Saturday, November 21, 2009

You Are What You Eat


Thursday night I attended a reading and discussion session with Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals. Jonathan is a fellow resident of Park Slope, and was presenting his book in support of the Community Bookstore, which is a wonderful privately owned establishment here in the neighborhood.

There are some thorough reviews of Eating Animals, written from different perspectives. Links to a few of the best are below:

New York Times Books: Hungry?
The Washington Post: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Animal Farm
USA Today: Ready for Dog Stew?
Natalie Portman: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals Turned Me Vegan

Omnivore, Vegetarian, Vegan, Human Being, I encourage you to read this book. The subject of eating animals is provocative. The issue is fraught with emotion and conversations can often become divisive, with meat eaters on one side and those who would eschew meat on the other. That is a shame, because that division obscures the facts. Unless one is a sadist, as humans we can all agree that animal cruelty in any form – even one that is sanctioned, subsidized, and supported in every supermarket across America – is just wrong.

The realities of factory farming are beyond cruel, and are so far removed from the pastoral image of Old Mac Donald’s farm that we all grew up with. This transition from humane family farming to ‘crank ‘em out at any cost’ factory farming has happened so rapidly and subtly that none of us really knew what was happening.

Safran Foer spent 3 years exhaustively researching (his statistics are backed up with 70 pages of footnote citations) the truths of factory farming. And the reality is that the cost the factory farming industry exacts on the environment, the land, the animals, and ultimately the consumers of the meat products that it spits out is too high for any of us to continue to pay. It’s time to know the facts and make important choices about where our food comes from. Too much is at steak.

2 comments:

  1. To chew versus to eschew... ;-)

    After our visit, you may be happy to know that I am now firmly following a family-farm humanely-raised organic local only meat policy. Meat has now become a condiment rather than a course!

    Not vegan, but at least a step in the right direction.

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  2. Yay Mom!! What a wonderful step you have taken :)

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