John Safran Foer’s Eating Animals discusses the issues of the meat industry: the huge environmental destruction it causes, the havoc it wreaks on our health, and (in my opinion, most devastatingly) the inconceivable torture the animals suffers. The suffering of animals is described heavily in our book for class, Animal Liberation, by Peter Singer. But what about the other effects it has?
Basically, all the thousands of tons of manure produced by these animals every year runs off into rivers and is spread in excess on fields as fertilizer. This can render the soil infertile and unfit for planting. In the manure is traces of growth hormones and antibiotics that are unnecessarily forced on the animals. When all these chemicals run into water, they can seriously damage the fragile ecosystems there. Not to mention all the carbon dioxide being released by the animals, especially cows, which rises into the atmosphere and contributes to global warming.
Factory farming is also very hard on our health. In the first place, meat isn’t the healthiest food. Yes, it has protein, but it also has a lot of saturated fat (yes, that is “the bad kind”). But in factory farming, these animals are filled with chemicals like antibiotics and growth hormones which then effect us! I find it hilarious when older people wonder why kids seem to grow up so much faster these days. I sit there and think, “Well maybe it has something to do with you serving them growth hormone-tainted meat every night at dinner?” Our systems slowly build up a resistance to the antibiotics we consume, so when we actually need real antibiotics, they are not as effective. Eating Animals accounts in detail how the dead chickens are all placed in a huge vat of cold water so that they absorb that water and then become heavier and bigger. But they also absorb all the feces still stuck on their bodies and all the other nasty stuff in that water. Eventually, chicken get injected with a kind of salty broth, too, to give it the flavor that we recognize as chicken. When we eat chicken, we are eating the watered-down, hormone-filled, flavor injected carcass of a bird who suffered terribly for a few short weeks before it was brutally killed. I am a vegetarian. Strange enough, I still miss the taste of chicken. I honestly don’t know why, given where it comes from and what it actually is.
That brings me to my next question. In Eating Animals, Foer states that he has to be a vegetarian in order to live with himself because he is just so appalled at what factory farming does to the environment, our health, and the animals involved. But he never once mentions being a vegan. Mass produced eggs and milk come from just as terrible conditions as chicken and beef. Why not boycott them, too? It would only make sense. Maybe the idea of an egg is different enough from a chicken that we vegetarians can eat it with relative ease. My reasons are that I don’t find herding animals and using their products morally wrong, but only if the animals are treated well. Foer discusses this issue as well. Is it wrong to domesticate animals and use them? No, many say, because they get a soft life and (hopefully) are treated kindly. They get to live longer and then die without too much pain. Animals like this contract. They automatically get fed and cared for, when all they have to do is give us some milk or wool or eggs. I don’t find this wrong. Even if it is wrong, it can’t possibly be wrong on the same scale as factory farming is. But today, these animal products such as eggs and milk do come from factory farms. So why do vegetarians (the ones who don’t eat meat because of the cruelty of factory farming) not automatically become vegans, too? I don’t drink plain milk anymore, but I do eat ice cream and cheese. I don’t eat as many eggs as I did before, and when I know someone who has a small brood of chickens whose eggs he humanely farms, I eat those in place of factory farmed eggs. So I have significantly cut down the amount of animal products in my diet. Is that enough, though? It’s difficult to be a vegan because it’s so restrictive. You never know what bread or dish is made with milk and eggs. I don’t want to commit to being a vegan if I know I might not be able to follow through. If I have ten minutes to grab something from Alliot before class, I don’t want to worry about every ingredient being free of animal products. It would be an unhealthy life for me, not eating as much or as often because of that one restriction. I very much want to see the end of factory farming in all its forms, but until then, I don’t see the need to restrict myself so greatly, to the point of unhealthiness. If I eat very little animal products, is that close enough to completely boycotting all animal products? Maybe not. But it’s enough for me, for now, because I am just not ready to commit to anything greater. But when I do eat animal products, I remind myself where it came from so I don’t simply become another human ignorantly eating whatever is put in front of me.
