After penning two acclaimed novels, author Jonathan Safran Foer writes his first non-fiction account, Eating Animals on, well, not eating animals. After learning of his wife’s pregnancy, Foer, faced with health and moral implications of feeding his then-unborn son, began more than a year’s worth of research into factory farming and vegetarianism. You don’t have to be a tree-hugging granola to understand where Foer is coming from: simply, factory farming in the US is fucked up. But beyond the deceiving corporations who run these farms and the environmental detriment, perhaps the hardest passages are those on abuses suffered by the animals themselves. Foer bravely tackles a subject most of us tiptoe around in this honest, well-researched book.
This article appears in Aug 12-18, 2010.
“Eating Animals” is an honest book, a good read, and largely because of the personal angle Safran-Foer give the issues. A funny, poignant novel that also deals with the questions around (not) eating animals is Ruth Ozeki’s “My Year of Meats.” The skeptical may want to note that the book is recommended by John Sayles, former member, Amalgamated Meat Packers and Butcher Workers of North America—also the director of “Matewan,” “Men with Guns,” and “Sunshine.”