This is what I get for reading…
I have been reading an eye opening book, Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. It has been keeping me up at night. Seriously, I cannot stop thinking about this book. Foer himself is a veggie eater, but he isn’t trying to convince you that eating meat is wrong, he just makes you feel like a heartless asshole. The book is full of facts about the factory farming and its impact on our health and our planet. It has been changing my life these past few days. I can’t read it in one sitting, I feel ashamed. Now I am not a book critic or even a very good book reader. This book is making me feel differently about food then I ever did before.
C and I are major meat eaters, it is not a complete meal if I have not eaten some form of animal. I have been known to pick out entrees because of their meat to whatever side they are giving me ratio. So reading this paperback has been hard on me. Because I don’t know where to draw the line. Foer gathers perspective from poultry farmers to PETA members to vegetarian meat suppliers. I am eating pork sausage while I type this because I don’t know what is going on in my brain and I am feeling a sense of hoarding/panic. I ate a salad before this, so shut up. I don’t think, and pardon the pun, I could give up the meat cold turkey. I am shaking my head because that sounded so cheesy. I know for a fact C had teryaki for lunch.
So do we find a farmer that will raise animals and slaughter them in the nicest way possible? Or is the allure of $5 whole chicken too great? I will end up knawing on C’s ankle if we try to go vegetarian to soon, I need to be weaned. (A-yo! Another farming reference!) Read this book, borrow it from me. Get it from the library. Learn anything you can about the impact that factory farming has on disease and pollution. I think animal rights activists turn some people off because they seem to value animal life higher then human life. Listen, when you are an organization that threatens the family members of a chef that cooks goose liver, you are an asshole. Yes, animals are suffering and it is cruel. Good on you to be a voice for them. But another side is the impact it has on our own health. The factory farms that are so deep in pig shit, they are polluting wherever and whenever they can. Why not? They have the money to pay a silly fine. Strains of virus that are bred in the cramped pens of factory farmed animals.
I’m not sure where our stance is on any of this, maybe I will lose interest in a few weeks. We will go back to eating anything we want. It’s not just about animal cruelty. Not just about disease control. The ridiculous amount of pollution and carbon emissions. And the list can actually go on and on.But I wanted to put it out there, just in case I am a stronger and better person then I think I am. This way C and I can look back and remember when we took a stand for something that was really a bunch of somethings that saved our lives.
I’m sure I will change my mind on this a million times in the next few days. I just needed to get this out there. Thanks for writing this book Mr. Foer. To be continued…
p.s. I get it if this seems like a bunch of nonsense. But please forward this to anyone you think might wanna know more. I will be back with more info. The title link will direct you to a website with excerpts or just visit the website http://eatinganimals.com/
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