The
Harrison Patch (Harrison, NY)
March 26, 2011
http://harrison.patch.com/articles/does-your-family-eat-animals-3
Does
Your Family Eat
Animals?
Jonathan
Safran Foer's book, "Eating
Animals," could convince
you
that the
amount of suffering surrounding
factory farming
outweighs
the
benefits of eating
meat.
By Jaclyn
Bruntfield
In Eating
Animals, author Jonathan Safran
Foer describes a letter
he
received
after he sent a friend a note
with pictures of his
newborn
son.
Foer's
friend replied, simply,
"Everything is possible
again."
Indeed,
when you bring a new, beautiful
life into the world,
things
do feel
quite ideal. You want to be a
better person for your
child,
and you
want them to have a better life
than you may have had.
But along
with those thoughts also comes a
sense of panic. On the
ride home
from the hospital after Aden was
born, my beau and his
dad
were having
a debate about the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
I
started
sobbing in the back seat as I
thought about all of
the
possibilities
my son's life held, and how the
world-and the people
in
it-are so
often all too cruel. The
dichotomy of holding my son's
tiny
little hand
on that ride home while thinking
of all the unpleasant
realities
he might realize over the course
of his life was
heartbreaking
to me.
And the
news of the world hasn't changed
much today: Japan is
facing
a dire
nuclear crisis, Libyans are
facing the beginnings of a
civil
war, and
here in America, things may not
be as bad, but we're
nevertheless
polarized and disunited by every
imaginable trait.
In Eating
Animals, which was published in
2009, Foer takes an
interesting
perspective in studying yet
another horrifying aspect
of
our modern
world: the factory farm
industry.
When he
found out he was going to have a
son, Foer set out to
decide
whether or
not he could, in good conscience,
feed his son meat.
"Feeding my
child is not like feeding
myself," he says. "It matters
more."
He goes
on:
"This story
didn't begin as a book. I simply
wanted to know-for
myself and
my family-what meat is. I wanted
to know as concretely
as
possible.
Where does it come from? How is
it produced? How are
animals
treated, and to what extent does
it matter? What are
the
economic,
social and environmental effects
of eating animals? My
personal
quest didn't stay that way for
long. Through my efforts as
a
parent, I
came face-to-face with realities
that as a citizen I
couldn't
ignore, and as a writer I
couldn't keep to myself.
But
facing
those realities and writing
responsibly about them are not
the
same."
While Foer
does an admirable job of
presenting the information
he
gathered
objectively, he also makes it
clear that he is a
vegetarian
because the
amount of suffering experienced
by factory farmed
animals
is too
great to ignore.
And this
issue of suffering, which is the
framework of Foer's
philosophical
argument, is why I've chosen to
become a vegetarian.
(Though I
must clarify that I do plan on
occasionally eating
meat,
but only if
I shake hands with the farmer.)
Of course more strict
vegetarians
might oppose this decision, but
my argument is that I
have no
problem eating meat a few times a
year if the animal lived
a
happy life
and was slaughtered humanely. We
luckily have many
farms
here in the
Hudson Valley that adhere to such
transparent practices.
What's so
disconcerting about factory
farming is that there is
no
transparency.
For instance, Foer writes that
when you buy a package
of chicken
breast at the grocery store,
you'd hardly know that
that
meat may
have come from a sick chicken.
That sick chicken, as
Foer
explains
it, is thrown into a concoction
insiders call "'fecal
soup,'
for all the
filth and bacteria floating
around." Foer also notes
that
those sick
chickens are immersed in the same
tainted chlorine bath
as
healthy
ones.
Other
reprehensible scenarios Foer
unveils in his book include
cows
being
skinned alive after stun guns
malfunctioned, pregnant
pigs
being
unable to move in their cages and
disabled baby piglets
being
killed
because they're deemed unfit by
management to be turned
into
bacon.
But of
course the factory farming
corporations-Tyson and Purdue
for
poultry and
Cargill for beef and pork-don't
want us to know about
the
absolutely
revolting conditions by which
animals end up neatly
packaged in
the supermarket. In fact, Foer
points out that his
multiple
requests to corporations asking
for tours of the
facilities
were
ignored.
American
consumers, and as Foer explains,
an increasing number
of
people in
other countries, are meant to be
disconnected from the
process of
producing meat for many reasons.
Chiefly among them,
though, is
the endless quest for profit by
big agribusiness. If
people knew
the process by which they came to
eat chicken parmesan
or
a juicy
steak, they'd likely think twice
about buying such
foods.
And of
course while those corporations
are raking in billions
of
dollars a
year while sending their minions
to influence federal
agriculture
policies, the primary issue of
suffering transcends
multiple
aspects of society. From the
environment, to workers'
health
to public
health issues, the suffering
caused by factory farming
is
on a global
scale.
As a
parent, I've read enough
information in Eating Animals
and
beyond to
convince me, like Foer, that big
agribusiness does not
care
about my
child's health. And for this
reason, when I go to
the
supermarket,
I choose not to support them
anymore by no longer
buying
their
product.
My decision
is a personal one, but what you
decide to feed your
family is
your choice. If you're not at the
point where you could
go
vegetarian,
decreasing your meat consumption
even a small amount
would give
less power to these companies.
Every little bit helps
when
it comes to
ensuring that the products we buy
help to maintain our
health,
rather than diminish
it.
