Intern Jon's Book Review: Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

While the average American lives blissfully without a worry of where the meat on his or her plate came from, Jonathan Safran Foer introduces the reader to a harsh reality in his book Eating Animals.  The nostalgic vision of family-farmed raised meat is nearly a dead illusion, as 99% of all meat production is now carried out by the often horrific factory-farming.  Likely recognizing that most Americans prefer to avoid acknowledging this truth, Foer engages the reader into his argument, supplying personal anecdotes of raising his son, fond memories of his grandmother’s cooking, in addition to the experiences of others such as small cattle ranchers who are threatened by corporate agribusinesses. He explains himself as someone who has dispassionately shuffled between vegetarianism and eating meat, and loved to eat meat when it was convenient.  However, through the research he dedicated to writing Eating Animals, he has now fully committed his dietary habits to purely vegetarianism as the easiest way to avoid supporting factory farming.  But his book is not only an argument for vegetarianism but also “an argument for another, wiser animal agriculture and a more honorable omnivory.”  

In other words, Foer is a vegetarian who supports the old fashion style of grass-fed farming.  He contrasts the methods of struggling small family-farmers with the images inside chicken, cow, and hog factory-farms.  For instance, Foer provides mind-numbing statistics such as the 145 marine life species that are killed as bycatch and then thrown back into the sea, for the specific fishing of just tuna; or that all male genetically engineered egg-laying chickens (known as layers), consisting of 250 million a year, are completely destroyed.   He also points out that the kosher meat industry also relies on industrialized factory-farming, and that such cruelty is not limited to treif meat. 

Foer focuses not only on the cruelty in the treatment of the factory-farmed animals, but also the health risks this system poses to us.  For instance, the feces covered confinement is a breeding ground for infectious viruses and bacteria.  Different strains of flu viruses can genetically mix and create drug-resistant hybrids that can and have led to large-scale pandemics.  Foer explains how the USDA and other Governmental regulating agencies are very much controlled by the corporate interests themselves.  For instance, chickens are placed in a water tank bath, after being slaughtered, where fecal-polluted water is absorbed by the meat of the chicken.  This process can be avoided but agribusiness CEOs know that they can sell the heavier water laden meat at a greater price.  Foer also warns the reader of misleading food labels.  For instance, USDA certified “free-range” or “cage-free” poultry or eggs merely means that these chickens came from a factory farm that had a small screen-door that rarely opens, yet these thousands of barn-stuffed chickens are still debeaked, drugged, and cruelly slaughtered.  Foer jokes, “I could keep a flock of hens under my sink and call them free-range.”  

While analyzing both arguments for and against eating meat, Foer considers the family traditions and the comfort that meat gives to carnivores. As a result, Foer truly does succeed in providing a convincing argument for all readers to change how their meat reaches their dinner tables. In doing so, he provides the suspense of a thriller novel with his nighttime break-in into a poultry plant, while certainly not lacking wit and humor that makes reading such a serious topic very easy to swallow.  Overall, Eating Animals is an informative and pleasing read, relevant to meat-eaters and vegetarians/vegans alike.