I May Be Standing on an Elevated Surface Known as a Soapbox.......

I don't get super serious in my posts usually. And I don't usually talk about why I choose a plant based diet (ok, there was that one time). And I certainly am not THAT person who tells others why they shouldn't be eating the standard American diet (SAD).( Although I do look at some of my co-workers lunches at times and judge the hell out of them in my head). But I don't say anything. But in this post, I'm going to say some stuff. Get ready.

Warning!!!! To my friend Robin, probably the only regular reader of this blog; you may want to stop here. It's going to get ugly. Ok, really, just skip the part about the chickens.

I just finished the book, Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. Powerful stuff friends. This book isn't new, originally published in 2009. The information in it isn't new, I already knew or had a general idea of most of the stuff he writes about. But Foer spent 3 years of his life with this subject as he was trying to decide whether to be a vegetarian, and I'm in love with the way he presents his facts. He doesn't really argue for or against eating animals: he presents the facts as they now exist and lets you make up your own mind. He also discusses the environmental aspect of eating animals, something most people don't even consider.

Americans choose to eat less than .25% of the known edible food on the planet
-Foer

America is a nation of carnivores, where meat is eaten, on average, 3x per day, every day, without a second thought. It is usually the star of the meal that everything else revolves around, the "side dishes".  I mean, we gotta get our protein, right? This country is obsessed with protein, which apparently is more important to our survival than water.

Foer gets into the uncomfortable subject of why we eat some animals and not others. Why is it "ok" to eat a pig and not a dog? Both are meat. Dogs are plentiful, local and we euthanize millions of them each year. And look out: the euthanized dogs are then made into feed for the animals that are eaten. As the author points out, "why not just eliminate the inefficient and bizarre middle step".  Why? Because these are our companion animals that share our homes, beds, lives. We would consider this crazy. But how is it really any different than eating any other animal?

Foer states: Eating animals has an invisible quality. Thinking about dogs, and their relationship to the animals we eat, is one way of looking askance and making something invisible visible.

If I wasn't already committed to not eating animals out of compassion, reading about the horrific conditions of factory farming,(the cruelty, the drugs, the genetic modifications made to these animals), would turn me off meat completely. And the current fact is that we get 99% of our meat in this county from factory farms.  The problem is that people have a large disconnect to how we get the meat. Right now, the meat industry in this country is horrifying. I don't know how else to describe it. Once you have this knowledge, I don't know how anyone can not be affected by it and make radical changes to their diet based on it.

As one former factory worker writes in the book: "Factory farms calculate how close to death they can keep the animals without killing them.  That's the business model. How quickly can they be made to grow, how tightly can they be packed, how much or little can they eat, how sick can they get without dying".

Let's just take one animal as an example.  Did you know there are only 2 kinds of chickens now? One that is genetically modified to be raised as a broiler and another to be a layer. There used to be dozens of different chicken breeds in America. Now we have 2.

In a factory farm situation, the chicken will be lucky to have 8/10's of a square foot to live in. That's about the size of a piece of printer paper. Now imagine this full grown bird on this space, then imagine 33,000 of these sheets of paper in a grid. This grid will be enclosed with windowless walls and a ceiling.

The chickens are engineered to grow big and fast on as little feed as possible, which leads to deformities and disease. The birds become overstressed. They are jammed together in their own filth. 95% become infected with E.coli. 8% will have salmonella. The birds must be given a chlorine bath to remove slime, odor and bacteria when killed, but not to worry, to counteract all the nastiness and lingering bad taste, the birds will be injected or "plumped up" with broths and salty solutions to give them the chicken look, smell and taste that consumers demand.

I won't even go into the processing of the chickens, expect to say that chicken slaughter is exempt from the USDA's Humane Methods of Slaughter (?) and that turnover rates at slaughter house's are 100%. But you need to read about this, to know what these animals must go through, all so this country can have cheap, plentiful meat at all times.

Let me say it best in Foer's own words:

What we do know, is that if you eat meat today, your typical choice is between animals raised with either more (chicken, turkey, fish, and pork) or less (beef) cruelty. Why do so many of us feel we have to choose between such options? What would render such utilitarian calculations of the least horrible option beside the point? At what moment would the absurd choices readily available today give way to the simplicity of a firmly drawn line: this is unacceptable? Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be?  If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say 'not now', then when?

I'm blaming this post on Jonathan Safran Foer. I guess I just needed to say some of the stuff I don't have time to say when someone asks me why I'm vegan. Or when someone tells me we are supposed to eat animals.  Or when someone just has zero understanding of why a plant based diet is a viable alternative and not insane!  All the above words are really just a small part of why I'm vegan, but I used Foer's words because he says it much better than I ever could. And I'm not expecting everyone to immediately stop eating meat.  I know that will never happen.  But I do think we need to end the disconnect and make conscious choices about what we put in our bodies and about what companies and their practices we want to support with our money. Because as long as the demand is there, these practices will continue. 

I will leave you with these words from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., writing about a time when "one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular". Sometimes we simply have to make a decision because "one's conscience tells one that it is right". (Foer, pg 259)

Read the book friends. And let your conscience be your guide.

Stepping off the box now.........