Eating Animals: A Longer Review

This is a happy chicken.

Eating Animals: This book has been in the chain of a series of events leading to me actually caring about where my meat comes from.  It all started several months back when I watched Food, Inc. on Netflix.  Then I read some articles online.  Then I read this book.  The reason I trust this book is because Jonathan Safran Foer did this research because he found out his wife was having a baby, and he wanted to figure out what he was planning on sticking in his kid's mouth.  He presents both sides of the coin and doesn't shove his viewpoints in your face.  He is on a journey with you through the demented poultry farms and pig pens.  He interviews the good, the bad, and the vegetarian. 

This is not a happy chicken.

The reason this book impacted me so much is because I don't necessarily care how an animal dies--the industry tries to make that part as quick and painless as possible.  What I care about is how an animal lives.  I care that a chicken spends it's entire life in a cage the size of a piece of paper.  I care that piglets have their balls cut off without pain relievers.  I care that pigs go crazy, chewing on the bars of their cages, because they have no life, because they are being raised to be fat.  I will no doubt blog about my conclusions in more depth later, but so far this is what I've come up with:


1.  If you buy factory-farmed meat, you are supporting a torturous life.  And I don't believe in that.  It is one thing to have dominion over animals and to take care of them and use them for our benefit.  It is another thing to treat them like something that doesn't deserve anything more than that.  To take this one step further, if you are a Christian, or moral, or whatever: Do you think this is really how God intended us to rule over the animals?  Do you think this is the only way to feed the earth? 


Frankly, to me, it's satanic.


2.  If you buy factory-farmed eggs, same thing.  Small cages.  No purpose in life.  No life at all.  Just an egg-machine.

3. If you buy factory-farmed milk, you are supporting the veal industry.  Cows are constantly impregnated so they produce milk.  The babies (especially the boys), who have milk-genetics in them instead of meat-genetics, are not worth keeping around.  They can barely stand up because their bodies are so deformed.  They become veal.

I have currently decided to buy my eggs, milk, and meat from the local co-op or farmer's market.  These support family farms who let their chickens, you know, walk and stuff.  Their cows get to raise their young.  And they all get to actually see what daylight looks like.