I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s ‘Eating Animals’ wide-eyed.. then re-read it and extracted some of the most shocking bits. I believe everyone should know (and think about) these.
You can read and digest them, or you can choose to keep your eyes shut for the rest of your life and still bite into that fillet.
Click HERE for the main facts
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and some other notes:
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On ethics: Why should eating be different from any of the other ethical realms of our lives? We were honest people who occasionally told lies, careful friends who sometimes acted clumsily. We were vegetarians who from time to time ate meat.
On practices: Upwards of 99 percent of all animals eaten in the U.S come from “factory farms”
On elements: The differences between dogs and fish couldn’t seem more profound. Fish are not companions, they are divided from us by surfaces and silence.
On truth: We are constantly lied to about nutrition
On space: One-third of the land surface of the planet is dedicated to livestock.
On scale: Farmed animals in the United States produce 130 times as much waste as the human population. And yet there is almost no waste-treatment infrastructure for farmed animals.
On reality: Farmers do not aim to produce healthy animals.
On invisibility: A single salmon farm generates swarming clouds of sea lice in numbers thirty thousand times higher than naturally occur.
On comparison: 100 percent pasture-raised beef, setting aside the issue of slaughter for a moment, is probably the least troubling of all meats
On action: Farming is shaped not only by food choices, but by political ones. Choosing a personal diet is insufficient. A collective will is emerging — a political will, and also a will of consumers, retailers, and restaurants.
On perspectives: The world doesn’t need to produce nearly as many animals as it’s currently producing. Factory farming wasn’t born or advanced out of a need to produce more food — to “feed the hungry” — but to produce it in a way that is profitable for agribusiness companies. Factory farming is all about money, creating a food industry whose primary concern isn’t feeding people.
On efficiency: It takes six to twenty-six calories fed to an animal to produce just one calorie of animal flesh. The vast majority of what we grow in the United States is fed to animals — that is land and food that we could use to feed humans or preserve wilderness — and the same thing is happening all over the world, with devastating consequences.
On supplies: Animal agriculture uses 756 million tons of grain and corn per year, much more than enough to adequately feed the 1.4 billion humans who are living in dire poverty.
Now think of any animal product, any other processed food item..
Darling…
Thank you again for this Article.
I am always grateful for your attention to what needs attending.
xxx
Grey Cloud
I”ve read Omnivore Dilemma and I think I’ll place this book on my list of books to read.
oh I think they realize that, but it takes effort to stay away from the processed stuff because the industry is so strong
I like his thought that “Cruel and destructive food products should be illegal”, and what the industry is doing should also be illegal!
Pollan’s Omnivore Dilemma is another good book on the subject, although I don’t think it’s as controversial as this one
As a vegetarian, the picture grossed me out, luckily I love reading your writing so I didn’t click away from your blog. When I first became Veg about 10 years ago, I mainly started for the reasons of how much energy goes into producing meat …although there are other reasons why a Veg diet is what I choose to stick with. People should realize that a Veg-based diet and/or a diet with no processed foods is not only healthy for the body, but also healthier for mother earth.
haha that depends what you were biting into
the picture had to be graphic (even if a bit harsh) to draw the eye, the citations take care of the rest
Well, thank you. I was just about to bite in my breakfast while opening your blog, where the picture hit me straight into the face. Good morning.
Citations are cruel. Thank you for bringing them in.