Word: meats
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...Since I encountered the realities of factory farming, refusing to eat conventional meat has not been a hard decision,” Foer writes. “And it’s become hard to imagine who, besides those who profit from it, would defend factory farming.” In a way, this is an evasion; Foer blames the most egregious ethical problems on how meat is raised, but is reluctant to conclusively delineate whether it is wrong to eat animals raised more comfortably...
Foer’s choice to engage this treatment in relief with human morality provides a context that may give pause to those who choose to consume factory-farmed products. “Eating Animals” is the most readable and thorough work on the subject of meat-eating since Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” which deals extensively with the question of eating meat and concludes that it is best to limit meat intake but not eliminate it entirely, based mainly on health and sustainability reasons...
Perhaps it’s counterproductive to belabor animal suffering in the way that Foer does; those who eat meat often argue that it is irrelevant to apply the same morality we do to human suffering. Foer makes an excellent argument that for himself and much of his audience meat is nutritionally unnecessary and ecologically harmful, but using a moral argument to evince a change in people’s daily lives may be ineffective. Foer’s facts are visceral and damning for those who sympathize, but they may not be enough...
...style to be cloying and contrived, he is, for better or for worse, one of the more important and accessible chroniclers of violence and morality in contemporary literature. “Eating Animals” is the first high-profile work to directly address the question of the meat industry’s ethical, ecological and economical sustainability in America...
Even if Foer’s conception of himself as a concerned citizen rather than a journalist is silly and pedantic, it is a necessary one in the context that he provides. The decision to eat meat is central, though perhaps more banal, in a way that other moral dilemmas are not. As Foer notes, culture is expressed in eating practices, and to change what we eat is to fundamentally change our identity. But change can also mean progress, and although diehard carnivores looking for reasons not to give up meat will find holes in Foer’s argument...