Foer highlights the differences between previous generations and now. We have gone from taking what one can afford or get and appreciating it to a culture of mass consumption where people are plump.
Humans are dependent on food for life, and our lives are centered around food often. At birth, babies breastfeed very soon after being born, and so begins our reliance on food.
How we feel about killing our food is a social construction. Some cultures eat dogs but not horses, or horses but not dogs. What has made our culture okay with how we hook and torture fish, but we would never think of doing such things to dogs?
Why is this meal “wrong” to eat just because it is dog?
Is there a balance between consuming so much meat for low cost and raising them humanely. Must we sacrifice one for the other, or can we strike a compromise?
As a consumer, I had no idea that animal agriculture had a 40% larger impact on the environment than transportation does. I hear all the time about how we should drive more fuel efficient cars, but never how I should eat less meat. We do choose on some scale to ignore the facts though. I did know that the meat industry was cruel and meat is not nearly as sustainable as other foods, but I have not let it affect how I eat.
Some chose to look at animals as stupid, and therefore okay to kill. There are an incredible number of ways in which animals have proven to be intelligent, and we even anthropomorphize them, yet still kill them readily.
While people perceive organic as being a positive, it does nothing to ensure the animals were treated humanely and while some factories are kosher, there have been grave atrocities committed at them before. I also find it extremely interesting that “fresh” is defined by the USDA as being between 26 and 40 degrees, so it can be frozen, and there is no amount of time that determines “freshness”.
Domestication of animals was once mutually beneficial. Animals were protected and fed, even though they were raised to be eaten themselves. However, their needs were appropriately taken care of.
“Enslaving a group of humans is acceptable if the posed alternative were nonexistence”.
The way animals have been modified to be eaten they often have broken bones and move. Their purpose in life ceases to be anything greater than to be one day eaten.
The conditions in the factory farms are not just bad for the animals, but for the workers also. The factories often hire people who aren’t in the position to complain, such as immigrants and pay them little.
Map of factory farm density by county
Food policy is designed to obscure, so that instead of making issues clearly expressed, we continue to eat food. The last thing lobbying companies want us to do is eat less.
The accounts from workers in processing factories are gruesome, yet the people have become numb to the killing and proceed anyways.
One farmer takes more of a stewardship or conservation approach to farming pigs. They are brought up with their well beings considered, although they are killed for food in the end. But is makes me think more of trees, where forests are sustainably cut and grown to be cute again. We use the earth’s resources (even animals) but do so with minimally affecting the environment.
The American culture involves food. Foer describes how we can still have all the memories of childhood as vegetarians. Do we need turkeys for it to be Thanksgiving? Can we celebrate and carry on our lives the same while removing meat for the equation? It seems so. Why don’t we then?
Foer says that being vegetarian is not about how the pig feels, since they likely do not feel any different for being spared, but it source of his own moral pride. “If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save”.
The choice between choosing to be cruel to animals & ecological destruction and not eating animals seems a rather easy choice ethically, but very few of us make the second choice.
Posted by demecsowu 
