Review
I love sushi, I love fried chicken, I love a good steak. But there is a limit to my love. - Jonathan Safran Foer
Eating Animals is, at times, an emotionally tough read. It describes the miserable lives and often horrible deaths of poultry, cows, pigs and fish that are bred (or caught) for human consumption. You may want smelling salts for some of the passages that describe what happens to the animals that aren't yet dead when they get near the end of the conveyor. Nevertheless, this is a book that everyone should read, vegetarian or not. It is didactic without being dull, it presents its arguments without preaching, it manages to be both approachable in style and appealing to educated readers, and it offers up new arguments in addition to some familiar ones.
One of the elements that sets Foer's book apart...
Beyond the Book
Factory Farm Alternatives
Foer suggests that meat lovers who don't want to support factory farms consider patronizing small family farms rather than buying grocery store meat, which has been produced by factory farms. The products offered by these small farmers tend to be pricey, but these producers say that their animals live most of their lives outdoors, pain-free, with access to high quality food and water. Foer, who is a vegetarian, doesn't consider them perfect (and he says that some practices, like castrating pigs, are still unacceptable to him), but he finds them to be admirable alternatives for those who choose to eat meat.
Profiled in
Eating Animals, Frank Reese's Good
Shepherd Poultry Ranch (Kansas) features free-range poultry and...
