Eating Animals

by Jonathan Safran Foer

  The seating arrangements and servings at the global table we all eat from change. The two Chinese at our table have four times the amount of meat on their plates as they did a few decades ago — and the pile keeps getting higher. Meanwhile, the two people at the table without clean drinking water are eyeballing China. Today, animal products still account for only 16 percent of the Chinese diet, but farmed animals account for more than 50 percent of China’s water consumption — and at a time when Chinese water shortages are already cause for global concern. The desperate person at our table, who is struggling to find enough food to eat, might reasonably worry even more at how much of the world’s march toward US-style meat eating will make the basic grains he or she relies on for life even less available. More meat means more demand for grains and more hands fighting over them. By 2050, the world’s livestock will consume as much food as four billion people. Trends suggest that the one hungry person at our table could easily become two (270,000 more people become hungry each day). This will almost certainly happen as the obese also gain another seat. It’s too easy to imagine a near future in which most of the seats at the global table are filled by either obese or malnourished people.

  But it doesn’t have to be this way. The best reason to think that there could be a better future is the fact that we know just how bad the future could be.

  Rationally, factory farming is so obviously wrong, in so many ways. In all of my reading and conversations, I’ve yet to find a credible defense of it. But food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, and identity. For some, that irrationality leads to a kind of resignation. Food choices are likened to fashion choices or lifestyle preferences — they do not respond to judgments about how we should live. And I would agree that the messiness of food, the almost infinite meanings it proliferates, does make the question of eating — and eating animals especially — surprisingly fraught. Activists I spoke with were endlessly puzzled and frustrated by the disconnect between clear thinking and people’s food choices. I sympathize, but I also wonder if it is precisely the irrationality of food that holds the most promise.

  Food is never simply a calculation about which diet uses the least water or causes the least suffering. And it is in this, perhaps, that our greatest hope for actually motivating ourselves to change lies. In part, the factory farm requires us to suppress conscience in favor of craving. But at another level, the ability to reject the factory farm can be exactly what we most desire.

  The debacle of the factory farm is not, I’ve come to feel, just a problem about ignorance — it’s not, as activists often say, a problem that arose because “people don’t know the facts.” Clearly that is one cause. I’ve filled this book with an awful lot of facts because they are a necessary starting point. And I’ve presented what we know scientifically about the legacy we are creating with our daily food choices because that also matters a great deal. I’m not suggesting our reason should not guide us in many important ways, but simply that being human, being humane, is more than an exercise of reason. Responding to the factory farm calls for a capacity to care that dwells beyond information, and beyond the oppositions of desire and reason, fact and myth, and even human and animal.

  The factory farm will come to an end because of its absurd economics someday. It is radically unsustainable. The earth will eventually shake off factory farming like a dog shakes off fleas; the only question is whether we will get shaken off along with it.

  Thinking about eating animals, especially publicly, releases unexpected forces into the world. The questions are charged like few others. From one angle of vision, meat is just another thing we consume, and matters in the same way as the consumption of paper napkins or SUVs — if to a greater degree. Try changing napkins at Thanksgiving, though — even do it bombastically, with a lecture on the immorality of such and such a napkin maker — and you’ll have a hard time getting anyone worked up. Raise the question of a vegetarian Thanksgiving, though, and you’ll have no problem eliciting strong opinions — at least strong opinions. The question of eating animals hits chords that resonate deeply with our sense of self — our memories, desires, and values. Those resonances are potentially controversial, potentially threatening, potentially inspiring, but always filled with meaning. Food matters and animals matter and eating animals matters even more. The question of eating animals is ultimately driven by our intuitions about what it means to reach an ideal we have named, perhaps incorrectly, “being human.”

  6.

  The First Thanksgiving of His Childhood

  FOR WHAT, AT THANKSGIVING, AM I giving thanks? As a child, the first kernel I transferred to the table was symbolic of my thankfulness for my health and the health of my family. Strange choice for a kid. Maybe it was a sentiment made in the shade cast by no family tree, or a response to my grandmother’s mantra of “You should be healthy” — which couldn’t help but sound like an accusation, as in, “You aren’t healthy, but you should be.” Whatever the cause, even as a young child, I thought of health as something unreliable. (It wasn’t only because of the pay and prestige that so many children and grandchildren of survivors became doctors.) The next kernel represented my happiness. The next my loved ones — the family surrounding me, of course, but also my friends. And those would be my first three kernels today — health, happiness, and loved ones. But it’s no longer my own health, happiness, and loved ones that I am giving thanks for. Perhaps it will be different when my son is old enough to participate in the ritual. For now, though, I give my thanks for, through, and on behalf of him.

  How can Thanksgiving be a vehicle for expressing that most sincere thankfulness? What rituals and symbols would facilitate an appreciation for health, happiness, and loved ones?

  We celebrate together, and that makes sense. And we don’t just gather, we eat. This wasn’t always so. The federal government first thought to promote Thanksgiving as a day of fasting, since that was how it had been frequently observed for decades. According to Benjamin Franklin, whom I think of as a kind of patron saint of the holiday, it was “a farmer of plain sense” who proposed that feasting “would be more becoming the gratitude.” The voice of that farmer, who I suspect was a stand-in for Franklin himself, is now the conviction of a nation.

  Producing and eating our own food is, historically, much of what made us Americans and not subjects of European powers. While other colonies required massive imports to survive, early American immigrants, thanks to help from Native Americans, were almost entirely self-sustaining. Food is not so much a symbol of freedom as the first requirement of freedom. We eat foods that are native to America on Thanksgiving to acknowledge that fact. In many ways, Thanksgiving initiates a distinctly American ideal of ethical consumerism. The Thanksgiving meal is America’s founding act of conscientious consumption.

  But what about the food we feast upon? Does what we consume make sense?

  All but a negligible number of the 45 million turkeys that find their way to our Thanksgiving tables were unhealthy, unhappy, and — this is a radical understatement — unloved. If people come to different conclusions about the turkey’s place on the Thanksgiving table, at least we can all agree on those three things.

  Today’s turkeys are natural insectivores fed a grossly unnatural diet, which can include “meat, sawdust, leather tannery by-products,” and other things whose mention, while widely documented, would probably push your belief too far. Given their vulnerability to disease, turkeys are perhaps the worst fit of any animal for the factory model. So they are given more antibiotics than any other farmed animals. Which encourages antibiotic resistance. Which makes these indispensable drugs less effective for humans. In a perfectly direct way, the turkeys on our tables are making it harder to cure human illness.

  It shouldn’t be the consumer’s responsibility to figure out what’s cruel and what’s kind, what’s environmentally destructive and what’s sustainable. Cruel and destructive food products should be illegal. We don’t need the option of buying children’
s toys made with lead paint, or aerosols with chlorofluorocarbons, or medicines with unlabeled side effects. And we don’t need the option of buying factory-farmed animals.

  However much we obfuscate or ignore it, we know that the factory farm is inhumane in the deepest sense of the word. And we know that there is something that matters in a deep way about the lives we create for the living beings most within our power. Our response to the factory farm is ultimately a test of how we respond to the powerless, to the most distant, to the voiceless — it is a test of how we act when no one is forcing us to act one way or another. Consistency is not required, but engagement with the problem is.

  Historians tell a story about Abraham Lincoln, that while returning to Washington from Springfield, he forced his entire party to stop to help some small birds he saw in distress. When chided by the others, he responded, quite plainly, “I could not have slept to-night if I had left those poor creatures on the ground and not restored them to their mother.” He did not make (though he might have) a case for the moral value of the birds, their worth to themselves or the ecosystem or God. Instead he observed, quite simply, that once those suffering birds came into his view, a moral burden had been assumed. He could not be himself if he walked away. Lincoln was a hugely inconsistent personality, and of course he ate birds far more often than he aided them. But presented with the suffering of a fellow creature, he responded.

  Whether I sit at the global table, with my family or with my conscience, the factory farm, for me, doesn’t merely appear unreasonable. To accept the factory farm feels inhuman. To accept the factory farm — to feed the food it produces to my family, to support it with my money — would make me less myself, less my grandmother’s grandson, less my son’s father.

  This is what my grandmother meant when she said, “If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save.”

  Acknowledgments

  Little, Brown has been the perfect home for this book and for me. I want to thank Michael Pietsch for his early and enduring faith in Eating Animals; Geoff Shandler for his wisdom, precision, and humor; Liese Mayer for months of profound and eclectic help; Michelle Aielli, Amanda Tobier, and Heather Fain for their seemingly endless creativity, energy, and openness.

  Lori Glazer, Bridget Marmion, Debbie Engel, and Janet Silver were enormously encouraging of Eating Animals when it was still only an idea, and I don’t know that I would have had the confidence to work on something so outside of my zone of comfort were it not for their early support.

  If would be impossible to mention all of those who shared their knowledge and expertise with me, but I owe particular thanks to Diane and Marlene Halverson, Paul Shapiro, Noam Mohr, Miyun Park, Gowri Koneswaran, Bruce Freidrich, Michael Greger, Bernie Rollin, Daniel Pauly, Bill and Nicolette Niman, Frank Reese, the Fantasma family, Jonathan Balcombe, Gene Baur, Patrick Martins, Ralph Meraz, the League of Independent Workers of the San Joaquin Valley, and all of the farmworkers who have asked to remain anonymous.

  Danielle Krauss, Matthew Mercier, Tori Okner, and Johanna Bond aided in the research (and collation of research) over the past three years, and were indispensable partners.

  Joseph Finnerty’s legal eye has provided me with necessary confidence to share my explorations. Betsy Uhrig’s eye for errors large and small has made this book finer and more exact—any mistakes are untirely mine own.

  Tom Manning’s chapter headings help give statistics an immediacy and poignancy that numbers, on their own, could not accomplish. His vision has been a tremendous help.

  Ben Goldsmith, of Farm Forward, has aided in more ways than I can recount, and his work on farming advocacy is an inspiration.

  As always, Nicole Aragi has been a careful friend, a careful reader, and the very best agent imaginable.

  I was accompanied on my journey into factory farming by Aaron Gross. He was the Chewbacca to my Han, my Bullwinkle, my Jiminy Cricket. More than anything, he was an incredibly good conversation partner and scholar, and while this book is the record of a deeply personal quest, I couldn’t have done it without him. There is not only a massive amount of sheer statistical information to consider when writing about animal food, but a complex cultural and intellectual history. There are a lot of smart people who have written on this topic before—from ancient philosophers to contemporary scientists. Aaron’s assistance helped me engage more voices, broaden the book’s horizons, and deepen its individual investigations. He was nothing less than my partner. It’s often said that such-and-such wouldn’t have been possible without so-and-so. But in the most literal sense, I wouldn’t have, and couldn’t have, written this book without Aaron. He is a great mind, a great advocate of more sensible and humane farming, and a great friend.

  Notes

  Storytelling

  Page

  1 Americans choose… Extrapolated on the basis of data provided in François Couplan and James Duke, The Encyclopedia of Edible Plants of North America (CT: Keats Publishing, 1998); “Edible Medicinal and Useful Plants for a Healthier World,” Plants for a Future, http://www.pfaf.org/leaflets/edible_uses.php (accessed September 10, 2009).

  12 upwards of 99 percent of all meat . . . These are my own calculations based on the most current available data. There are vastly more chickens raised for meat than any other kind of farmed animal and virtually all are factory farmed. Here is the percentage of each industry that is factory farmed:

  Chickens raised for meat: 99.94% (2007 census inventory and EPA regulations)

  Chickens raised for eggs: 96.57% (2007 census inventory and EPA regulations)

  Turkeys: 97.43% (2007 census inventory and EPA regulations)

  Pigs: 95.41% (2007 census inventory and EPA regulations)

  Cows raised for beef: 78.2% (2008 NASS report)

  Cows raised for dairy: 60.16% (2007 census inventory and EPA regulations)

  All or Nothing or Something Else

  Page

  19 modern industrial fishing . . . See page 191.

  22 Sixty-three percent of American households . . . American Pets Products Manufacturers Association (APPMA), 2007–2008, as quoted in S. C. Johnson, “Photos: Americans Declare Love for Pets in National Contest,” Thomson Reuters, April 15, 2009, http://www.reuters .com/article/pressRelease/idUS127052+15Apr-2009+PRN20090415 (accessed June 5, 2009).

  22 Keeping companion animals . . . Keith Vivian Thomas, Man and the Natural World: A History of the Modern Sensibility (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 119.

  $34 billion on their companion animals . . . “Pets in America,” PetsinAmerica.org, 2005, http://www.petsinamerica.org/thefutureofpets .htm (accessed June 5, 2009). Note: The Pets in America project is “presented in conjunction with” the Pets in America exhibit at the McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina.

  the spread of pet-keeping . . . Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 119.

  25 electrocute his children . . . “My biggest nightmare would be if the kids ever came up to me and said, ‘Dad, I’m a vegetarian.’ Then I would sit them on the fence and electrocute them.” Victoria Kennedy, “Gordon Ramsay’s Shocking Recipe for Raising Kids,” Daily Mirror, April 25, 2007, http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/news/2007/04/25/gordon -ramsay-s-shocking-recipe-for-raising-kids-115875-18958425/ (accessed June 9, 2009).

  sometimes eat their dogs . . . “Inquiries revealed that dog meat is a prized food item here,” as quoted in “Dog meat, a delicacy in Mizoram,” The Hindu, December 20, 2004, http://www.hindu.com/2004/12/20/stories/2004122003042000.htm (accessed June 9, 2009).

  26 Fourth-century tombs . . . “Wall paintings in a fourth-century Koguryo Kingdom tomb depict dogs being slaughtered along with pigs and sheep.” Rolf Potts, “Man Bites Dog,” Salon.com, October 28, 1999, http://www.salon.com/wlust/feature/1998/10/28feature.html (accessed June 30, 2009).

  the Sino-Korean character . . . Ibid.

  The Romans ate . . . Calvin W. Schwabe, Unmentionable Cuisine (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1979), 168.

  Dakota In
dians enjoyed . . . Hernán Cortés, Letters from Mexico, translated by Anthony Pagden (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 103, 398.

  not so long ago Hawaiians ate . . . S. Fallon and M. G. Enig, “Guts and Grease: The Diet of Native Americans,” Weston A. Price Foundation, January 1, 2000, http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_diets/native _americans.html (accessed June 23, 2009).

  26 The Mexican hairless dog . . . Schwabe, Unmentionable Cuisine, 168, 176.

  Captain Cook ate dog . . . Captain James Cook, Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific: As Told by Selections of His Own Journals, 1768–1779, edited by Grenfell Price (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1971), 291.

  dogs are still eaten . . . “Philippines Dogs: Factsheets,” Global Action Network, 2005, http://www.gan.ca/campaigns/philippines+dogs/fact sheets.en.html (accessed July 7, 2009); “The Religious History of Eating Dog Meat,” dogmeattrade.com, 2007, http://www.dogmeattrade .com/facts.html (accessed July 7, 2009).

  as medicine in China and Korea . . . Kevin Stafford, The Welfare of Dogs (New York: Springer, 2007), 14.

  to enhance libido in Nigeria . . . Senan Murray, “Dogs’ dinners prove popular in Nigeria,” BBC News, March 6, 2007, http://news .bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6419041.stm (accessed June 23, 2009).