Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals Turned Me Vegan

Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals changed me from a twenty-year vegetarian to a vegan activist. I've always been shy about being critical of others' choices because I hate when people do that to me. I'm often interrogated about being vegetarian (e.g., "What if you find out that carrots feel pain, too? Then what'll you eat?").

I've also been afraid to feel as if I know better than someone else -- a historically dangerous stance (I'm often reminded that "Hitler was a vegetarian, too, you know"). But this book reminded me that some things are just wrong. Perhaps others disagree with me that animals have personalities, but the highly documented torture of animals is unacceptable, and the human cost Foer describes in his book, of which I was previously unaware, is universally compelling.

The human cost of factory farming -- both the compromised welfare of slaughterhouse workers and, even more, the environmental effects of the mass production of animals -- is staggering. Foer details the copious amounts of pig shit sprayed into the air that result in great spikes in human respiratory ailments, the development of new bacterial strains due to overuse of antibiotics on farmed animals, and the origins of the swine flu epidemic, whose story has gripped the nation, in factory farms.

I read the chapter on animal shit aloud to two friends -- one is from Iowa and has asthma and the other is a North Carolinian who couldn't eat fish from her local river because animal waste had been dumped in it as described in the book. They had never truly thought about the connection between their environmental conditions and their food. The story of the mass farming of animals had more impact on them when they realized it had ruined their own backyards.

But what Foer most bravely details is how eating animal pollutes not only our backyards, but also our beliefs. He reminds us that our food is symbolic of what we believe in, and that eating is how we demonstrate to ourselves and to others our beliefs: Catholics take communion -- in which food and drink represent body and blood. Jews use salty water on Passover to remind them of the slaves' bitter tears. And on Thanksgiving, Americans use succotash and slaughter to tell our own creation myth -- how the Pilgrims learned from Native Americans to harvest this land and make it their own.

And as we use food to impart our beliefs to our children, the point from which Foer lifts off, what stories do we want to tell our children through their food?

I remember in college, a professor asked our class to consider what our grandchildren would look back on as being backward behavior or thinking in our generation, the way we are shocked by the kind of misogyny, racism, and sexism we know was commonplace in our grandparents' world. He urged us to use this principle to examine the behaviors in our lives and our societies that we should be a part of changing. Factory farming of animals will be one of the things we look back on as a relic of a less-evolved age.

I say that Foer's ethical charge against animal eating is brave because not only is it unpopular, it has also been characterized as unmanly, inconsiderate, and juvenile. But he reminds us that being a man, and a human, takes more thought than just "This is tasty, and that's why I do it." He posits that consideration, as promoted by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma, which has more to do with being polite to your tablemates than sticking to your own ideals, would be absurd if applied to any other belief (e.g., I don't believe in rape, but if it's what it takes to please my dinner hosts, then so be it).

But Foer makes his most impactful gesture as a peacemaker, when he unites the two sides of the animal eating debate in their reasoning. Both sides argue: We are not them. Those who refrain from eating animals argue: We don't have to go through what they go through -- we are not them. We are capable of making distinctions between what to eat and what not to eat (Americans eat cow but not dog, Hindus eat chicken but not cow, etc.). We are capable of considering others' minds and others' pain. We are not them. Whereas those who justify eating animals say the same thing: We are not them. They do not merit the same value of being as us. They are not us.

And so Foer shows us, through Eating Animals, that we are all thinking along the same lines: We are not them. But, he urges, how will we define who we are?

 

Comments

[KurtMichaelFriese - Huffpost Blogger]

Is this story EVER going to NOT be at the head of the HuffPo Food Politics page? Fer cryin out loud the DOJ is holding hearings on Monsanto's seed monopoly and HuffPo is still leading with a 5 month old story about a celebrity's eating habits. Even the most recent comment before this one is over a week old

MOVE ON!

[plus1]

Interesting article, well done...

BUT...I don't get the supposed switch from VEGETARIAN to VEGAN. It seems like the article supports a strong vegetarian/vegan agenda, but it never once actually touches on any VEGAN issues.

In fact, it really just makes it sound like Natalie just went from "vegetarian" to "vegetarian activist" using the term 'vegan' instead. What was in the book that convinced you that honey, milk, eggs, etc were wrong? Was it only the impacts of large scale factory farms? Vegetarians are against that too....

I'd like to think that Natalie Portman would know the difference between a vegetarian and a vegan, and isn't just another armchair activist misusing the term...but nothing in this article shows that she actually knows that makes a vegan different than a vegetarian.

As a vegetarian myself, I understand vegans' point of banning eggs, dairy, honey, etc because of factory farm abuses, and when I eat these things I only choose local, free range eggs, and dairy.

I see no harm in eggs, dairy and honey created locally, on a small scale, with no abuse to the animals.

As a buddhist, I contemplate the insulting nature of milking, from a cow's point of view...but considering the health care, food, & love that small family farms bestow on their milk cows, that seems little price to pay...better than half the jobs I've worked in my life...

[noiselull]

Animals are not humans, therefore they cannot enter into the social contract of non-aggression in the first place.

[sosparkly]

Natalie,

Very well written and compelling. Thank you.

[Sharon7777]

Where exactly did Jonathon Safran Foer see these cattle? Texas is where most cattle in the U.S. come from. I have lived in Texas all my life. I grew up on one of the largest cattle ranches in Texas. We had over 8000 head of cattle every year. It was pasture land, trees, windmills. Nice place for a cow. Every ran...cher I have ever seen in Texas raises their cattle on pasture land. You know wheat and grass.
Feed yards are very expensive and used only before a calf is killed for meat, jsut a few days! Beef processing plants? Thats one day.
So the fact that cattle are raised in horrible environment 99% of the time, is stupid and ludicrous.
Maybe Foer got his info from Siberia?

[plus1]

Actually Sharon, thats only half of a truth.

I grew up in Texas too, on a cattle ranch (Steiner Ranch outside of Austin, BEFORE the suburbs and tech companies were there), and it IS a beautiful free range lifestyle there for cows...but that isn't where the majority of american beef comes from....and it only lasts until their brutal mishandling at slaughter houses.

For a view of a REAL large beef provider, head to southern New Mexico/West Texas, and check out the endless, revolting smelling vastness of factory beef fields...about 9 miles south of Las Cruces New Mexico, is enough to make you vomit if the winds are right.

If you never make it there I'll describe it...a vast ocean of dusty, dirty cows in a desert environment with no vegetation in sight (not near the cows at least) wallowing in their own filth with no cover, just off the interstate, for miles. One of the worst things I've ever seen.

Still thik you're right? Read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" to see just how wrong you are...since 1906.

[ss2010]

Part 1...
Now this is tough to take...two "farmers/ranchers", perhaps one presently ranching and one former rancher. I find truth in both arguments...For background sake, I do believe that there is a right and wrong way to treat living things, and as a farmer/cow person believe that we walk the talk that we speak on our farm. We treat our animals right by bedding, feeding, watering, and respecting that they are living bodies, but also with the understanding that they are just that - animals - and did not evolve to frollick around and skip through meadows. They are food. They are the best source of protein available to humans.
Cattle are a better use of land and resources converted to protein units than a crop of soy - or any other plant based protein ever would be. It is impractical to think that we could ever feed the world, or the hunger of the American consumer, with plant based products.
cont'd...

[ss2010]

Part 2...
Now back to "vast ocean of dusty, dirty cows in a desert environment with no vegetation in sight". Perhaps this operation (I'm not saying it's up to standard) has chosen to locate there so that it does not have to deal with the "not in my backyard" phenom that is becoming ever so popular, especially in urban groups. Perhaps it is a dusty, smelly, very short drive, but so is the smog around any city. I'll bet you are glad that is not occurring near your house. Yes, animals stink. But animal waste is productive when recycled properly into the ground...where in the world are "organic" vegetables grown?? Need I add that human waste is twice the stink of cattle waste and it does not have near the ability to floursh back in the ground like cattle manure does.
cont'd...

[ss2010]

Part 3...
There are so many angles on this and each and every word can be carved to your liking. Just think carefully about whose reputation is at stake. Yes, people can sit in their offices, high rise or not, working in the world of advertising, media, computers, etc...I thought about having that type of lifestyle too, that type of "clean" living. I chose to come back to the farm because I am passionate about it...about dirt, about my animals, about wide open spaces. Please remember, we are farmers, we are ranchers, we have children. WE HAVE TO MAKE A LIVING TOO. So before you spout off and join the celebrity bandwagon of Natalie Portman and Ellen, remember that we are eductated, feeling people that run farms. We are not in this to make a quick buck by making people sick with mistreatment and endangerment of anything living. We are in this for the long haul with the most sustainable employment in the world - feeding people.
thank you!

[Rastuhss]

Vegetables are living creatures too. Murder is murder whether its a dumb animal or a dumb plant.

Eat rocks and minerals.

[revolutionoftheheart]

http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/a-revolution-of-the-heart/

Comments welcome.

Peace

[revolutionoftheheart]

But, tell me, WHAT ABOUT THESE POOR ANIMALS? So much of the conversation here reflects an unquestioned attitude that animals are its and objects. Reminds me of this scene in Silence of the Lambs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQb2m6VJ-eo. IMO it is pathological and barbaric for human beings to be doing what we do to animals at this point in our evolution. What we do to the animals we do to ourselves. There will be and is now payback in many forms.

The mere fact that we acknowledge that animals should be "humanely" treated and killed tells me that we sub-consciously possess the ability to empathize with the misery, fear and pain of another species. Why else would we even care? The thing is to care not just half-way, but fully. Confront our moral schizophrenia of why we care about some animals but not others.

Wouldn't what it means to be human (a thing not so easily defined) gain some transcendence if we would abstain from murder whenever possible ... whenever unncessary?

Anthropocentricism will prove fatal for us now. I wish people would ponder the concept and reconsider the notion that "might makes right".

[HumanExperience]

Best wishes in the new year to the beautiful, talented, compassionate and smart Natalie Portman wherever you are. And Whiz too.

Keep on truckin'! (?)

[loupbouc]

In my last-preceding comment, I listed and criticized the American Dietetic Association's sponsors. Perhaps I owe a bit of proof that, say, Unilever's food-products are toxic as I asserted. Consider the example of the ingredients of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!

Liquid soybean oil (GMO & toxic because soy & because non-organic)

Liquid canola oil (GMO & also toxic because non-organic & because it is rape seed oil & rape seeds are toxic)

Hydrogenated soybean oil (trans-fat toxic & GMO & toxic because soy & non-organic)

Partially hydrogenated soybean oil (trans-fat toxic & GMO & toxic because soy & because non-organic)

Water

Sweet cream (not organic, so nearly100% chance of being GMO)

Salt

Soy lecithin (toxic because soy & because non-organic)

Vegetable mono- and diglycerides (since non-organic, toxic)

Potassium sorbate & calcium disodium EDTA — used to “protect quality” (both are toxic)

Citric acid

Natural & artificial flavors (the “natural” flavors are at best toxic because non-organic & the artificial flavors are surely toxic)

Vitamin A (palmitate) — liver toxic

Beta carotene — for color (if “natural,” taken from non-organic carrot, hence toxic & if artificial, perhaps toxic, the matter depending on the end chemistry)

[chamberwindow]

Vitamin B12 is not toxic in the form of cyanocobalamin. The information you provided showed that some people have side effects to the large doses given in the form of an injection. Also, the Natural Hygiene Society might as well be relegated to the status of an historical anecdote of a naive time we should all be thankful has long since passed. I quickly read the wikipedia page, since I hadn't heard of the "society" before. It is alternative medicine. In other words, it is not scientific medicine. The founder of the group rejected the germ theory of disease at a time when this theory had been established for half of a century. The obsession with "toxicity" also smacks of quack science as it is basically a fear of some vague unknowable force labeled "toxins" (ooooh spooky).
I am a vegan, I am healthy, happy, and active. I'm not sickly, underweight, constantly hungry, or suffering from any ailments. Ask other vegans how they feel. Probably just fine. Also, this is a quote from the ADA website: "It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes." http://www.eatright.org/About/Content.aspx?id=8357&terms=vegetarian

[loupbouc]

PART 1 OF 5

After I posted my 3-PART (02:56 PM, 12/23/2009) comment concerning the American Dietetic Association [ADA], I re-checked references I put in that comment. Two bore hyperlinks aimed to connect with ADA web-pages. I clicked on 2 of the links. I found that the ADA had redesigned its website so the link-aimed texts were made unreachable by the links. To find the texts, I had to engage in a tortuous & torturous negotiation of the ADA website.

In saying “Check out their list of corporate sponsors, if you have any doubt about who the ADA works for” my comment's first reference, http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/642/letter/?letter_KEY=1152, supplied a link that would have identified the ADA's corporate sponsors. That link did not work because, shortly after my reference published its damning criticism of the ADA's corrupt support of GMO foods & the ADA's corrupt insistence that commercial foods are good as organic foods, the ADA altered its website — very timing-suspiciously.

But, still, I found the ADA's disclosure of its corporate sponsors. The disclosure occurs at http://www.eatright.org/HealthProfessionals/content.aspx?id=7454&terms=corporate+sponsors

CONTINUED

[loupbouc]

PART 2 OF 5

Among the ADA's corporate sponsors are:

* ARAMARK — which hawks commercial, low-quality ready-made meals and junk food, including kinds sold with vending machines, see, E.G., http://www.aramark.com/Services/FoodServiceandRefreshments/

* The Coca Cola Company — which markets more than 400 brands of junk-drinks

* The National Dairy Council — which supports factory dairy farming & milk of cows injected with rBGH (Monsanto's genetically engineered recumbent bovine growth hormone), which makes cows' milk carcinogenic & otherwise toxic & which was banned in Canada & the European Union because it makes cows suffer very painful mastitis for which they are given antibiotics that taint their milk further.

* PEPSICO — which does not only market hundreds of kinds of toxic drinks (tainted with artificial colors, artificial preservatives, artificial or GMO sweeteners......), but also owns numerous subsidiaries that produce and market GMO & otherwise toxic junk foods (like the stuff marketed by Frito Lay, one of PEPSICO's subsidiaries), toxic breakfast “cereals” (like much of the stuff of “Quaker,” another of PEPSICO's subsidiaries), “Lucky Snacks,” “Sabritas” snacks, and too many other food horrors

CONTINUED

[loupbouc]

PART 3 OF 5

More ADA sponsors:

* Unilever — which makes Lipton teas (tainted by artificial colors, pesticides, herbicides, artificial fertilizer residues, some also by artificial preservatives) & which owns Ben & Jerry's, Bertolli, Breyers, Good Humor, Hellmann's, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!, Klondike, Knorr, Popsicle, Promise, Ragú, Shedd’s Spread Country Crock, Skippy, Slim-Fast, all makers of foods tainted by toxic or GMO substances & substances obtained by torturing animals in factory farms & otherwise (e.g., eggs Hellmann's uses, thickeners & milk Breyers, Ben & Jerry's, Good Humor, and Popsicle use, trans-fats, excess saturated fats, and other toxic chemistries of spreads of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!, Shedd’s Spread Country Crock, and Skippy).

* Abbot Nutrition — which makes “energy bars” & other foods that are GMO or tainted by toxic substances. Abbot is mostly a pharmaceuticals firm, which makes drugs that cause many serious “side effects” and which, therefore, is not inclined to concern itself with the side effects of its food products.

* General Mills — which needs no introduction of the unhealthfulness or toxicity of junk it markets as food

* Kellogg's — which, like General Mills, needs no introduction of the unhealthfulness or toxicity of junk it markets as food

CONTINUED

[loupbouc]

PART 4 OF 5

More ADA sponsors

* MARS — the junk-candy/junk-snack maker

* SOYJOY — maker of soy products that are GMO-tainted, tainted by various toxic ingredients, and naturally toxic, since soy beans & non-fermented soy products contain phylic acid, which blocks mineral absorption, trypsin-inhibitors, which impair nutrition, and hemagglutinin, which causes pathological blood-cell agglutination

* TRUVIA — which concocts sweeteners made mostly with rebiana (stevia leaf extract), but also with erythrisol and “natural” flavors that the company does not identify. The “natural” flavors are not organic (as Truvia admits) & likely they are unhealthful, since “natural” does not bear any legal definition & is used now to denote any manner of unhealthful substance a hawker seeks to pass off as “good for you.” Oh, & poison mushrooms are natural. Erythritol is a sugar alcohol made mostly by fermenting glucose. Erythritol can cause diarrhea, which results from colon dysfunction, which deprives the body of needed water and mineral nutrients, and which, long-term, can cause serious colon disease. Since the stevia leaves are not organic, they are tainted by pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizer residues. [This comment's next part discusses rebiana's toxicity.]

CONTINUED

[loupbouc]

PART 5 OF 5

More concerning TRUVIA:

I can find no proper, unbiased scientific study that finds, soundly, that rebiana is safe.

Two studies claimed rebiana is safe. http://www.foodproductdesign.com/news/2008/05/stevia-based-rebiana-sweetener-studies-published.aspx (May 2008) AND http://www.flex-news-food.com/pages/16495/Cargill/Coca/Sweetener/new-scientific-studies-establish-safety-rebiana-sweetener-stevia-plant.html (May 2008)

But the studies' inquiries were misdirected — away from physiological/biochemical attributes rebiana might affect harmfully & toward attributes not likely susceptible to being harmed by a chemstry like rebiana's. Coca Cola & Cargill developed rebiana. Cargill produces GMOs & toxic grains. Cargill owns Truvia. Cargill —CARGILL — sponsored the two above-referenced studies.

With the Cargill-sponsored studies, compare http://www.cspinet.org/new/pdf/stevia_update.pdf (October 2008), which observes that rebiana has caused mutations, chromosome damage, and DNA breakage & may pose cancer-risks. Before the Cargill-sponsored studies (& before Cargill twisted some FDA arms), the FDA disapproved use of rebiana, because studies indicated substantial risk that it is carcinogenic.

END