoon praktisch onhoudbaar, uit een beperkt aantal grondstoffen-standpunt.
Wat mij betreft stappen we best over naar een dieet van grotendeels proteïnes uit insekten en gelijkaardige (yum, garnalen) – en voor de zondagen en feestdagen ethisch gekweekte, goed verzorgde, gelukkige beesten. Respectvol geslacht en verwerkt, met kennis van zaken klaargemaakt, en dus immens lekker.
Maar bon, ik kon even niet slapen, en ik dacht: waarom lees ik niet eens dat boek, waarvan ik ontelbare mensen heb horen zeggen dat ze na het lezen ervan nog nauwelijks aan biefstuk meer konden denken zonder te kokhalzen?
Komt erbij dat ik heel graag Everything is Illuminated gelezen heb, en idem voor Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, dus what the hey.
Helaas.
Ergens in het begin van het boek schrijft Foer iets als “at the risk of losing my credibility on page 13”. Ik ga niet zeggen dat hij zijn geloofwaardigheid daar al helemaal kwijtgespeeld was, maar het was wél met de ene na de andere oogrol dat ik begon te lezen.
Dat hij komt uit een familie zonder eetcultuur. Dat het allemaal zo Amerikaans is. Dat hij tot zijn negen jaar niet besefte dat kip van kippen gemaakt is. Dat hij de eerste 26 jaar van zijn leven niets van dieren moest weten tot hij zijn eerste hond kocht. “Zucht”, denk ik dan.
En dan, nauwelijks begonnen, begint hij mij écht te irriteren. Om op een shockerende manier aan te tonen hoe akelig het wel is om dieren te eten, doet hij een soort advocaat van de duivel slash ab absurdum met honden.
A simple trick from the backyard astronomer: if you are having trouble seeing something, look slightly away from it. The most light-sensitive parts of our eyes (those we need to see dim objects) are on the edges of the region we normally use for focusing.
Eating animals has an invisible quality. Thinking about dogs, and their relationship to the animals we eat, is one way of looking askance and making something invisible visible.
gaff
Slamming a gaff into the side, fin, or even the eye of a fish creates a bloody but effective handle to help haul it on deck.
Looking past the ritualism, my mind kept returning tot the fish in these videos, to the moment when the gaff is between the fisher's hand and the creature's eye....
No reader of this book would tolerate someone swinging a pickax at a dog's face. Nothing could be more obvious or less in need of explanation.
Animals
Nothing could seem more “natural” than the boundary between humans and animals.
Broiler chickens
You probably though that chickens were chickens. But for over the past century there have actually been two kinds of chickens - broilers and layers.
Pigs
If pig intelligence has been part of America's barnyard folklore, that same lore has imagined fish and chickens as expecially stupid Are they?
Another why: Why would a farmer lock the doors of his turkey farm?
It can't be because he's afraid someone will steal his equipment or animals. [...] A farmer doesn't lock his doors because he's afraid his animals will escape. (Turkey's can't turn doorknobs.)
In the three years I will spend immersed in animal agriculture, nothing will unsettle me more than the locked doors. Nothing will better capture the whole sad business of factory farming. And nothing will more strongly convince me to write this book.
dat
The power brokers of factory farming know that their business model depends on customers not being able to see (or hear about) what they do.
schelen
alles
You are not fed, forced to labor, or protected. You are not marked as a possession with brands or tagging. [...] The image of your motherly protection and care will be used in the second verse of Genesis [...] Jesus will invoke you as an image of protective love [...] But Genesis has not yet been written, nor Jesus born.
Basically, humans struck a deal with the animals we have named chickens, cows, pigs and so forth: we'll protect you, arrange food for you, etc., and in turn, your labor will be harnessed, your milk and eggs taken, and, at times you will be killed and eaten.
ping!
I appreciate Foer's ability to cross genres and his presentation of information. It's a lot to take in, a lot of it unpleasant (the point) and he manages to create the desire to do so. I love his posing questions and thought points, owns the ambivalence and struggle. I as vegetarian listened with my omnivorous partner and it inspired a ton of conversation between us.. In addition, I think, to convincing partner to give up meat, or at least some forms. (Other documentaries etc haven't convinced him). I only wish Foer had addressed the dairy industry as well.
Such important material. Such a great presentation. Such a shame that he ends it on such an offputting sanctimonious note.
We all know we need to eat less meat. We can all use periodic boosts to our resolution; some of us also appreciate impartial observations about the meat we do eat, especially when we're hoping to eat humanely raised and ethically slaughtered animals. This book provided much of that: points of view I hadn't considered, frank discussion of the difficulties of being humane throughout an animal's entire life. Genuinely thought-provoking material. Then, at the end, he goes all preachy-like and undoes so much of the good he's done! I felt like eating a fuck-you burger just out of spite. (I didn't, but it's taken me more than a week to get over my ill will and write a fair(ish) review.)
So, unless you're already vegan: read this book, but skip the last section (“Storytelling”). There's worthwhile material in it, but it's not worth the proselytizing.
If you eat any meat at all, even 100% non-CAFO, read it. You will be better informed, and perhaps be a better person.
If you do eat CAFO meat, I don't know what to say: you probably should read this book, but you won't. It'll be too difficult. Do me favor, though: start thinking a little about the animals you eat. Start paying attention to infectious-disease news and to animal-rights voices. At some point you'll be ready to read this, and then please do. (Just skip the last section).
Hitler was not a vegetarian!
This book is entertaining and presents itself in unique and non boring ways. It starts with the author's background as a flimsy, sorta vegetarian who wanted to research everything about eating animals because he now has a son when the world is like this and global warming is on the rise. Poor decisions aside they research animal agriculture the best they can and come to the reasonable conclusion that eating animals is horrible. They are now not a flimsy vegetarian and don’t want to consume meat, yay.
This body of work is not the best and dated though. I am not well versed in all the statistics and facts, but for example if you get the basic fact that Hitler wasn’t a vegetarian wrong I start to worry. It spends a huge portion showing welfarists struggles and showcases a vegan rancher which perhaps is not the best use of time but I did enjoy hearing those nonconventional perspectives about which I would have never read otherwise. Despite being a vegan and going through quite a lot of information, some of it in the book was written in cool ways that surprised me and kept me intrigued.
The writing has a very emotional and empathetic touch which I miss when reading most non fiction, you don’t necessarily write a better book if you opt out from emotions for intellectualization.
The author is not vegan which is a shame and weird, but the information in the book would make a ton of people vegan and already has. Perhaps I am rating it too high, oh well. Let’s end this with a vegan message, haha. Be vegan! Watchdominion.org xoxo (Recently I have been going around the town writing this in chalk everywhere. You are welcome. You wish you were me.)
OH MAN. I loved this book. I'm really glad I read it immediately after I read the Omnivore's Dilemma (which I also loved), because it directly engages with Omnivore, while also going beyond it. If you eat meat and don't want to read this book because you think it will attack you... try it. Foer talks about his life as an omnivore and all the pros and cons (cultural, culinary, ethical, etc.) of meat eating and agriculture ( industrial and sustainable). This book is, I think, more literary and personal than Omnivore's Dilemma, but as well-researched. It isn't preachy, but it is searching. And although it deals with tricky ethical questions, it's extremely readable.... I almost want to call it a page-turner, although I'd usually save that term for a Dan Brown book or something.
If you are at all curious about the food that you eat, I'd strongly recommend reading both this and Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, preferably this book following Omnivore. But if you only care enough to read one book, make it this one.
–
“Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?”
–JSF
It didn't make me a vegetarian, but it's full of interesting facts, it opens your eyes on a lot of things. Definitely a must read! Loved it.
This was incredibly well written and further solidified my undying love for Impossible nuggets (specifically the spicy ones).
In all seriousness, this is a book that everyone should read. I loved that this was not pushing vegetarianism on the reader, but (through peer reviewed research) showed the facts and horrors of factory farming in the USA Today and how far removed we are from the animals we consume. Eating/not eating meat is a multi-level discussion (moral, social, economic, feminist) and I'm privileged to be able to make the choice to not eat meat.
This book was also so thoughtfully written. Some non fiction can be too stark and textbook-y, but JSF wove personal narrative with peer reviewed facts (the last 30% of this book on my kindle was citations, notes, and links) in a way that felt incredibly natural. It was an honor to read this book. 5 stars.
