Eating Animals

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Average customer rating 4.8 (8 comments)

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I typically rate books and do not write reviews. Why should I throw my two cents in about a topic when everyone else has probably said the same thing--and more eloquently? Do I need to repeat what has already been written just so I can see my name somewhere? It feels narcissistic. Or perhaps that is just a good excuse for not being able to add anything new? This one is hard to leave without a review or reflection though. I am not even sure what a rating matters in this instance. I could give it a 3 or a 4 because I thought it was powerful, but felt too emotionally wrenched by it or manipulated by the rhetoric. I could give it a one for forcing me to reconsider my purchasing and eating habits and for making me feel like I have a horrible conscience. A five would signal the transformative power contained herein. Any of these feels arbitrary, so I give it a four based on all of these reasons. I did not enjoy this book. I found it funny in a few places. I was perplexed by some of his comments (his belittling dismissal of normal consumers who would take the slaughter of an animal's life into their own hands in order to know from where their food came). He is clever and he pushes cultural norms and logical buttons (dogs as a source of food). And yes, he is absolutely rhetorically dastardly. Why shouldn't he be? The industry of factory farming does not play fair and acts with such stomach-churning cruelty that his rhetorical deviousness is the best approach. Going about our normal lives and presuming that we live in a harmless society or pretending that our consumption is not harmful to the animals, our environment, and ultimately to us (see his connection to pandemics) is as unsustainable as these "farms." Foer himself is a vegetarian and his ultimate goal is vague. He says that the book is not simply a case for vegetarianism--though this seems ideal because it reduces animal suffering the most. He presents some of the family farmers and ranchers who truly care about animals, try to give them happy lives, and the least-cruel death possible. These real farmers do exist and can thrive (and multiply) if our consumption changes. In some ways, this approach--fully funded and supported through our ethical choices--is more of a blow to the factory farm behemoth (and more realistic) than assuming there will be a mass conversion to vegetarianism. It is also supported by vegetarian ranchers and vegan slaughterhouse builders. I have known many of these facts and yet have turned away and gone back to my old ways of thoughtless consumption in the past. This feels different. I do not see how my desire for animal flesh can justify the cruelty and suffering that Foer presents in these pages (and is available through many other sources). Rate it whatever you want, but read it and wrestle with it.

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Inspired me to join my souse in vegetarianism and saying no to the factory farm. Safron has such an accessible way of writing that allows the reader to fully engage with the topic of EATING ANIMALS.

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Great book, makes thoughtful and compelling arguments about considering the implications of our diets. At least one friend felt compelled to make a change after reading this book.

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I read this book primarily because I have enjoyed several other books by this author. I was intrigued by the subject matter as well, though. I am a struggling vegetarian, meaning that I try to be one but falter on an infrequent basis. This book has helped me reconsider my choices, as well as how I rationalize what, and how, I eat. Foer does not demand that the reader give up eating animals, but he does demand that you take a closer look at how you approach the subject on an intellectual and moral level.

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I am a Foer fan. I am an omnivore, through and through. Foer makes you really stop and think about the choices you make and rekindled my interest in the sustainability of our food systems.

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I'd never considered becoming vegetarian, but Eating Animals has made me consider my usual food shopping decisions. In the book, Jonathan Safran Foer analyzes the production and consumption of animals on several different levels, each of which are disturbing. He points out that much of the food that we buy in the supermarkets that we presume are healthy, such as turkey, fish and chicken, are not what we'd expect. Much of the turkey and chicken available in the grocery stores have been bred for human consumption -- the fowl that we find are bred to grow fast, to have large breast sections (because US consumers prefer the white meat). The animals themselves are so altered from their original species that they aren't expected to be able to survive in the wild. Having been bred for consumption, these animals are dependent upon the feed, antibiotics, vitamins, etc. from the poultry farms in order to survive. It's disturbing that the animals are so different from the original animals. How healthy can it be for us to consume an animal that was fed so much hormones, antibiotics and vitamins? Foer describes his underground visits to poultry farms and to slaughter houses. His account doesn't become excessively emotional but the details are disturbing. Learning exactly how the animals are raised and cared for, imagining the pain and knowing the various attrition rates paints a disturbing picture and once imagined is hard to dismiss. While I had expected the description of slaughterhouses would be disturbing, the degree of unnecessary cruelty that many animals suffer at the time of their death -- hurting for sport --and the absence of any effective supervision over the care of the animals is worse than anything I could have imagined. I guess Eating Animals has made me realize that I can't just ignore the impact of my food choices. While I haven't become vegetarian, it's hard to enjoy meat the same way. Eating Animals has gotten me to make more careful choices. Have you read Eating Animals? If so, has it changed how decide what to eat? ISBN-10: 0316069884 - Trade Paperback Publisher: Back Bay Books; Reprint edition (September 1, 2010), 368 pages. Review copy provided by the publisher.

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This should be mandatory reading. Everyone in the first world has a moral responsibility to justify their food choices. This book is a good place to start gathering the necessary information to do that. Just read it and make honest, informed choices. It's nice to see a book on this topic by a novelist rather than a journalist. He makes it a story - his story - which underscores the humanity and complexity of this topic. It reads neither like a cold list of facts, nor like muckraking journalism. I found Foer's account of the realities of factory farming to be truly harrowing and the story of his own conversion to vegetarianism to be profound and hopeful (and not just because I'm a vegetarian).

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I don't know why I thought the meats in our grocery stores came from great big farms in the country with clucking chickens and mud-bathing pigs and cows chewing their cud in the field, but I did. Reading the story of how animal husbandry has become agribusiness and how family farms have become factory farms was an eye-opening, life-changing experience. Seriously. I have become a vegetarian. And will probably become a vegan eventually. It's been 6 months since I finished the book, and I still have nightmares about the "farm" worker who cut off a piece of a living pig's nose "like it was a slice of bacon" and then rubbed salt in the open wound. Who ARE we as a species, and why do we always abuse those with less power?