I received this book from some very well-intentioned people, but I don't think they quite knew how disturbing this book would be. I actually couldn't even finish it. Foer was so blatantly animalistic (pun intented) in his promotion of a vegetarian lifestyle, and so dead-set on blasting any supporter of meat-eating that I was constantly feeling guilty for even buying grass-fed, humanely treated/slaughtered meat. In fact, he goes so far as to say that the meat that we eat is "tortured flesh." I mean, come on, thanks for the visual!
Now, I have to be fair here. Jonathan started off the book as any author who is attempting to uncover the dirty secrets (and I'll admit, it's pretty dirty) of factory farmed animals. He starts with statistics about how 75 million people get food poisoning from factory farmed animal meats, and how we're pumping ourselves full of the growth hormones and other crap that the animals we're eating are being dosed on. But then he gets into the scary shit, like how animals have been bred beyond the ability to reproduce sexually, how animals are deprived of their natural foods in order to promote faster growth rates, and how most, if not all, animals are diseased in some way. Basically, that any chicken you get from Tyson or Perdue probably was hyped up on antibiotics, or the eggs you bought from Stop and Shop were produced from a chicken that was being conditioned to longer days, smaller amounts of feed and not alot of space so that they can lay more eggs. And that chicken was also confined to a space smaller than an 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper for its entire life. And don't even get me started about the pigs and the cows. It was because of how graphically he described the slaughter house for beef that I stopped reading the book, close to vomiting/crying on the T on my way home from work. It's taken me weeks just to get the nerve to write about this book, for crissakes.
So, I get it. He doesn't think we should eat meat. Or he doesn't think we should eat factory farmed meat, but that humanely raised meat is ok? Or he also doesn't think that humanely raised meat is even humanely raised because even though they were grass fed, they had to be shipped off to a slaughter house, plumped up on grain for a month and then shot through the head with a bolt? A la that movie with the two old guys out in Texas? Foer's message is so convoluted, and he contradicts himself so many times in the book, that it's hard for me to get a clear idea on what he himself thinks, which is why I've created a list of things I learned from this book:
1. All factory farmed meat from animals: fish, cows, pigs, chickens, etc is tortured flesh.
2. All of those animals are also fed tons of antibiotics, often tortured by the sadistic workers at said factory farms, and are forced to feed on foods not natural to their evolutionarily derived diet.
3. Many of those animals are mutilated to prevent cannibalism, or suicide. (This was the hardest stuff to read about)
4. He visits farms that allow their animals to live natural, happy lives, but often finds ways to throw these people under the bus because "cage-free" "free-range" and "humanely raised" aren't "legally defined" terms that can be backed up by case law/legal regulations
5. The FDA doesn't visit these factory farms at all, and often because the lobby is so huge in D.C.
6. Hotdogs are bad.
7. He wanted to write this book to talk about the discoveries he made while trying to figure out how to feed his newborn son, and to educate people about the truths behind the animal meat industry in America. Cute.
8. While doing that, he manages to alienate his reader because his "altruism" quickly turns into "I'm better than you because I'm a vegetarian." Not cute.
9. I still can't tell what it is this book was supposed to be about: was it an expose on the animal farms? Was it supposed to tell people to be a vegetarian? I hate books that have a "I'm only telling you one side of the story, and YOU decide for yourself." Pick a fucking side already, buddy.
Ok. While I still try each and every day to stop thinking about the grisly descriptions in this guys book, I'm still left with very little information about what is a good way to choose the most-humanely raised meat I can find. I love meat. I won't give it up. It's a wonderful source of protein for me, and since I'm in training, I need lots of it. I also don't want to eat antibiotics or hormones in my meat because I'm 24 and I'm going have babies within the next 5-6 years and I want to be as healthy as possible. But I know that being a vegetarian takes a bit more thought and prep than being an omnivore does, and I'd rather spend more time at the gym or outside than trying to figure out how to soak beans for some kind of bean loaf or something. So, when I received this book as a gift, I thought "Great! A book about the industry, this will be awesome. OK, so he doesn't eat meat himself, this should provide an interesting point of view. Hopefully he'll come across some farms that are raising meat the old-fashioned way, and I can learn more about that!"
Au contraire, mon frere. Totally not the case. It was one page after the other, each page more distressing than the past. Nieman Farms? The forerunner of humanely-raise meat? Yea, apparently in Foer's opinion not so much. And why? Because they have to bring their animals to a slaughter house that kills the animals the same way a factory farm would. Same with any other small, family run farm that sells meat that was raised organic, naturally, humanely, etc. There is no winning with this guy! I'd hate to be his wife. I mean just look at him! Talk about a smug bastard.
All I can say about this book is: beware. If you are a vegetarian and want more back-up for why you've chosen to drop meat off of your plates, go ahead and read it, you'll find it. But if you're an omnivore like me, hoping for an informational discourse on the benefits of humanely-raised animals and how they compare to one another - and more importantly, support for why spending an extra $3 per pound for ground turkey is justified - you'll be sorely disappointed.
