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Eating Animals

Jonathan Safran Foer (Goodreads Author)

4.20 · Rating details · 65,993 ratings · 6,453 reviews

Jonathan Safran Foer spent much of his life oscillating between enthusiastic carnivore and occasional vegetarian. Once he started a family, the moral dimensions of food became increasingly important.
Faced with the prospect of being unable to explain why we eat some animals and not others, Foer set out to explore the origins of many eating traditions and the fictions involv ...more

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Hardcover, 341 pages

Published November 2nd 2009 by Little, Brown and Company (first published October 31st 2009)

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Lists with This Book

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445 books — 490 voters

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Nov 03, 2009 dara rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to dara by: Jonathan Safran Foer's previous writing

Shelves: favorites, read-in-2009, reviewed

This isn't as much of a review of Jonathan Safran Foer's latest book as it is a reaction to it--a reaction to the reactions of others, even. The title of this book garners a reaction from people who haven't read it and who may never read it. Just carry Eating Animals around for a few days and you'll understand. There's an assumption that a book about eating animals is going to tell you that it is in some way wrong to eat animals--whether for the welfare of animals or for your own welfare--and mo ...more

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Oct 10, 2009 brian rated it really liked it

TO SERVE MAN

i can't review this book. can't even finish it. the page-count to tears-shed ratio is just too high. and my head's not in the right place for this shit. (and talk about preaching to the choir…) -- i haven't read jonathan safran foer's novels and fuckoff what he's ever written or what he ever will write: he's a great man for this book alone. he's a great man by default, perhaps, because most people are such evil and miserable cunts. but, no. set apart from a race of miserable cunts he TO SERVE MAN

i can't review this book. can't even finish it. the page-count to tears-shed ratio is just too high. and my head's not in the right place for this shit. (and talk about preaching to the choir…) -- i haven't read jonathan safran foer's novels and fuckoff what he's ever written or what he ever will write: he's a great man for this book alone. he's a great man by default, perhaps, because most people are such evil and miserable cunts. but, no. set apart from a race of miserable cunts he's still a great man.

the problem, really, with hitler and stalin and mao and all those other guys is not what they did... but what they didn't do. a bad case of extreme short-sightedness. they set their crosshairs on specific targets when what they really should have gone after was the destruction of the entire human race. (logistically i know this is problematic; you need to start small. but i can dream, eh?) if i found a magic lantern, before the genie uttered 'and your first wish can't be for a million more wishes', i'd already have made my only wish: that every human being on the planet be instantly transformed into a dog except for me (and rosario dawson. or marisa tomei. decades of silence and masturbation and i'd probably end up throwing myself off a bridge after a week-long romp with a border collie). and i'd hang out with all of 'em. i'd toss a few hundred dogs into a swimming pool and do laps. i'd play tag in forests with 'em. i'd take 'em swimming in oceans and lakes. and then i'd retire to my cabin, start a fire, pour myself and rosario a cold beer, stuff about 3 or 4 hundred dogs into a large room, and me and my woman'd take a long nap with/on them.

the human race is capable of such beauty and goodness, and life is not easy -- there's little clarity: it's seldom easy to know what is truly right or wrong. but factory farms? the torture and intense suffering of creatures weaker than us? no brainer. and all the war and peaces, all the mona lisas, all the moonlight sonatas, all the oskar schindlers and MLKs cannot possibly justify what we've done to one another, what we've done to the planet we inhabit, and most offensively, to the rape and utter destruction of the animal kingdom.

my dream scenario: as a result of the evil actions perpetrated on animals, a variant of swine or bird flu gets ultra-deadly, goes airborne, and wipes us all out. yes. we have reached the point in which the kanamits should come and 'serve' us. we've earned it. and we should know what it's like to be on the other end.

as human beings we simply must lie to ourselves about much -- but not about this. it is not necessary. but we do. and for what? for the least interesting of our five senses? because stuff tastes good? we tolerate factory farms because stuff is 'yummy'?
evil and miserable cunts.

do i sound too angry? hyperbolic? unstable? juvenile? like some blood-throwing PETA nut? am i 'not going to convince anyone with this tone'? good. i don't want to convince anyone. i just want the human-eradicating disease to come.
and come soon.

and if considering a vote for this review, understand that it's almost totally certain that if i knew you i'd wanna toss you in a woodchipper.
keep your vote, miserable cunt. ...more

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Aug 22, 2020 Ruby Granger rated it it was amazing

EVERYONE should read this book. I don't think I've ever read something so important.
Starting from a neutral standpoint on the matter, Safran Foer answers the question of whether he and his family should eat meat. Approaching the subject as a journalist, he includes interviews with family-run farms, activists and slaughterhouse workers. He includes different perspectives and arguments (which is great!) but ultimately exposes an underground network which is shocking.
I knew the situation was bad, ...more

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Nov 04, 2009 JSou rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

I am not a vegetarian. Honestly, I've never even tried to be a vegetarian at any point in my life. I love steak. I love bacon. I love sushi. I could go on, but you get the idea.

With my son not being able to have any sort of gluten or artificial coloring in the food he eats, I've always thought I was doing good by stopping by the actual farmer's stand to get fresh eggs and some fruit & veggies (one benefit of living in a small, hick town) and then picking up my nicely-packaged and already butcher I am not a vegetarian. Honestly, I've never even tried to be a vegetarian at any point in my life. I love steak. I love bacon. I love sushi. I could go on, but you get the idea.

With my son not being able to have any sort of gluten or artificial coloring in the food he eats, I've always thought I was doing good by stopping by the actual farmer's stand to get fresh eggs and some fruit & veggies (one benefit of living in a small, hick town) and then picking up my nicely-packaged and already butchered meat from the store. Foer addresses this in the book about how people just don't want to think about how their meat ends up ready for them to purchase, and that's surely the case with me. I have no issues picking up the value-pack of chicken breasts, yet I can't go to Red Lobster anymore since I feel so bad for those damn lobsters on display. I've always assumed operations in a slaughterhouse wouldn't exactly be pleasant, but again, I willingly ignored to really think about what goes on there.

One of the main points Foer brings up in this is factory-farming. Corporations have taken over the aspect of farming, and of course done everything they can think of just to make it as profitable as possible. The majority of all meat in this country comes from this type of farming now, and there is only a very small percentage of actual farmers left. How these animals are treated throughout their short lives in these factory-farms is sickening. I don't think anyone who reads this book will be able to ignore these issues anymore. I know I'm not able to. This book really opened my eyes not only to the ethical standpoint of eating animals, but also to the health-related issues. The conditions at these factory-farms are vile. There is no way I can feed my kids this kind of meat knowing the shit (yes, actual shit) it's been through.

JSF's writing throughout this is never preachy or whiny; he just presents the facts and wants the reader to make his/her own choice on the matter. He talks with ranchers who are still trying as best they can to hold onto the old way of farming, members of PETA, and vegans who are trying to construct more humane slaughterhouses. The book never felt one-sided or that it was attacking people who eat meat. It did inspire me to make a drastic change though, and I think anyone who reads this would feel the same. ...more

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Feb 26, 2020 Sean Barrs rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: meat eaters

Shelves: nature-biology-enviroment, 5-star-reads, veganism-and-vegetarianism

Should we stop eating animals?

To my mind the answer to this question is very plain and very straightforward; it does not require much thought or calculation: the answer is, of course, yes.

We should stop. We should have stopped a long time ago, but it is very difficult for an entire population to break a habit that is centuries in the making. A habit, though, is not justification enough for eating animals. There can be no justification.

Truth is, the animal agriculture industry is the single la Should we stop eating animals?

To my mind the answer to this question is very plain and very straightforward; it does not require much thought or calculation: the answer is, of course, yes.

We should stop. We should have stopped a long time ago, but it is very difficult for an entire population to break a habit that is centuries in the making. A habit, though, is not justification enough for eating animals. There can be no justification.

Truth is, the animal agriculture industry is the single largest contributor towards climate change. Simply put, our diets are destroying the planet. The amazon rain-forest is being reaped to clear land to grow crops to feed to the animals we harvest for food. A much more sustainable practice would be to eat the crops ourselves; it would be a drastic reduction in the amount of land needed to feed us.

Veganism is the answer to climate change.

So many climate protesters and influencers lobby governments and local councils to take action on what is now being called the climate crisis, but the single biggest action we can take as individuals is to go plant based and to no longer partake in the industries that are ruining our planet. We need to take moral responsibility. We need to stop pointing fingers. We need to wake up. We need to change. And we need to do it right now.

Environmental reasoning is one case this book discusses at length. Ethics and compassion are another. Ethically speaking, killing is morally wrong. We live in a world where there are so many viable alternatives to animal products. If we can avoid causing suffering through our food choices, then we should at every opportunity. Then there is the entire health side of the debate. I am not going to discuss this at length here, but instead point you in the direction of a wonderful book that could change your life How Not to Die.

The most effective element of this book is its openness. It is non-threatening, and it provides succinct discussions on why we should stop eating animals. It wants you to think. It wants you to question. It wants you to consider the ramifications of your choices. And so do I.

___________________________________

You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree
__________________________________ ...more

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Nov 05, 2008 Lisa Vegan rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: everybody 16+; anyone who’s in a position to decide for themselves what to consume

Recommended to Lisa by: Christina

Shelves: animal-rights, philosophy, goodreads-author, zz-5star, 1-also-at-librarything, z2009, readbooks-male-author-or-illust, reviewed, non-fiction, biography

I was torn how to rate this book. It isn’t perfect (I noted many flaws in its comprehensiveness) but it’s amazing enough, so 5 stars it is.

I’ve read so many books such as this but none for a while, and it’s because reading about how humans use animals is so devastating for me. It’s not just the books’ contents, it’s knowing that, at most, only 1% of Americans feel as I do, that my feelings and beliefs are shared by so few (The latest statistics I have are that 3% of Americans are truly vegetaria ...more

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Feb 04, 2010 mason rated it it was amazing

i've long flirted with vegetarianism. for a few months in the early '00s, i even dated her. but i'd never truly wanted to spend all of my time with her, send her flowers, or introduce her to my parents (and everyone i've ever cared about) until i read this book.

foer claims early on that he hasn't set out to write a book about why people should become vegetarians, an argument that holds zero ounces of water once you actually start reading his descriptions of factory farms. i found it impossible t ...more

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Aug 21, 2009 Meredith Holley rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Michael Pollan

Recommended to Meredith by: JSF? No need for a recommendation

Shelves: non-fiction, reviewed, disturbing

I don’t mean this dismissively, but I feel like I finally get what Charlton Heston meant when he cried out, “Soylent Green is people!! It’s peeeeople!” Just . . . I don’t know. That movie’s pretty silly, but I keep walking around the house feeling like all those years that I ate meat, I was really eating human souls. And I even knew almost all of this information before reading the book. I know I’m being dramatic, as per usual, but there really is something about food that brings out both the be ...more

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Jan 05, 2010 Stephanie *Extremely Stable Genius* rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2010, favorites, non-fiction

Hear are my thoughts in order as I was reading this book....

1. OMG.....OMFG!

2. Crap...now I'm a vegatarian!

3. I can never have my favorite Mongolian Chicken from Mings again (snif).

Yes in that order. I have not eaten meat since half way through this book. Will it stick? I hope so.

Not only the mind numbing crulety of the factory farms (which is plenty), and the enviormental damage they cause, but the shear crap they feed the animals did it for me. H1N1....factory farms. traced back to a hog farm ...more

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May 13, 2016 Ashley DiNorcia rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, non-fiction

I realize I finished this book 10 days ago and have not rated it...and I also can't stop thinking about it.

There's a lot I could say about this book and how much it made me think-it's completely riddled with highlighter-but honestly, most people I know wouldn't bother picking this up no matter what I say. We eat animals because we're too selfish and stubborn to change. We eat animals because we're too lazy to make the "inconvenient" choices. We eat animals because we've been told over and over ...more

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Nov 13, 2009 Rebecca rated it it was ok

Shelves: read2010, upwithfood

In his book Heat, Bill Buford reflects (as he prepares to butcher a pig) that he has always respected vegetarians for being among the few who actually think about meat.

In Eating Animals, JSF doesn't seem to respect much of anybody, other than his grandmother and Kafka. For all the promising ethical paths he walks down, from traditional animal husbandry to Bill Niman's sustainable beef to animal rights activism, he's so determined to shit on everyone else's ideas about eating meat that I'm not s ...more

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Jun 22, 2017 Lori rated it liked it · review of another edition

Well, fresh fruits and vegetables are alive and responsive to light when you eat them, grain harvesters leave a wake of maimed and mutilated wildlife, and a songbird dies for every cup of coffee. I suspect that last is an imprecise ratio. So, Burroughs point that your food was alive is absolutely true. While North Americans aren’t the only people who overeat, it’s obvious that we do. Ninety dollars for a Thanksgiving turkey would certainly limit my household consumption.

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Nov 16, 2009 Books Ring Mah Bell rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction

Well done, Jonathan Safran Foer, well done.
(your book, not steak)

Look, I love meat. I really do. I hate myself for that, but I love meat. I also deplore seeing living creatures suffer. (I'm the jerk that lets spiders out of the house instead of squishing them.) I also know that if I had to kill the animal myself, I'd be a veggie for sure. I'm a total sucker for animals, but not enough of a sucker, I guess.

In junior high, I became a "crazy animal rights/environmentalist tree worshiping bunny hugg ...more

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Aug 20, 2009 Chloe rated it really liked it

Shelves: i-will-not-eat-them-sam-i-am, environment

“For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves. The lies are necessary because, without them, many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.”
-Derrick Jensen

People cannot talk about their food choices without resorting to a narrative, and I’m no different. Food is so intensely personal; we relate to it on such an elemental level, that it’s easy to understand. The foods we eat are part of the mythos we use to delineate our identities. We eat “For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves. The lies are necessary because, without them, many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.”
-Derrick Jensen

People cannot talk about their food choices without resorting to a narrative, and I’m no different. Food is so intensely personal; we relate to it on such an elemental level, that it’s easy to understand. The foods we eat are part of the mythos we use to delineate our identities. We eat kosher or halal because this is part of the cultural heritage that we are either born into or adopt as our own. We have our comfort foods and guilty pleasures and food phobias and all of these help inform who we are. My own narrative is none too exciting:

I stopped eating meat at fifteen as a bet with a very intense (self righteous?) vegan and animal rights activist friend of mine and just sort of never stopped. I have to admit that videos of slaughterhouses and feedlots disseminated by PETA (regardless of my current feelings about them) played a large part in my continued change of diet- I love the taste of animal flesh, but cannot agree with the way in which it is culled. If I’m going to be eating an animal then I am going to be the person who raises it, cares for it, kills it and prepares it and I want to honor its sacrifice as best as possible. Since my laziness precludes that active of a relationship with my food, I’ve stuck with my current diet. Along the way I’ve slipped up- sushi while living in Hawaii (who am I to say no to that?) and goulash while living in the Czech Republic (because there’s really only so much fried cheese a person can eat) - but I’ve always come back to the fold. To this day I still don’t call myself a vegetarian because I grow easily tired of people trying to find some hypocrisy in my actions, as though a failure to adhere to doctrine on my part would make the entire case of animal rights a moot point. Instead I just tell friends that “I don’t eat meat.” This is both a good way of circumventing any sort of new age stereotypes they may hold about vegetarianism as well as paving the way for a positive (read: non-adversarial) discussion as to my various reasons for it.

Suffice to say that when I heard that Jonathan Safran Foer, revered author of both Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, was penning a book about his lifelong debate about whether or not he should eat meat, I was sold. Fast-paced, impeccably researched, witty, heart-breaking and infuriating, this book did not disappoint. There’s relatively little that is ground-breaking or new here, the literature on animal rights has been dittoed for decades now. What makes this book so remarkable is Foer’s voice. Foer is an author able to evoke the most fragile of emotions from some of the most embittered hearts and to have the opportunity to look into the world of slaughterhouses and feedlots with one of the few authors to reduce me to a shuddering wreck was like looking at the world through less jaded eyes.

Rather than use the horrific realities (and they truly are horrific) of factory farming to attempt to shock the reader, a tactic that I would have taken much umbrage with, Foer presents the sad facts in a straightforward, almost clinical, tone: “At a KFC ‘Supplier of the Year,’ Pilgrim’s Pride, fully conscious chickens were kicked, stomped on, slammed into walls, had chewing tobacco spit in their eyes, literally had the shit squeezed out of them, and had their beaks ripped off” (Pg. 182). Rather than minimizing the impact these facts would have, this allows the reader’s imagination to fill in all the gory details, which cannot help but be far more persuasive. This book isn’t a rant, it’s a conversation. It is a conversation about our existence in relation to other beings and the level of respect that they should be afforded. It’s a conversation about the dehumanizing effect brought on by our near-complete divorce from the natural world. Foer just makes his points in as straightforward a manner as possible and lets the reader pose the question themselves: “Now that you are aware of what goes into making your food, what are you going to do?” When ignorance is stripped away what can be left but to change or be reduced to flimsy excuses and hardened hearts?

The solution, as solutions invariably are, is not a simple one. There is not one hard and fast answer to what we should do, though I’ve had many discussions with animal advocates who claim that making the mass slaughter of animals illegal would spur a massive increase in the number of vegetarians in the world. Ignoring the fact that such pie-in-the-sky utopianism is simply never going to happen (sorry, Obama, systemic change does not come from within), it also neglects the true cost of the farming of soy, the protein replacement choice of millions of vegetarians.

Every day some 200 acres of Amazonian rainforest get bulldozed so that their mineral-scarce soils can be used as beds for another crop of soy. American farmers alternate growing vast fields of genetically modified corn with vast fields of genetically modified soy, never allowing a field to lay fallow for a season or two and recapture the necessary nutrients for growing, which leads to the addition of dozens of petrochemical fertilizer cocktails to spur it on. In short, the problem of farming animals is a symptom of a far larger problem, one which activist and author Derrick Jensen has been writing about for years: civilization in and of itself is a ravenous self-sustaining cancer bent on feeding desires that it hasn’t even thought of yet. It is the uncontrolled id to our Prius-driving, Trader Joe’s-shopping, plant-a-tree on Earth Day, National Geographic-subscribing ego. No story that we spin for ourselves will change the fact that our individual impact on slowing this destruction will be nil.

This is also why I don’t get down on myself for my cheese addiction (yes, addiction is the correct word. I will fight a strung-out tweaker in Thunder Dome for a block of cheddar and perform far more unsavory acts for just the promise of a good muenster). The problem of is huge, probably insurmountable, but to not even attempt to change is to tacitly approve of the system as it stands. An activist hoping to make a difference can be easily overwhelmed by the sheer scope and interconnectedness of the problems facing us. When confronted with just how much suffering goes into our comfortable First World living it’s easy to suffer an empathy overload and just be rendered numb to new atrocities. As the Buddhists like to say, all of life is suffering. It is up to us to determine just how much we can bear on our consciences. The trick is finding a level of compromise that you as an individual can live with. It could be as simple as beginning to cook vegetarian once or twice a week and making more conscious selections when in the grocer or it could be as extreme as eschewing all animal products, from steak to gelatin to leather- or any middle ground in between. Even the smallest step is still forward momentum.
...more

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Jan 13, 2010 Greg rated it really liked it

Shelves: general-non-fiction

I’ve been a vegetarian for a few years now, and it was a long process that brought me here (literally too, I didn’t go cold turkey). I’m sometimes surprised by how little I thought about certain things throughout my life. And coming from someone who grew up with a face in a book, and his head in the clouds, I find this interesting. I over-thought and over-analyzed everything (or at least everything I thought about). I spent my days thinking about fantasy worlds and the future, about girls and re I’ve been a vegetarian for a few years now, and it was a long process that brought me here (literally too, I didn’t go cold turkey). I’m sometimes surprised by how little I thought about certain things throughout my life. And coming from someone who grew up with a face in a book, and his head in the clouds, I find this interesting. I over-thought and over-analyzed everything (or at least everything I thought about). I spent my days thinking about fantasy worlds and the future, about girls and relationships (of which I was not very adept at having), about what ifs and what could bes. I thought. I was philosophizing about the universe, and society, and the self long before I knew I was even doing it. And yet even with everything I thought about, there was so much that I never questioned, that I just took for granted.

The state of consumerism in our society makes it very easy for us to not question certain things (though I certainly can’t blame my choices on "the system"). We are so far removed from the process that brings things to our doorsteps and our dinner tables, that it usually takes an effort to even begin contemplating it. How many of us question where our tvs and laptops came from, how that cup of coffee got in our hands, who made the sneakers we’re wearing and how did this food got on our plates? I certainly didn’t. And yet when we start asking ourselves these questions they become hard to ignore. That last of those questions becomes most salient when we start asking, “what” was this food before it got to our plates?

I imagine many children one day suddenly realize they’re eating Babe for dinner and ask their parents why. Their parents probably tell them not to worry about it, and to finish their dinner, and most of them do, end of story…vegetarianism averted. I was recently shocked to learn that as a child I actually went vegetarian for a year or two (I vaguely recall this). Without any real explanation to my mom, I just refused to eat any meat. When I started again, it was sparingly (once a week), and never ventured out past a few staple meats. I never ate pork (jewish schooling gave me an aversion to it, even though my family didn't keep kosher), I refused to eat seafood (it was gross), and mainly stuck with chicken and turkey. Even when I started eating steak I had to eat it well done. Thinking about it now I like to tell myself that deep down I knew what I was doing was wrong. That I didn’t eat seafood because it still too closely resembled the animal it had been before, that I couldn’t eat rare meat because the blood reminded me of what I was eating, and that I felt too sorry for all the other animals to eat them. This probably isn’t that unlikely, but I wouldn’t steak my life on it (pun intended), my general pickiness as an eater is kind of damning for my “I was ethical but didn’t know it” theory.

As an adult, the more I thought about the life and suffering of the animals that were sacrificed for my meal, the harder it became to continue eating them. I never watched any of those horrible factory farming videos, I didn’t have to, though I had some idea of the content. Having seen these videos now, I only wish someone had shown them when I was 15 because I would have been a vegetarian for 15 years now, rather than three. I’m sometimes baffled by individuals that are aware of the practices involved in the meat industry, but continue to support it (with their dollars and their dinners). I imagine there are two types. One intellectually believes they shouldn’t be eating meat anymore, but is held back from making the choice. I understand this state of being. I lived it. I struggled most of my life with acting on, and making a reality, my inner beliefs. How often do we say we’re going to start working out, or stop wasting time on this or that, and we never do it. I fully empathize with this predicament.

Then there are those who understand the system, but who don’t care, or don’t agree it’s wrong in any way. This second case is more baffling, though it shouldn’t be. The human ability to engage in cognitive dissonance (is that something you engage in?) is truly amazing. I’m sure there were plenty of good and kind people who owned slaves, men who value loyalty above all else but cheat on their wives, and though I doubt anyone reading this would rob a bank, how many of us have cheated on our taxes or stolen something from work? I imagine this second case consists of people who understand what’s involved in the meat industry, but don’t think that animals feel pain like us, or that their suffering is like that of a machine or a bug. Or who maybe buy into the fallacy that we need to eat all that meat to fulfill our protein requirements (I should note I’m not a vegan yet). Whatever it is, they feel the positives of eating that food outweighs any negatives involved in bringing it to their plate.

As if this wasn’t enough, the more I thought about the chemicals we pump into these animals, and the damage done to our environment and the resources we consume in feeding, housing, raising, processing, and transporting our food, I just couldn’t justify taking part in it anymore. The only thing left is the “but it tastes good” philosophy, and I really do struggle sometimes to find sympathy for it. It’s worth noting I’m not the kind of vegetarian who is against the idea of eating meat in theory (it’s just dead flesh), but given the realities of our system I don’t find I have another choice for myself.

I’ve always been an animal lover and the happenstance of our willingness to eat Porky but not Skippy strikes me as odd. This has been another tough part of society for me to come to grips with. As someone who wants to work in cognitive science, and who owns and loves two ferrets, I have to wrestle with the fact that much neuroscientific research is done on ferrets. We live in a world of contradictions and hypocrisies and this is not on the verge of changing any time soon. And I guess we each have to ask ourselves, how far are we willing to go to break out of the system and act on our beliefs?

I didn’t intend for this book review to turn into a story about me, but I think it’s a fitting way to write about a Jonathon Safran Foer book. Foer can weave a sad, funny, and heartbreaking story in beautiful prose like it's spilling out of his mouth. His stories are fantasy, but they are also personal journeys. In a way this book was about his personal journey to becoming a vegetarian, and the case he makes for it. I can’t think of a better way to recommend this book than to tell you about the personal journey I took, and direct you to Eating Animals if you want to read a thorough case for it, written by someone with more talent than yours truly, and an amazing ability to be frank, and yet empathetic and non-judgmental at the same time.. I should warn readers though, I only vaguely mention the fact that there are many problems with the meat industry, Foer goes into much more specific detail about these practices. If you're a squeamish person, you may have serious problems getting through this book. One half of me wants to tell you to not read this book to protect you, and the other half wants you to go through that if it makes you take stock afterwards... ...more

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Oct 08, 2020 Prerna rated it liked it

Shelves: philosophy, non-fiction

This is a difficult review to write, my reading experience of this book has been painful.

The ethics of meat-eating is something I've struggled with for a long while and I personally chose vegetarianism over five years ago. However, I refrain from bringing it up in my conversations because, as the author points out in this book, food is a cultural icon. Our debates regarding food are discomfort inducing to say the least, and they often don't have any conclusions to offer.

While most of our indiffe ...more

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Feb 22, 2011 Caroline rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, get-smart, he-wrote-it, important-nonfiction, litmus-test, page-turner, nonfiction, maximum-impact

***NO SPOILERS***

The title alone may scare off those who’d rather not know how their meat got from farm to table, but Eating Animals is one of those books that’s too important not to read. This is part memoir, part journalistic investigation, but the book is strongest when going inside slaughterhouses and educating, exposing the truth of something heinous beyond imagining.

When people think of farms, idyllic Charlotte’s Webーlike images might spring to mind, but according to Eating Animals, the f ***NO SPOILERS***

The title alone may scare off those who’d rather not know how their meat got from farm to table, but Eating Animals is one of those books that’s too important not to read. This is part memoir, part journalistic investigation, but the book is strongest when going inside slaughterhouses and educating, exposing the truth of something heinous beyond imagining.

When people think of farms, idyllic Charlotte’s Webーlike images might spring to mind, but according to Eating Animals, the farm of today is a factory. Our clothing, toys, cars, boxed and canned foods, and many, many other products are created and processed in factories. Farm animals are now no different.

Lest passionate meat-eaters think Eating Animals is a stringent pro-vegetarian, “meat is murder” book, Foer is sure to approach the topic from another angle; he points out factory farming’s effects on human beings. One of the most compelling and frightening sections concerns the connection between factory farming and the rise in aggressive flus that jump from animals to people, such as avian flu. Information about the serious health ailments suffered as a result of living near factory hog farms will have readers looking at Smithfield with new eyes. Slaughterhouse work has an almost 100% turnover rate; workers cannot handle the psychological toll.

Is Eating Animals life-changing? It most definitely is. It’s arresting, thoughtfully researched, and intensely interesting, and what’s quite notable is that Foer is never militant or holier-than-thou in his vegetarian views; in fact, the book is well balanced by italicized sections that are first-hand accounts from farmers, an animal activist, and even a vegan who builds slaughterhouses. These are interesting and offer a welcome reprieve from the shock and statistics of the rest.

At one point, Foer says something especially intriguing. He says that sales of cruelty-free/cage-free (sadly, labels that actually mean nothing) eggs are rising in the United States. This proves that people want to do right by animals. He therefore surmises that if 100 meat-eaters were fully informed about factory farming, 95 would choose vegetarianism.

Finally, the entire book is food for thought, but perhaps nothing hits home more than this: “Not responding is a response--we are equally responsible for what we don't do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle.”

Update, 3/16/20: "What the "meat paradox" reveals about moral decision making" https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20... ...more

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Dec 20, 2018 Rebecca McNutt rated it it was ok

Shelves: non-fiction, memoir, animal-rights, philosophy

Being unabashedly speciesist myself and having seen how sadistic most animals are when killing their own prey, I honestly can't say I got much out of reading Eating Animals. It was so pretentious and holier-than-thou that it just had me cringing the entire time, and I'm not entirely sure that Foer really understands much about animals in general, writing about them as if they are these angelic and pure souls that we must all view as equal to or better than ourselves. I know I'm setting myself up Being unabashedly speciesist myself and having seen how sadistic most animals are when killing their own prey, I honestly can't say I got much out of reading Eating Animals. It was so pretentious and holier-than-thou that it just had me cringing the entire time, and I'm not entirely sure that Foer really understands much about animals in general, writing about them as if they are these angelic and pure souls that we must all view as equal to or better than ourselves. I know I'm setting myself up for either a barrage of PETA-esque hate mail for posting this review, or for some patronizing criticisms trying to convert me from being another ignorant sheep - whoops, shouldn't use the phrase "sheep", that's speciesist - but at this point I'm not sure I care. I go to a liberal arts university and have already gotten enough of a bad rep for my views on climate change and religion, so I'll risk it.

Eating Animals is so judgemental it's not even funny. Right off the bat it assumes readers are just blind to where food comes from and that they choose to view animals as less-than just because it's easy. I've seen the interior of factory farms before, I've seen butchered animals before, I've seen pigs and chickens in cages before. Personally, after seeing murdered human beings I find that the humane killing of a chicken or a pig pales in comparison, moreover I view animals as less-than not because it's easy, but because I find most animals are sadists and are inferior in their lack of empathy, their impulsive behaviors and their blatant cruelty to their own prey. If a cat which captures, "plays with" (tortures) a live rodent before eating it alive can still be considered a sweet and dear little pet, I cannot really buy into the notion that it's wrong to humanely shock and then kill animals for the purpose of food production. And to assume I'm better than the cat and should therefore behave less savagely is also speciesist. Anyhow, it wasn't even just the book's constant criticism of society which I hated, but also the long bouts of philosophical ramblings which failed to sway me and also came across as an attempt simply to guilt people for their personal lifestyle choices. And don't get me wrong, I see nothing bad about veganism or being a vegetarian. A lot of vegans and vegetarians just want to be left alone, bother nobody and have chosen to not eat meat/use animal products because of their own subjective morality - no more or less subjective than any argument which could be made for eating meat - but I do see something wrong with guilting or talking down to others to shove them towards your own arbitrary viewpoint. That's what bullies and radicals do, neither of which I respond to with any level of respect.

Had Eating Animals been able to make more of a point for animal rights than the same tired old shtick we've all heard before and a lot of recycled pop philosophy, I might have given it three stars rather than two for at least being able to craft a solid argument based on more than just misplaced sentiment and self-righteousness. I couldn't care less about Foer's beliefs or his little anecdotes. I think he was almost at the point of making at least a good case for why factory farming is a bad practice (and I would agree that free-range farms are better and more natural for the environment), but just when I thought he would get it right and make a compelling argument, he'd go off rambling about himself or about animals in an almost fictional sense. The whole mess of it is just very silly rather than persuasive. I do find it ironic that while he's so against meat-eating he says nothing about the toll which vegetable crops take on the land or on the animals whose habitats are destroyed by crops. So, it's wrong to hurt/kill animals for meat but when it comes to non-meat farming it's just better not to mention it? Why side-step it? It's wrong to kill animals until it isn't? Does it matter less if we cut down a forest and destroy a habitat to grow soybeans, rice and corn than if we butcher one pig?

The problem with Eating Animals isn't that it cares about animal welfare. There is nothing wrong with caring about animals, liking animals or wanting to do right by animals. The problem with this book is that it doesn't make the reader think. It tells the reader what to think while sanctimoniously making anybody who doesn't obey Foer's ideas out to be some kind of monster. Using overdramatic rhetoric and "facts" that aren't really facts but rather objective opinions and moral values, Eating Animals is a book that will please vegans and vegetarians but drive others further away... oh, and of course there's a dash of vanity project thrown in for good measure.

*I will concede that to Foer's credit, at least he openly criticizes PETA. I lost all respect for them after some nutter dressed as a rabbit on the street once told me that he was speaking on behalf of PETA to warn me that baked pretzels are glazed with animal urine. After calling a few food companies it didn't take long to discover that most of them use synthetic alternatives these days and that PETA's information was very dated and worst-case-scenario when it comes to ingredients used in food. And hey, even in 100% vegan products, the FDA permits an allowable number of animal contaminants such as mouse hairs, maggots and insect parts - so thank you Mr. Foer for at least having the decency to not stoop to shock value or gross-out statements the way PETA does, and for not lumping in all vegans and vegetarians in as PETA zealots. Most of my friends who happen to be vegan do not associate with PETA, they just care about animal rights. ...more

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Jun 26, 2013 Darwin8u rated it liked it

Shelves: 2013

“If Nothing Matters, There's Nothing to Save”
- Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

description

I'm going to have to chew on this book for a bit. I'm not sure a review the day after reading will fully vest what I plan on doing after reading this. I might be about ready to go veg, but there is something just annoying enough about JSF that almost wants to keep me eating meat just to piss him off. Nah, that really isn't true, but I wish it was.

The book isn't as well-written as I would have liked. It gave me ...more

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Apr 30, 2010 unknown rated it really liked it

Shelves: library-books, 2010, 30-day-book-challenge, 52-in-2010, add-half-a-star, non-fiction

I am floating this again (last time! Swear!), this time for the Facebook 30 Day Book Challenge. Day whatever I am on asks for a book that changed your life. I... don't know that I have ever read a book that really changed my life. But this one comes the closest.

That sounds a little dippy, but really. For years, I had skittered around the margins of vegetarianism. I'd forgo meat the majority of the time, perhaps even the vast majority, but I didn't have really concrete reasons as to why. Health? ...more

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Nov 10, 2009 Melissa rated it really liked it

Shelves: what-the-fuck-are-we-even-doing

I think that this book has changed my life, albeit in a really f*cking inconvenient way. I've read Omnivore's Dilemma and Fast Food Nation and all the types of books that people who are trying to be socially conscious are supposed to read, and I know about the horrors of factory farming and how brutally animals are treated in the course of getting to my plate. But somehow it's been easier to live with it and ignore it in the past; Pollan even gives you a convenient out at the end of his book, wh I think that this book has changed my life, albeit in a really f*cking inconvenient way. I've read Omnivore's Dilemma and Fast Food Nation and all the types of books that people who are trying to be socially conscious are supposed to read, and I know about the horrors of factory farming and how brutally animals are treated in the course of getting to my plate. But somehow it's been easier to live with it and ignore it in the past; Pollan even gives you a convenient out at the end of his book, where he "pities" the "dreams of innocence" of the vegetarian. I've never quite had it put to me the way that Safran Foer does, and it is this way that I cannot escape. This book asks just what the hell are you going to do about it? Knowing what you've just told about how chickens are raised & slaughtered, how the hell can you ever go to the store & buy chicken breasts again? After reading about what's done to pigs in the course of their lives, how can you go buy bacon? And even if you don't want to admit that turkeys and chickens and cows can feel pain, how can you support of an industry that Human Rights Watch says is guilty of "systemic human rights violations"? I'm not trying to get on a high horse or anything here: I love meat. I love bacon & sausage & desebrada & chicken fingers and pork roasts. I love these things and I don't want to go without them. And I never asked for the farming industry to use genetic manipulation to breed animals that are weaker & sicker. I never asked for them to jam-pack animals with antibiotics & end their lives in horrifically violent ways. But I don't think I can eat meat anymore because whether I asked for it or not, buying their products is supporting their ways.
This review's getting too long. I suppose to sum up, this book has changed my life & I really wish I hadn't read it. I really wish I could just go on pretending that none of this ever happens. I wish I didn't tear up when I think about the chicken in my freezer (keep in mind that I am pregnant & emotional, please). ...more

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Jun 11, 2014 Jennifer rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

Eating animals ...is about eating animals..and much much more. I've always felt wrong for eating meat yet continued to do so. For some reason, I thought it would be so hard to give up. Over time my conscience spoke louder than my fears (denials) and the ball has been rolling ever since. I wanted some extra encouragement, so I ordered this book.

I knew about slaughter houses and what goes on: to an extent. Little did I know, I really knew nothing. I've ingested this food all my life! HOLYYYYYY SH ...more

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Sep 27, 2019 Alex J. O'Connor added it

A non-intrusive and at times touching case for reconsidering our relationship with food. One of the fairest analyses of animal farming available to purchase -- it isn't unequivocally opposed to the use of animals for food, but that is not the point of the book.

If you already don't consume animals, this won't do much for you besides providing arguments to strengthen your enthusiasm for veganism, and humanising those who haven't made the same life choice. If you still do eat animals, this will be ...more

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Dec 25, 2009 Eric_W rated it really liked it

Shelves: current-affairs

Addendum 2/11/10 at bottom, edited to remove some grammatical errors 5/20/10

For Feb reading club. This NYTimes science article should help heat things up: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/sci...

Joint review with Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma

Let's see, things we can't or shouldn't eat: butter, steak, meat, spinach because of the salmonella (or maybe it's only the organic spinach that gets contaminated), apples because of the alar, salt, sugar, fat, any food not bought at a farmer's market, any foo ...more

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Nov 15, 2018 alexandra rated it really liked it

Shelves: influential, own-in-ebook, nonfiction, read-2018

4? 4.5? –

i’ve been vegetarian/vegan for the past two years and the contents of this book is the reason why it’s lasted this long (and will continue to last longer). although it did take me TWO YEARS to finally finish this, Eating Animals is life changing, important, and at times, hard to consume.

i wouldn’t consider myself a typical “animal lover” and grew up loving burgers and korean bbq. but i grew interested in the vegan community and picked this up a few weeks after i decided to make the chan ...more

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Nov 04, 2009 Elizabeth rated it really liked it

Shelves: losing-my-religion, journalism

Edit 04/15/13

"About thirty years ago the poultry industry convinced the UDSA to reclassify feces so that it could continue to use automatic eviscerators (where fecal contamination occurs from high-speed machines ripping open the birds' intestines, releasing feces into their body cavities). Feces are now classified as a "cosmetic blemish."

What does this mean (other than the fact that consumers are eating chicken shit)? Inspectors condemn half the number of birds. So, according to journalist Scot ...more

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Jun 23, 2015 Lee Klein rated it really liked it

Warning: the review that appears below was written in Summer 2015 (it's now Spring 2019) around the time the author experimented with veganism for a few months. He is embarrassed by the naivety and ignorance expressed in it. He now knows that climate change isn't primarily caused by cow farts and that grains and beans (carbs in general) are converted into glucose in your body, a process that maintains elevated insulin levels and thereby significantly contributes to diabetes, heart conditions, mo Warning: the review that appears below was written in Summer 2015 (it's now Spring 2019) around the time the author experimented with veganism for a few months. He is embarrassed by the naivety and ignorance expressed in it. He now knows that climate change isn't primarily caused by cow farts and that grains and beans (carbs in general) are converted into glucose in your body, a process that maintains elevated insulin levels and thereby significantly contributes to diabetes, heart conditions, most likely Alzheimer's disease (type 3 diabetes), as well as comparatively minor issues like indigestion and anxiety. He now believes that animal protein is essential for your physical and psychological health. Starting in the late '70s/early '80s, the processed food industry dumped shit-tons of sugar, flour, and oil into the food supply, diluting the regular daily consumption of protein from around 15% to around 10%, a change that may in part be responsible for more than a third of the U.S. population being diabetic or pre-diabetic these days (~110 million people overall) -- the solution isn't to stop eating animals but pretty much the opposite: to stop eating everything other than animals and some green veggies and more importantly to stop freaking eating for extended periods of time instead of constantly snacking. Agriculture practices, including for example monocropping, also aren't exactly innocent in terms of the environmental impact of deforestation and desertification. Anyway, I'll revise this italicized preamble if ever I adjust my viewpoint again but for now I would read what's below with many shakes of pink Himalayan salt atop a local grassfed flat-iron steak from the neighborhood woman-owned butcher shop.

I didn't have the highest opinion of this book or its author when I first heard of it. But since I've been heading toward a sort of not-very-militant veganism lately, I decided to give it a go when I saw a copy online for a penny plus shipping. It's a worthwhile read, especially as a moral argument -- that is, it's commendable as a somewhat formally inventive elaboration of the timeless conflict between wrong and right. The author's Judaic heritage helps him out in this sense, plus there's the heft of his grandmother's Holocaust survival and the perfectly handled (ie, not heavy-handed) association he suggests between the systemic execution of 50 billion animals a year for human consumption and the systemic execution of 12 million humans by the Nazis. Heft also comes in the form of the fact that animal agriculture (factory farming in particular) is the foremost contributor to global warming, more than emissions by a good deal. Bits that struck me included the fact that, thanks to factory farming, the price of meat hasn't really increased in decades whereas the price of everything else has quadrupled at least. Eating animals is a personal decision with global political ramifications. I love tacos al pastor, cheeseburgers, grilled kabobs, all sorts of fish, on and on, but I sort of feel like I've eaten my meat. I have the intelligence and funds and knowledge/creativity in the kitchen to eat mostly plants, grains, beans etc and be healthy and happy while not contributing to the general suffering of animals or degradation/endangerment of the planet in particular. The author's tone and mild formal inventiveness at first irritated me but it (the tone and my irritation) fell away as he unleashed the facts. I didn't mind parts in the first-person, but toward the end I skimmed gratuitous descriptions of eviscerated and dismembered and/or brutalized animals. In general, a good read that reinforced for me half-formed thoughts on the topic, that laid-out a few facts previously unknown to me, and most importantly that mapped moral complexities related to the stuff with which we stuff our faces. ...more

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Oct 18, 2009 Ginny Messina rated it it was amazing

Shelves: all-time-faves, animal-rights

There is no way that any compassionate and responsible person could read this book and not want to begin taking steps to end his or her contributions to factory farming.

Jonathan Safron Foer is not an animal rights activist and that’s not what this book is about. At the same time, it is not another Omnivore’s Dilemma, either. Eating Animals is a much more honest analysis of factory farming and it is also far more honest about the solutions. (In fact, it’s fair to say that this book makes Pollan ...more

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Sep 25, 2016 Amy | littledevonnook rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, favorites

Shocking yet incredibly informative - I was deeply moved by this book and I have since bought it for a number of friends and relatives to read.

In this brilliant work of non-fiction Jonathan Safran Foer shares his journey to becoming a vegetarian. Foer gives a very rounded look at why someone would want to be a vegetarian, he tackles a broad range of topics and presents them in a very digestible way. I didn't feel like this book was at all preachy and loved that fact that Foer went and interview ...more

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Oct 20, 2009 Lee rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Lee by: Lisa Vegan

Shelves: 2009, veg-n, own, environment-nature, favourites, animals, non-fiction

I’m sitting here after finishing this book asking myself how is it possible that only one short month ago I was an omnivore, regularly and obliviously munching away on fish and meat without the least idea of what goes into their production and delivery to my table.
The way this author approached the topic of eating animals really resonated with me. It was personal, it was engaging, he conveyed the information and expressed his preferences without making me feel I had to follow suit.

I love how h ...more

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About Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer

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Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of two bestselling, award-winning novels, Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and a bestselling work of nonfiction, Eating Animals. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.