Eating Animals By Jonathan Safran Foer

In this book, Jonathan Safran Foer analyses the production and consumption of animals on several different levels, each of which are disturbing.

He points out that most of the food we buy in the supermarkets, we presume is healthy, such as fish and chicken. However much of the chicken available in grocery stores has been bred for human consumption - the fowl is specifically bred to grow fast and to have large breast sections (because consumers prefer the white meat).

The animals themselves are so altered from their original species that they aren't expected to be able to survive in the wild. Having been bred for consumption, these animals are dependent upon the feed, antibiotics, vitamins, etc. from the poultry farms in order to survive. It's disturbing that the animals are so different from the original animals. How healthy can it be for us to consume an animal that was fed so many hormones, antibiotics and vitamins?

Foer describes his underground visits to poultry farms and to slaughter houses. His account doesn't become excessively emotional but the details are disturbing. Learning exactly how the animals are raised and cared for, imagining the pain and knowing the various attrition rates paints a disturbing picture and once imagined is hard to dismiss.

While I had expected the description of slaughterhouses would be disturbing, the degree of unnecessary cruelty that many animals suffer at the time of their death - hurting for sport - and the absence of any effective supervision over the care of the animals is worse than anything I could have imagined.

However, he doesn't have anything resembling a strategy for improving animal welfare other than to not purchase them. This is a good preliminary strategy, but he doesn't address the obvious collective action problem: even if he stops, this doesn't entail that anyone else will, even with the influence of other vegetarians. Further, he neglects to discuss why it would be bad to try to reform the actions of participants in the food production chain when the greatest improvements to animal welfare might simply come from things like better slaughterhouses.

I guess Eating Animals has made me realize that I can't just ignore the impact of my food choices. While I haven't become vegetarian, it's hard to enjoy meat the same way. Eating Animals however has made me make more careful choices. Have you read Eating Animals? If so, has it changed how you decide what to eat it? As it certainly has mine. Feel free to comment and if you have read this book you might also like the movie, Food Inc