Jonathan Safran Foer Tentatively Suggests Eating (Fewer) Animals

Eat bacon. Tape bacon to your cat. Wear a bacon hat to work. Whatever gets a conversation started is okay by Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals, as long as we all sit around and talk about bacon. Maybe later we’ll hold hands and sing Kumbayah.

Despite the title of his latest book, Foer is no firebrand. Foer’s intent, repeated several times, is to widen the conversation in America about industrial animal agriculture, i.e. factory farming, CAFO‘s, slaughterhouses, et cetera.

He doesn’t want to alienate anyone, or put them on the defensive. At Town Hall, last night, he was so restrained and moderate that I would have been shocked that he was the author, if I hadn’t already seen his appearances on The Colbert Report and Ellen. As it happened, the only shocking thing about Foer’s talk was the lack of passion evinced from the podium.

The result was a bland and forgettable chat about a topic that should be infuriating and revolution-inspiring. My more carnivorous friends and peers (who uniformly turned down invitations, because they “liked eating animals” [Ed.: I actually said that to Constance!]) could have attended, and still felt completely comfortable going out for a beer and a burger afterward. Ironically, during his introductory remarks, Jonathan Safran Foer told the audience that before he started touring, he feared people showing up to throw ground beef at him. That hasn’t happened, but I sort of wish it had. Maybe such a confrontation would have radicalized Foer’s delivery.

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Eating Animals starts from the proposition that just because we, as humans and a society, can torture, maim, mutilate, and kill animals (and then piss on their corpses, just for good measure), doesn’t mean that it is appropriate, rational, or ethical so to do. That might, to quote Lincoln, does not make right.

In fact, in this case, “might” makes for animals that are raised in shit, treated like shit, dipped in ammonia to rinse off the smell of shit, and then served to Americans as food. The average carrot is treated better than cows or chickens by our food system, and that is a crime of massive proportions. Those aren’t the precise words that Foer uses, but that’s the gist.

I happen to agree with his proposition, as do most people. No one wants to eat shit, but industrial animal agriculture in the United States is in the business of feeding it to the public. That anyone eats it at all is truly, mind-bogglingly, irrational. If live web-cams were installed in CAFO’s and slaughterhouses, no would eat their products. The industry would either collapse or reform, virtually overnight.

But saying so might squeeze the conversation, so instead Foer suggested that perhaps people might consider not eating meat one meal a week. I found this infuriating.

The facts are clear and indisputable. The animal ag sector does harm. Lasting, incontrovertible, needless harm to workers, small farmers, the environment, animals, consumers, and society. The industry causes suffering for spurious reasons excused with reductive anti-logic. Consumers could revolutionize the industry by boycotting all industrial animal products. Within our current food marketplace, going vegetarian is actually easier for most people than doing the research and due diligence necessary to source only truly sustainable, healthy animal protein.

Inertia, habit, laziness, sentimentality, willful ignorance, “I like burgers…” These are all excuses, and stupid ones. Does anyone like feces shaped into patties with special sauce so very, very much that they are willing to die for it? To kill for it? To ruin a planet for it? Really?

The common response to this sort of call to arms, these days, is to invoke “people less privileged” than whomever is speaking, but I call bullshit on that particular straw-man. I am the “people less privileged” in this conversation, and if I can live below the poverty line without a Tyson chicken or a Big Mac, anyone can. I could argue that I eat better, and live better, than people farther up the economic ladder, precisely because I don’t spend my food dollars on shit. Not contributing to an evil–to harm, suffering, destruction, and degradation–is completely and totally supportable, at any economic level.

Most people are opposed to E. coli, salmonella, and kidney failure. Most people would not willfully play Russian Roulette with their child’s lunch. That’s a given. We all pretty much agree on those points. And maybe Foer is correct in his non-confrontational approach. He wants to reach an audience that isn’t generally receptive to changing their eating habits, and I support that. I don’t know how effective he is, or will be, but it’s a big conversation, with room for many voices, and if Jonathan Safran Foer can make even one person rethink eating animals, he’s won.