The reason why I decided to read this book is that I had read Everything is Illuminated, a work of fiction, also by Foer, and decided I wanted to give another book of his a go. Boy, I had no idea what I was getting into.
As a book, I found this a tremendously powerful read, full of facts, but also compelling and interesting. However, it was not easy to read this book; the graphic details about the horrific truth made it too much to take sometimes. It literally brought me to tears more than once, almost made me vomit, and made me question the sanity of the entire human race.
I first became a vegetarian right when I went away to college. It was a combination of reading Diet for A New America and seeing the "grade D meats: for prisoner and institution use only" stamped on the boxes of food in the CU dorms. I was actually a very strict vegetarian for about the first 10 years, and then have wavered back and forth between a vegetarian and a mostly-vegetarian, to a baconatarian, or whatever seemed to suit me best at the moment. In recent years, I have mostly not eaten meat, but have eaten it when dining with other meat-eaters (trying to be less demanding). In recent months, I have been shifting back towards eating less meat and had come to a point where I had decided that I was going to be vegetarian again, at least for awhile. And then I read this book and I decided that meat eating was not anywhere in my near future.
This book touched on why we eat animals and why we eat the animals that we do (like, for instance, why is it normal to eat pigs, but not dogs?). Foer gets into talking about confined feedlot operations, the huge impact of animal farming on the environment, and especially global warming, and the terrible terrible treatment that these animals undergo. And not just the ones raised for meat, either. The ones raised for milk and eggs as well. In the US, farmed animals produce 130 times as much poop as the human population of the US. Gross.
Foer also touches on the tons of antibiotics used in animal farming, which are making diseases immune to them, the potential threat of a pandemic from diseases mutating from the animals we raise for food, and the fact that the animals raised for food have been so genetically altered that they are very little like their counterparts found 100 years ago.
The portions of this book that really spoke to me the most were the stories of the animal cruelty: the beatings, the inhumane practices, the deaths without dignity. It made me sick to my stomach to hear the ways in which these animals were treated. On a regular basis. And, fish included. Even wild-caught ones. It made me realize that we need to demand better conditions for the animals that we eat. Whether we do this by voting with our dollars, and only purchasing meat raised from non-factory farms, or we demand change at the policy level makes no difference to me or the animals, but clearly, something has to be done.
After reading this book, I decided to re-instate my vegetarianism and am now questioning the fish that I enjoying eating so much. I have tried go vegan before, several times, and have had a terribly hard time with it, but I would like to reduce the amount of dairy that I consume. We have always purchased milk without growth hormones and 'cage-free' eggs, but after reading this book, I really question what that means. I want to go to the farm where my food is coming from and see their animals. I want to make sure my cheese is coming from a cow that is having a decent life. But how feasible is that? Especially when my husband loves meat about as much as he loves me and my son eats cheese on top of his cereal (no, I am not joking). My family enjoys animal products. A lot. And so my family decisions need to have other peoples thoughts and feeling included.
I think my best bet is to head to my local farmers markets and try to purchase animal products from growers that are not keeping their animals in confined conditions. But what about those mid-week runs to the store for more milk and cheese? Luckily, New Seasons, our local organic grocery, does a pretty good of researching the farms where it buys it food. Now I just need to do a better job of informing myself.
This is a read that I would recommend to those questioning a move towards vegetarianism, or anyone with a stomach of steel. It is in no way pleasurable to read about how an animal become a meal, but I think that it is important to know where our food is coming from and what it took to get it there. Knowledge is power, and the more we know, the more we can impact change.
Now, I think I am off to write some letters on food policy......
