Enjoying a good meal sounds so much better than livelong torturing and killing when fat enough.
Please note that parts of this review are unusually shoEnjoying a good meal sounds so much better than livelong torturing and killing when fat enough.
Please note that parts of this review are unusually short, collected speech notes. Could be offending to some bigoted unknowing victims of cognitive bias too. Go look a pig, chicken, or cow in the eye while eating your freaking bacon, chicken nuggets, or steak.
The adverse effects are not limited to martyred animals and sick consumers, because before that is the exploitation and destruction of vast areas of land for animal feed and environmental damage. The contributions to global warming are manifold. The destroyed forests can no longer fulfill their task in the climate cycle. The methane emissions of livestock are considerable. Transport over the oceans causes immense CO2 emissions. The logistics, industrial processing, distribution, and operation of the meat departments in the retail chains cost tens of billions.
The agony of the animals. Be it the mercifully selected male chicks killed just after hatching, which are unsuitable for laying batteries. The castration of the piglets without anesthesia soon after birth. The narrowness. The cannibalism among the animals. Turkeys can no longer walk properly and permanently tilt forward because they are bred for maximum meat yield. The feces in multi-level laying batteries rain down. Calves are immobilized by being tied down to give the meat the desired consistency. Darning geese are forcibly fed with corn under high pressure. The beak tips of the chickens are cut off so that they do not pick each other in the narrowest space. One needs tons of medication and antibiotics, because the animals hurt each other and get wounds from the sharp and hard environment. Sweeteners, flavor enhancers, hormones, and all kinds of other chemicals are mixed into the feed to increase efficiency. One has to keep in mind that everything is subordinated to the increase in profits. If one cubic centimeter of stable space can be saved or the lining can be pimped with some chemicals, that will be done too.
Once the meat has been consumed for decades, the health costs for the community are added, just as with other, pathogenic habits such as sugar addiction, smoking, and various other substances. The ensuing incapacity to work, early retirement, disability, and long-suffering go at the expense of the general public and the relatives of the incorrigible carnivores.
It´s challenging to estimate whether antibiotic resistance or the plunge of zoonosis is more dangerous. The areas around industrial livestock farms are highly hazardous for health because contamination cannot be avoided. Either via the water or the contaminated dust, germs get into the environment. Moreover, as in hospitals, the messengers of the post-antibiotic age slumber here. If a pathogen manages to make the transition to humans in such large farms, it has resistance against most conventional defensive measures up its sleeves. As already demonstrated with swine flu and bird flu, not much is missing to compose the perfect disaster. It´s only a matter of time. And as long as the pharmaceutical companies shy away from the costly development of new antibiotics, as long as the old ones still work reasonably well, no savior can be expected.
It looks bigoted and mentally ill. In one country, the animals are eaten and in another used as a substitute for social contacts and treated as friends. While no expenses are spared for the pets, the purchaser of meat in the supermarket just looks at the price. Then it doesn´t matter how it came to this bargain. Expensive beef? An impudence! Cat food for a higher rate than human food? No problem. Which increases the pressure on the meat producers to still produce cheaper at the expense of the animals.
In one state or culture, pet owners sit with their favorite pets and eat different animals together. In other countries, the relationship is reversed. No, not that the animals eat humans. Feeding the domestic pig with cat and dog in aspic with pasta in a tomato sauce seems bizarre. However, there is no difference and, strangely enough, such a comparison causes more protest than the fact that meat consumption is a deviancy of epic proportions. People feel personally attacked when confronted, as if the use of corpses is a defensive pillar of their existence. They can´t do anything with the idea of associating something profoundly wrong and contrary to their behavior.
Imagining that the euthanized dogs and cats are mixed into the feed for the vegetarian farm animals, which appears consistently bipolar, is unbelievable too. As if those responsible had learned nothing from the problem of feeding meat and bone meal around BSE and didn´t conclude. The pets are raised to the level of humans, the livestock is degraded to objects, and meat consumption is considered legitimate. However, eat a canary or puppy, or kitten? That is, of course, perverted or even criminal!
Alternatively, suppose one would buy headless torsos from dogs and cats in supermarkets. So once a year everyone buys a considerable dog, and everyone sits together and has a good time, partying and laughing, let´s call it Thanksslaughtering or something. Or one spears the carcass on a suckling pig grill and lets it spin automatically. Alternatively, make the children argue about who is allowed to turn the meat. Or a kitten grill in which dozens of kittens rotate in circles in different cooking stages. In the restaurant: "Saint Bernhard English, raw, medium, done or well done, sir?" Not even a sausage will be eaten if one associates it with meow and wuff, let alone a whole animal. Why does the mere thought of such possibilities make one irritated, while the same cruelty to other animals is taken for granted, unavoidable, Flying Spaghetti Monster given, and systemic? Because it has always been that way, because one is so used to it because Grandpa still had one set up the battle shot apparatus and then you ate delicious pork together and went for a walk in the park?
It is "nice" together as a family, as a childhood memory, to eat a dead animal. Festivals all over the world revolve around it, are impossible without it. See the public and religious holidays practiced in every culture related to grazing animals. Sometimes the slaughter itself is integrated into the ceremonies and rituals. Everyone is looking forward to it for days, it´s sentimentally and nostalgically transfigured. As if people needed a corpse in their midst for the confirmation of their sense of family, which had previously been adequately tortured for a lifetime to affirm their sympathy. Everything is highly ritualized from shopping for food to cooking together with the children. The expectant time until the exceptional food is finally ready. Many adults probably have had one too many and play even more cheerful with the kids. There are gifts. It´s altogether very nice and one wants to do it with own kids later in life too.
Given the minimal animal suffering associated with organic free-range farming and sustainable farming, the question of the absolute benefits of vegetarian nutrition and the vegetarian movement arises. An unrestricted yes in contrast to products from animal factories and with animal suffering. However, what is with exemplary farms that preserve cultural landscapes, practice biological pest control, can be visited by children and school classes, act as graces farms for animals and inspire people? Which are strictly checked for compliance with all production processes? In such cases, giving up on their dairy and eggs harms more than a purely vegan diet would help. Also, why should vegetarians be ashamed of consuming such products if they are extremely low on animal suffering?
Indeed the goal is to exploit no animal at all. Only as a society as a whole develops slowly, for example, from theocracy to dictatorship, monarchy, to militaristic theocracy to fascist dictatorship to social, democratic market economy to neoliberal nightmare, etc., so a change of diet can be made only in the long term. It´s too radical and for many also dissuasive and expensive (organic) to renounce all animal products. Vegetarianism is a useful intermediate on the way to a broad acceptance of veganism. Only until that happens aggressive advertising for new vegans can be counterproductive and could scare people off, arouse in them the fear of being stigmatized by their carnivore friends too.
The author goes through a transformation in the course of the book. Like any average citizen, he has never known the actual dimensions of the problem before, just as the reader who remains baffled after reading. One has eaten meat all her/his life. It tasted good. And now it has got a dark aura associated with environmental destruction, animal factories, industrial agriculture, and immeasurable suffering at every step of the production chain. It literally stinks, and it seems to be surrounded by dark streaks, the associations are no longer sufficiently positive. The symbols of advertisements have got cracks with blood floating from in between.
And sure, the easy way is always the pleasant, joyful one. Procrastination against diligence. Sitting instead of exercising. Passively consuming rather than actively shaping. Eat meat instead of consuming vegetarian food. Lazy evil is strong in us. It is extremely unpleasant, and it begins to tingle in the neck when dealing with such issues. One doesn´t want to have that feeling, preferably displaces it. The fact that we are physiologically composed of this suffering meat, that we are what we eat, is better ignored.
It is easier, as always, to point the finger at minorities. Oddly enough, discriminating against someone because of their gender, skin color, or sexual orientation is just illegitimate. To bask against vegetarians and vegans, on the other hand, is instead a trivial offense. The stigma of militant teachers, do-gooders, and spoilsports is anyway not too politically incorrect. It´s much easier to slander them in this way rather than critically reflecting on their diet. This goes in part so far that they have to justify their children's nutrition and the child's welfare is doubted. While fast-food-consuming people don´t have the slightest need for explanation, supporters of a sustainable way of life must expect a visit from the social welfare office.
So many industries depend on it, so much advertising, so many powerful corporations. Almost everyone is involved. It´s a bit like with oil, media cartels, all monopolies past present, and future. If all people became allergic to meat overnight, the animals and the planet would be helped. The stock markets would collapse. None of the profiteers would allow such a development. It seems more likely that widespread acceptance and, above all, a dominance of animal-free products will result in a PR advertising and marketing war. A triumphal procession of meatless nutrition would be their downfall, and therefore they have nothing to lose. However, probably the producers of artificial meat will destroy the previous top dogs, while they are still busy discrediting exemplary people.
The future sees many positive alternatives to meat consumption. For example, by cloning small amounts from animal donors who do not suffer for it. Alternatively, eat artificially produced meat that works without any animal components. It can also incorporate positive health effects, be individually adapted to the nutritional needs of different groups of people. Ultimately, the mass application and the ever-cheaper technology will make the difference. People will not stop eating flesh because of remorse, instead, the meat will be artificially produced. Also, because this is cheaper than conventional animal breeding, it will disappear. Perhaps at most as a deluxe segment for snobs, it will lead a shadowy existence.
Until that happens, the decisive factor will be the readiness of the population to change. If no renunciation, then at least a reduction. So that meat, as in earlier generations, again becomes an unusual and rare food and from that grows a more responsible consciousness. That, at least, like the indigenous people living in harmony with nature, they pay respect to the dead animal. For being able to continue living thanks to its death.
Moreover, if one's health, as well as ethics and morality, do not affect one, then perhaps the future of one's children and grandchildren do. With unreflective, excessive consumption one cannibalizes these too. The occupation of the meat mincer is not in vain defined as detrimental to enlightenment in Asian cultures. Because she/he works with death. Because interpreted metaphysically, one takes in parts of the souls of the martyred creatures. Whether they continue to scream, become part of one? And one day, after decades of consumption, large parts of one are made of such elements of torment, suffering, and misery?
A Cascade effect: excessive meat consumption, vast pasturages, monocultures, oil to keep the machine running, environmental degradation, climate changA Cascade effect: excessive meat consumption, vast pasturages, monocultures, oil to keep the machine running, environmental degradation, climate change.
It's not just eating the meat. Only the health disadvantages and ethical aspects. That heavily processed red meat is now being compared to asbestos by the WHO. The unfortunate chain ends in the stomach of a carnivore, but it begins elsewhere.
It is beyond question, how despicable factory farming is. Just the topics relating to huge stables, antibiotic resistance, environmental contamination, spillovers,... are worrying. Concerning climate change, cow farts are the smaller problem. Rather, the amount of CO2 that is released during the entire meat processing process. From breeding, farms to slaughterhouses, the food industry, distribution, logistics and electricity for the refrigerated counters.
To fatten all the tormented souls, one needs the largest monocultures of all time. No matter where, be it in increasingly compressed, over-fertilized, for desertification and desertification predestined areas or in the rainforest. And the food has to be transported by fleets of huge ships.
These ships must be built and maintained, which consumes raw materials. And they drink oil, much of it. From politically unstable regions, which are instrumentalized and even more destabilized. Or from oil and tar sands depletion, maybe soon from the drilling of the untapped spouters at the poles.
It is virtually impossible to eat meat without potentiating this process. Even if one reduces meat consumption and practices self-deceit with the schizophrenic argument of killing only very few animals to calm one's conscience. It is unrealistic that people exercise such self-control. Much worse, the West has no legitimacy to criticize the coming explosion of meat consumption in other countries. That would be the same bigotry as with emissions. And as more and more people consume more and more dead animals globally through cheaper and cheaper meat, it will be no longer hundreds of millions of people consuming meat. But billions with corresponding CO2 footprint.
A silver lining is the progress made in the production of artificial meat. Be it by breeding it in the laboratory or making life-like replicas with the same consistency so that one feels no difference while chewing it. There is also immense potential in insects. And if one has the moral issue between consuming intelligent mammals and critters, the answer should not be, "Yuck, I'm not eating mealworms!". That would be too infantile to stay stubborn with a mentality of just eating what one knows. Not to forget the irony of all the chemicals and food ingredients that are consumed without any protest. And a few little, friendly grasshoppers won´t be such a big deal for model adults. "Eat your maggots kids, or you won´t get dessert." If it would be that drastic, ok, but one even doesn´t recognize the difference, cause it´s in the food.
Foer's emotional and stirring style portrays the subject on a personal level. This methodology already made his novel "Eating Animals" a memorable experience.
PS: It's just about the influence of food. And alone this footprint is so immense. Things like consumerism, energy waste, and generally unsustainable economic models are even worse by dimensions. The masses of literature showing alternatives make hope and motivate to get active.
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this, yuck, ugh, boo, completely overrated real-life outside books:
Mario the lone bookwolf
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Books:
foer-jonathan-safran
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