Eating Animals

No reader of this book would tolerate someone swinging a pickax at a dog's face. Nothing could be more obvious or less in need of explanation. Is such concern morally out of place when applied to fish, or are we silly to have such unquestioning concern about dogs? Is the suffering of a drawn-out death something that is cruel to inflict on any animal that can experience it, or just some animals?

Choosing leaf or flesh, factory farm over family farm, does not in itself change the world, but teaching ourselves, our children, our local communities, and our nation to choose conscience over ease can. One of the greatest opportunities to live our values - or betray them - lies in the food we put on our plates. And we will live or betray our values not only as individuals, but as nations.

If we are not given the option to live without violence, we are given the choice to center our meals around harvest or slaughter, husbandry or war. We have chosen slaughter. We have chosen war. That's the truest version of our story of eating animals.

Some have tried to resolve this gap by hunting or butchering an animal themselves, as if those experiences might somehow legitimize the endeavor of eating animals. This is dubious. Murdering someone would surely prove that you are capable of killing, but it wouldn't be the most reasonable way to understand why you should or shouldn't do it.

Killing an animal oneself is more often than not a way to forget the problem while pretending to remember. This is perhaps more harmful than ignorance. It's always possible to wake someone from sleep, but no amount of noise will wake someone who is pretending to be asleep.

As I was taught them, in Hebrew school and at home, the Jewish dietary laws were devised as a compromise: if humans absolutely must eat animals, we should do so humanely, with respect for the other creatures in the world and with humility. Don't subject the animals you eat to unnecessary suffering, either in their lives or in their slaughters. It's a way of thinking that made me proud to be Jewish as a child, and that continues to make me proud.

I frequently found myself confused. Sometimes my disorientation was the result of the slipperiness of terms like suffering, joy, and cruelty . Sometimes it seemed to be a deliberate effect. Language is never fully trustworthy, but when it comes to eating animals, words are as often used to misdirect and camouflage as they are to communicate. Some words, like veal, help us forget what we are actually talking about. Some, like free-range, can mislead those whose consciences seek clarification. Some, like happy, mean the opposite of what they would seem. And some, like natural, mean next to nothing.

Whether we're talking about fish species, pigs, or some other eaten animal, is such suffering the most important thing in the world? Obviously not. But that's not the question. Is it more important than sushi, bacon, or chicken nuggets? That's the question.


- Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

Observe me, and keep me holy

The Gypsy girl carved love letters into trees, filling the forest with notes for him. Do not forsake me, she removed from the bark of a tree in whose shade they had once fallen asleep. Honor me, she carved into the trunk of a petrified oak. She was composing a new list of commandments, commandments they could share, that would govern a life together, not apart. Do not have any loves before me in your heart. Do not take my name in vain. Do not kill me. Observe me, and keep me holy.

Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated