Eating Animals

“And that, I thought, was that. And I thought that was just fine. I assumed we’d maintain a diet of conscientious inconsistency. Why should eating be any 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.”

This is Foer’s main characterization prior to embarking on his investigation, as he explains his and his wife’s longstanding wavering on vegetarianism. For the reader who has never considered vegetarianism or who has also wavered on vegetarianism, this characterization is meant to be relatable. Humans are fallible, and people often fail to meet their own goals for themselves. For Foer, vegetarianism was one such goal, and he is expressing how imperfection is not really a cause for shame, as everyone makes mistakes.

“No matter how much we learn about the physiology of the pain—how long it persists, the symptoms it produces, and so forth—none of it will tell us anything definitive. But place facts in a story, a story of compassion or domination, or maybe both—place them in a story about the world we live in and who we are and who we want to be—and you can begin to speak meaningfully about eating animals.”

This explanation of the relevance of pain to the practice of eating meat relates how Foer intends to construct a narrative around and concerning these animals and the people who raise and eat them. The purpose of the narrative is to go beyond simple statistics or gruesome testimony to connect with the reader. Foer is explaining that he will use a full range of rhetorical techniques in the work, as just logic is insufficient in relaying the experiences of animals meaningfully.

“The list of our differences could fill a book, but like me, George fears pain, seeks pleasure, and craves not just food and play, but companionship. I don’t need to know the details of her moods and preferences to know that she has them. Our psychologies are not the same or similar, but each of us has a perspective, a way of processing and experiencing the world that is intrinsic and unique.”

George takes on a symbolic role in this passage, as Foer comments on how animals in general have experiences that are not translatable to the human experience. However, he still asserts that the experience of animals is real and valuable, making abuses against animals immoral or unethical. In some ways, this argument forms the basis of Foer’s discussion of factory farming, as he regularly asks readers to step into the perspectives of farmed animals and farmers, despite the incomprehensible nature of the animal experience.

“Can the familiarity of the animals we have come to know as companions be a guide to us as we think about the animals we eat? Just how distant are fish (or cows, pigs, or chickens) from us in the scheme of life? Is it a chasm or a tree that defines the distance? Are nearness and distance even relevant? If we were to one day encounter a form of life more powerful and intelligent than our own, and it regarded us as we regard fish, what would be our argument against being eaten?”

Foer’s argument here serves a dual purpose of asking why animals are deserving of slaughter and asking how animals could convince humans not to eat them. In his hypothetical of alien life, Foer is redirecting the argument to the true situation, in which animals are not able to communicate effectively or collectively with humans. He is also pointing out the species barrier, in which people seem to arbitrarily decide which animals can and cannot be eaten.

“If we wish to disavow a part of our nature, we call it our ‘animal nature.’ We then repress or conceal that nature, and yet, as Kafka knew better than most, we sometimes wake up and find ourselves, still, only animals. And this seems right. We do not, so to speak, blush with shame before fish. We can recognize parts of ourselves in fish—spines, nociceptors (pain receptors), endorphins (that relieve pain), all of the familiar pain responses—then deny that these animal similarities matter, and thus equally deny important parts of our humanity. What we forget about animals we begin to forget about ourselves.”

Continuing in the comparison between humanity and animals, Foer notes the relevant elements of animal life, most pointedly the pain receptors, and questions how humans that feel pain can deny pain in other creatures. Because people do not recognize animals as sentient, they do not feel a sense of connection with animals. However, Foer points out that this disconnected perception of animals is likewise a disconnect within humanity. Just as a person might deny the pain of an animal, they can also deny the pain of other human beings.

“The shame of parenthood—which is a good shame—is that we want our children to be more whole than we are, to have satisfactory answers. My son not only inspired me to reconsider what kind of eating animal I would be, but shamed me into reconsideration.”

Foer is highlighting the inspiration for the book here, as well as including The Balance of Personal Shame and Desires as a component in his motivation to investigate factory farming. Parenthood, according to Foer, forces parents to scrutinize their own beliefs and actions, as they now must explain those trends to their children. For Foer, this means explaining to his son how and why it is acceptable to eat animals, and he finds that he cannot justify the practice.

“CFE: Common Farming Exemptions make legal any method of raising farmed animals so long as it is commonly practiced within the industry. In other words, farmers—corporations is the right word—have the power to define cruelty. If the industry adopts a practice—hacking off unwanted appendages with no painkillers, for example, but you can let your imagination run with this—it automatically becomes legal.”

CFEs are an important concept in Eating Animals because they explain how factory farms can employ inhumane techniques without consequence. Foer specifically uses examples that are gruesome here because they are precisely the kinds of actions that one would expect the government to prevent. However, Foer is also playing into his overarching argument for change, as a widespread acceptance of humane techniques would likewise have the effect of banning inhumane practices.

“Most simply put, someone who regularly eats factory-farmed animal products cannot call himself an environmentalist without divorcing that word from its meaning.”

This passage is one of the few instances in which Foer directly points to a group with an accusation. After defining environmentalism, Foer actively shows that factory farming is counterproductive to environmentalist efforts, and, rather than allow the implication to serve as an accusation, he outwardly points out that the two ideas and practices are incongruent. If one supports factory farming, they are operating against environmentalism, and any environmentalist who is true to that label would need to stand against factory farming. 

“Virtually all of us agree that it matters how we treat animals and the environment, and yet few of us give much thought to our most important relationship to animals and the environment. Odder still, those who do choose to act in accordance with these uncontroversial values by refusing to eat animals (which everyone agrees can reduce both the number of abused animals and one’s ecological footprint) are often considered marginal or even radical.”

Here, Foer points out that most people seem to oppose animal abuse, especially on a large scale. Despite this general agreement, most people also seem to view vegetarianism as a radical opposition that is disproportionate to the issue at hand. In other words, vegetarians are branded as unreasonable for opposing the same abuses and environmental damage that most people agree should be changed. This pattern likely reflects The Balance of Personal Shame and Desires associated with eating meat when confronted with the complications that result from such a diet, as vegetarians embody that confrontation by taking action.

“In the three years I will spend immersed in animal agriculture, nothing will unsettle me more than the locked doors. Nothing will better capture the whole sad business of factory farming. And nothing will more strongly convince me to write this book.”

The term “unsettle” in this quote is meant to intentionally evoke the statistics and gruesome abuses that Foer brings up throughout the work. More than physical abuse, damaged or diseased meat, or environmental harm, the locked doors are what “unsettle” Foer. What makes the locked doors disturbing is that they are obviously intended to prevent the public from learning about what happens in factory farms and slaughterhouses. If no inhumane actions were occurring behind these doors, they would not need to be locked.

“Before child labor laws, there were businesses that treated ten-year-old employees well. Society didn’t ban child labor because it’s impossible to imagine children working in a good environment, but because when you give that much power to businesses over powerless individuals, it’s corrupting. When we walk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than the animal has a right to live without suffering, it’s corrupting. I’m not speculating. This is our reality. Look at what factory farming is. Look at what we as a society have done to animals as soon as we had the technological power.” 

This passage comes from C’s testimony, in which she is outlining how animal rights activism runs parallel to other fights for rights among disadvantaged groups. Like children, animals have little to no defense against the decisions of the adults around them, and they are entirely dependent on those adults for proper care. Just as it is illegal for children to work because of the possibility of abuse, C is showing that it should be illegal to farm animals because of the similarity in power dynamic between animals and humans as between children and adults.

“Sure, you could say that people should eat less meat, but I’ve got news for you: people don’t want to eat less meat. You can be like PETA and pretend that the world is going to wake up tomorrow and realize that they love animals and don’t want to eat them anymore, but history has shown that people are perfectly capable of loving animals and eating them. It’s childish, and I would even say immoral, to fantasize about a vegetarian world when we’re having such a hard time making this one work.” 

This passage comes from the unnamed factory farmer’s testimony, in which they defend the practice of factory farming with a variety of arguments that Foer counters elsewhere. The most important element of this farmer’s argument is the direct attack on vegetarians as “childish” and “immoral” for attempting to reduce the harm caused to animals. Rhetorically, the farmer is turning around the argument that vegetarians and members of PETA would make, which is that factory farming is immoral, except this farmer does not have a concrete reason for their accusation. Instead of pointing out how a vegetarian is damaging the world, they simply say “we’re having such a hard time,” which fails to establish a reasonable basis for their accusation. 

“We can also be sure that any talk of pandemic influenza today cannot ignore the fact that the most devastating disease event the world has ever known, and one of the greatest health threats before us today, has everything to do with the health of the world’s farmed animals, birds most of all.”

This passage has particular significance in the present day, as COVID-19 has already taken its toll around the globe. Though COVID-19 is not linked to birds, it is a zoonotic disease, and Foer is calling attention to how consumption of animals is the main avenue by which such diseases develop and spread. Referring to previous pandemics, Foer is cautioning against the ways in which factory farming encourages potential development of diseases that could devastate humanity.

“Another thing we could say about fifty billion is that it is calculated with the utmost meticulousness. The statisticians who generate the figure nine billion in the United States break it down by month, state, and the birds’ weight, and compare it—each and every month—to the death toll in the same month a year before. These numbers are studied, debated, projected, and practically revered like a cult object by the industry. They are no mere facts, but the announcement of a victory.”

Foer is both establishing the credibility of his statistics and criticizing the industry that produces them in this passage. The statistics are not coming from unbiased organizations, but from the farming industry itself as a measurement of success. The same numbers that Foer is using to condemn factory farming as a practice serve, within the farming industry, to show a “victory” of modern advancements in farming more meat for less cost. When the perspective shifts from animal welfare to profits, the numbers take on a new tone and meaning.

“If it is sometimes hard to believe that eschewing animal products will make it easier to eat healthfully, there is a reason: we are constantly lied to about nutrition. Let me be precise. When I say we are being lied to, I’m not impugning the scientific literature, but relying upon it. What the public learns of the scientific data on nutrition and health (especially from the government’s nutritional guidelines) comes to us by way of many hands. Since the rise of science itself, those who produce meat have made sure that they are among those who influence how nutritional data will be presented to the likes of you and me.”

As with CFEs, Foer is noting how the agricultural industries are essentially self-regulating, both in the sense that they make their own rules, but also that they control the information that is spread about them. Just as the locked doors prevent the public from seeing what goes on at the farms, the “many hands” of business and government that provide information to the public have a vested interest in protecting the farming industry, which prevents them from allowing information to spread which might damage profits.

“For nearly all farmed animals, regardless of the conditions they are given to live in—‘free-range,’ ‘free-roaming,’ ‘organic’—their design destines them for pain. The factory farm, which allows ranchers to make sickly animals highly profitable through the use of antibiotics, other pharmaceuticals, and highly controlled confinement, has created new, sometimes monstrous creatures.”

Part of Foer’s argument is that the animals people eat are no longer the animals that people imagine. Genetic engineering and breeding over generations have changed the basic appearance and functionality of these animals to the point that they are no longer capable of fulfilling the idyllic roles of farm animals that the collective American ideal pictures when asked about farm life. Pain, in this sense, is not just the pain of processing or slaughter, nor of confinement, but of living with a body that was not designed for functioning, but for producing meat.

“Increasingly, instead of being forced into gestation crates, sows live in small group pens. They can’t run in a field or even enjoy the sun like Paul Willis’s pigs do, but they have space to sleep and stretch. The sows don’t get sores over all over their bodies. They don’t gnaw frantically at the bars of their crates. This change hardly redeems or reverses the factory system, but it meaningfully improves the lives of sows.”

This passage is one of Foer’s uses of “meaningful difference,” in which the comparatively less harsh living conditions of some sows are compared to the harshest conditions to show how minor improvement can make a difference. At the same time, Foer intentionally includes the mention of Willis’s farm, as Willis provides a more ideal environment for his pigs. This raises the question of why all pigs are not given the quality of life that Willis provides.

“My decision not to eat animals is necessary for me, but it is also limited—and personal. It is a commitment made within the context of my life, not anyone else’s. And until sixty or so years ago, much of my reasoning wouldn’t have even been intelligible, because the industrial animal agriculture to which I’m responding hadn’t become dominant. Had I been born in a different time, I might have reached different conclusions.”

Foer periodically reflects on the decision to eat or abstain from meat as a personal one. However, his comments on how the farming industry has changed remind the reader that Foer’s arguments are not deniable in the current situation. Years ago, before the advent of factory farming, many of Foer’s arguments did not exist and would not be relevant, but now, his decision is not just personal but logical.

“Saying that meat eating can be ethical sounds ‘nice’ and ‘tolerant’ only because most people like to be told that doing whatever they want to do is moral. It’s very popular, of course, when a vegetarian like Nicolette gives meat eaters cover to forget the real moral challenge that meat presents.”

This passage comes from Bruce Friedrich’s testimony as a PETA member and friend of Nicolette’s, and his perspective is essentially that Nicolette, as a vegetarian rancher, serves more as a justification for those who eat meat than a symbol of vegetarian tolerance. In a way, Friedrich is also criticizing Foer’s insistence that vegetarianism is a personal choice, as that framework allows for others to decide that they would prefer to eat meat, personally, despite the overarching impacts of the factory farming industry and the ethics of farming animals in general.

“There is one other rule to this game: never, absolutely never, emphasize that virtually all of the time one’s choice is between cruelty and ecological destruction, and ceasing to eat animals.”

Foer is pointing to the same issue as Friedrich, here, and the same point of contention that leads people like the unnamed factory farmer and Michael Pollan to criticize vegetarians as harshly as they do. Pointing out to someone who eats meat that their diet is harmful almost all the time is not a reality that they want to face. Instead of reacting, as Foer does, by deciding to confront the ethical and moral implications of consuming meat, most people will react angrily by lashing out at the vegetarians who force them to feel shame or guilt over their choices, which reflects The Balance of Personal Shame and Desires.

“The meat industry has tried to paint people who take this twofold stance as absolutist vegetarians hiding a radicalized agenda. But ranchers can be vegetarians, vegans can build slaughterhouses, and I can be a vegetarian who supports the best of animal agriculture.”

The twofold stance Foer notes here is becoming vegetarian while still supporting ethical farming. What Foer is discussing is how decisions regarding the issue of animal rights and factory farming are not easy or straightforward for everyone. Foer himself does not take the additional step of becoming a vegan, and yet he tries to take a stance that supports animals without sacrificing too much for himself. There is no reason why each person cannot contribute only as much as they comfortably can while supporting causes that might be more or less extreme.

“We can’t plead ignorance, only indifference. Those alive today are the generations that came to know better. We have the burden and the opportunity of living in the moment when the critique of factory farming broke into the popular consciousness. We are the ones of whom it will be fairly asked, What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals?”

This passage forms the cornerstone of how Foer’s argument about a personal decision intersects with the broader implications of this work. While Foer does not insist that each reader become a vegetarian, he is asking here how any reader can defend themselves against the implications of eating meat after learning about the farming industry. On an even broader scale, Foer is addressing how modern society has been exposed to factory farming through works like Eating Animals and several other books and documentaries on the industry, which prevents claims of ignorance or innocence.