What I learned from reading Eating Animals

As the title suggests, I’ve recently decided to pay my Vegan membership dues (they take away your powers if you don’t) and better educate myself through some Veg*an literature. To fulfill such a quest, I went on acquiring a number of Veg*an related works and began by reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals. I find myself conflicted after reading this book. On the one hand, Foer provides an effective and powerful argument against factory farms while also peppering in statistics stating that if one eats meat, it is almost guaranteed to be factory farmed meat. My inner-conflict stems rather from his giving such a substantial platform in the book to “humane” farms that aim to treat animals well in life and kill them “as mercifully as possible.” Now, I know many of you will groan at the very notion that some farms are “humane” (I certainly grow sick of hearing people that probably regularly eat at KFC saying it on the internet), but my real problem with his voicing the concerns of these “good guys” is that it doesn’t matter. By his own extremely thorough research, the victory of factory farms over traditional animal husbandry is nearly absolute (one farmer even faced industry bullying in real time while Foer was writing the book). It’s tempting to say traditional farming is dying. It’s more accurate to say it’s actually dead. Therefore, I find Foer’s dedication of such a substantial portion of the book to “ethical animal killers” is either extremely naive, or I am missing the more subtle purpose behind it. Anyways, seeing as this is NOT a review for the book — and the fact that I found the book extremely useful and thought inspiring — I am going to stop bashing it and make my point: there is no such thing as an ethical omnivore.

I do find it necessary — though tedious — to briefly defend the author as a reputable source and not some Vegan loon. A substantial defense of the author for me is that he is a regular author. What does that mean? As the mind behind both the quite popular Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Everything is Illuminated, he is (if nothing else) not some one-hit-wonder Vegan lunatic who only exists to spread the Vegan message. He is a credible author and, perhaps more importantly, a somewhat regular human being attempting to grapple with modern animal farming. If his résumé isn’t enough for you, his descriptions in the book are also convincing. He describes the importance of “food culture” and how he has felt conflicted on whether he believes replacing specific family traditions in the name of ethics is too great a loss to bear. He also, as I grumpily noted above, gives a lot of voice to animal farmers, ranging from the only legally considered “traditional” chicken farmer in the United States to kill men on the slaughterhouse floor. I guess my point is, the guy seems frank. He’s not trying to trick anyone, and — if he is — he’s doing a good job.

Ok, let’s get to the good stuff, the thesis I think the book should have: you are not an ethical omnivore. Now, I want to make something clear. Sometimes when people write “you” in an essay, article, etc. they mean the impersonal you, the general you. I don’t mean that. I am talking to you, right now, reading this essay. You are not an ethical omnivore. You are either (and most likely) a Veg*an (because honestly who else is reading this crap (Hi Mom!)), or you are an unethical omnivore. “How do you know I’m unethical in my omnivorousness?” you might ask. Well, based on two relatively simple arguments and one supplementary one:

Factory farms are absolutely, undeniably, and undisputedly unethical. If you eat meat, you eat factory farmed meat. Your partial participation in an ostensibly more “ethical” meat consumption is, if anything, counterproductive in the self-assuredness it provides you.

Starting with the first one. I think most people know factory farms are straight up evil. Omnivores often rightfully cringe if they are presented with factory farming footage on the internet, squeamishly muttering something like “don’t ruin bacon for me” as it plays. I also think the general idea of a factory farming is considered abhorrent to the average human being without even being aware of the specific information. I’m sure if I were to take a poll asking random people “Should animals be forcefully bred into captivity only to be killed?” they would say “no”….errrr….Maybe that’s not true. They would say, “Found the Vegan” or something like that to protect their fragile moral framework, but they would be thinking “no.” Plus, if that’s not enough for you, Foer provides plenty of evidence demonstrating the undeniable horridness that is modern animal agriculture. Here’s just a few tidbits:

Ethical (this is one, small example; the book is replete with them) : “Half the layer chicks born in the United States, more than 250 million chicks a year — are destroyed…by being sucked through a series of pipes onto an electrified plate…tossed into large plastic containers…where they suffocate slowly…[or] sent fully conscious through macerators (picture a wood chipper filled with chicks)” (Foer 36).

: “Half the layer chicks born in the United States, more than 250 million chicks a year — are destroyed…by being sucked through a series of pipes onto an electrified plate…tossed into large plastic containers…where they suffocate slowly…[or] sent fully conscious through macerators (picture a wood chipper filled with chicks)” (Foer 36). Environmental : “The UN summarized the environmental effects of the meat industry this way: raising animals for food (whether on factory or traditional farms) ‘is one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global…’” (Foer 45).

: “The UN summarized the environmental effects of the meat industry this way: raising animals for food (whether on factory or traditional farms) ‘is one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global…’” (Foer 45). Public Health : “[Humans] have to go to the doctor to obtain antibiotics…to limit the number of such drugs being taken by humans…Microbes eventually adapt to antimicrobials…On a typical factory farm, drugs are fed to animals with every meal…In the United States, about 3 million pounds of antibiotics are given to humans each year, but a whopping 17.8 million pounds are fed to livestock” (Foer 110).

: “[Humans] have to go to the doctor to obtain antibiotics…to limit the number of such drugs being taken by humans…Microbes eventually adapt to antimicrobials…On a typical factory farm, drugs are fed to animals with every meal…In the United States, about 3 million pounds of antibiotics are given to humans each year, but a whopping 17.8 million pounds are fed to livestock” (Foer 110). Economic : “Annual [factory farm] turnover rates typically exceed 100 percent…Illegal aliens are often preferred, but poor recent immigrants who do not speak English are also desirable employees…By the standards of the international humans rights community, the typical working conditions in America’s slaughterhouses constitute human rights abuses” (Foer 103).

: “Annual [factory farm] turnover rates typically exceed 100 percent…Illegal aliens are often preferred, but poor recent immigrants who do not speak English are also desirable employees…By the standards of the international humans rights community, the typical working conditions in America’s slaughterhouses constitute human rights abuses” (Foer 103). Human Rights: “Undercover investigations have consistently revealed that farmworkers, laboring under what Human Rights Watch describes as ‘systematic human rights violations,’ have often let their frustrations loose on farmed animals…” (Foer 205).

Factory Farms are bad in absolute. There is no denying it. By reading Eating Animals or doing any minimal research, you can easily come to this conclusion yourself. If you disagree, you are beyond reason, and there is no point in continuing to read this article.

There is a point in continuing to read, though, if you agree with what I’ve already written, but your instincts are telling you to fight for your specific meat-eating practices in a defensive, #NotAllOmnivores type of way. I’d like to note here that IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT. Your whole life you have been brainwashed into thinking that small, happy farms where animals run free and love their owners are representative of the great majority of animal products. Sadly, this is not the case. Turning to Foer’s research again, 99% of land animals used for animal products in the US are factory farmed (Foer 26). When you’re hungover and go to KFC, when you go out to a restaurant with your friend’s parents, when you go to a barbecue or a tailgate, and when you buy meat from the supermarket, it is almost a guarantee that you are buying factory farmed meat. You are buying meat representative of an industry responsible for the live skinning of cows, the mutant genetics of chickens, the castration of pigs without anesthetic, the “accidental” catching and killing of marine life, and more. What’s more, your buying meat from an “ethical farm” in addition to the above practices does not in any way alleviate your participation in the atrocity that is factory farming.

Now for the more subtle point of why you are not an ethical omnivore, and probably the most important revelation that I experienced while reading Eating Animals. Your excuses don’t matter. If factory farms manufacture animals like things, Carnists manufacture excuses. Claims to hunting one’s own meat, supporting the humane slaughter of animals, or buying cage-free eggs serve as a few examples. Now, there are plenty of issues with these statements in themselves (cage-free and free-range for instance are vaguely defined and not actually followed in practice), but that is besides the point. The point is that, as I mentioned above, 99% OF ANIMAL PRODUCTS CONSUMED IN THE US ARE FACTORY FARMED. Even if I were to yield that the above examples are “ethical meat consumption,” you would have to essentially eat Veg*an in all situations during which whatever your particular cocktail of ethical animal products is not followed. That means no beef in your tacos when you and your friends go to Taco Bell stoned at 3AM, no hamburgers after you play the weekly softball game with the fellas from work, no beef jerky when you and the kids go on that annual road trip, and no pepperoni pizza at the stereotypical office birthday party. Those are all factory farmed products. To be an ethical omnivore is to eat Veg*an whenever one is in the company of factory farmed meat, which — as I mentioned earlier — is pretty much always. In other words, a modern day ethical omnivore would look a lot like…wait for it…a Vegetarian. Moreover, all the most painful situations to deny meat are those when you’re out with friends or in social situations, those situations in which you are the most likely to be eating cheap, factory farmed meat. Are you really denying meat in all the most awkward situations only to eat hunted deer in your cabin alone? Something tells me no.

And what’s worse about the Omnivore claiming an ethical lifestyle is that the rationalization has allowed them to have their proverbial meat pie and eat it to. As I’ve written about before, Omnivores tend to search for the chink in Vegan armor and use it to fully rationalize their behavior, even when it doesn’t make a lot of sense. An example of this might be highlighting the habitat destruction caused by feral boars as an excuse to continue eating factory farmed pigs. It makes no sense; one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. Not only has the Omnivore escaped actually changing by rationalizing their beliefs and continuing to support an evil industry, but they may be even less likely to change now that they’ve found a “loophole.” Many Veg*ans make this problem even worse by giving people an out and not holding their feet to the fire when they say they only hunt their food or buy grass fed beef.

In conclusion, the ethical Omnivore is theoretically possible (granted one actually believes in ethical forms of animal husbandry, a big if), but it is certainly not you. To eat meat regularly is to support an industry that is under-regulated, overly empowered, abused, and — frankly — out of control.