Jonathan Safran Foer's "Eating Animals" is one of my favorite food books ever. I don't agree with everything it says, but the book is so incredibly compelling, the arguments so well reasoned, and the descriptions so very vivid, that I recommend it to anyone who is thinking seriously about our food and where it comes from.
Early in the book, Safran Foer takes great pains to describe why we should be eating dogs. He even goes so far as to provide a "classic Filipino" recipe. Here's a small excerpt:
[...] unlike all farmed meat, which requires the creation and maintenance of animals, dogs are practically begging to be eaten. Three to four million dogs and cats are euthanized annually. This amounts to millions of pounds of meat now being thrown away every year. The simple disposal of these euthanized dogs is an enormous ecological and economic problem. It would be demented to yank pets from homes. But eating those strays, those runaways, those not-quite-well-behaved-enough-to-keep dogs would be killing a flock of birds with one stone and eating it, too [...]
Dogs are plentiful, good for you, easy to cook, and tasty, and eating them is vastly more reasonable than going through all the trouble of processsing them into protein bits to become the food for the other species that becomes our food.
But Safran Foer is no monster, just a smart fella making a case for vegetarianism. He rounds out his discussion of eating dogs with this:
Thinking about dogs, and their relationship to the animals we eat, is one way of looking askance and making something invisible visible.
An avowed vegetarian, the author makes the case that - if we're going to eat any meat at all - we should be eating dogs, which are well-treated, plentiful, healthy, and delicious. And if the idea of eating dogs appalls us (which he hopes it will), then the idea of eating pigs, or cows, or chickens, or fish - which our industrial food system tortures, poisons, and abuses - should appall us even more.
I've heard more and more people use this line of reasoning lately (Alicia Silverstone could be heard talking about eating dogs on Oprah recently!), and I find it compelling. Not compelling enough to start eating dogs, you may be glad to know, but compelling enough to reconsider my views on even humanely raised animals.
In the words of Safran Foer:
Pigs are every bit as intelligent and feeling [as dogs], by any sensible definition of the words [...] So why don't they get to curl up by the fire? Why can't they at least be spared being tossed on the fire?
Good question, worth considering.
Comments
I don't doubt that the idea of eating dogs, particularly for those of us who consider our dog a full fledged member of the family, is a bit horrifying. The same holds true for horse meat, which in many parts of the world is considered a viable protein source.
I think that suggestion is similar to the idea expressed by other authors that if you choose to eat meat then you should be able to stomach (and in fact experience) the idea of killing that animal that becomes your meat. One must be able to understand that "meat" was once a living, breathing animal, not something that comes neatly cut and packaged at the store.
Excellent post, Lee! I haven't read this book, since I doubt I could handle another descent into the annals of meat production, but I think the topic is incredibly important and should be widely discussed.
I grew up on a tiny non-production family farm (Cornish hens, cats, a dog, a horse), loved all animals to the ends of the earth, yet had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA that I was eating them with nearly every meal. Eighteen years later, I went vegetarian, then vegan, as realized that I could no longer justify continuing to consume "food" manufactured (slaughtered, tortured, mutilated) by a disturbingly industrialized system that treats living, breathing, intelligent creatures like products simply because they cannot speak up (in English) for themselves. "Humane" meat production is an oxymoron of the highest order.
My belief system revolves around the idea that people shouldn't eat anything they'd be uncomfortable killing themselves; since I feel very comfortable picking lettuce and tomatoes, but not stealing milk from baby cows, debeaking chickens, or slitting pigs open from throat to sternum, I'm vegan. Meanwhile, people who would kill -- or, better yet, have already killed -- another animal just to eat it are (IMO) well within their rights to do so.
On the other hand, the unbelievable number of people who are willfully or blissfully unaware of the destruction that industrialized agriculture wreaks on ecosystems across the world need to give continuing to eat meat more than a little thought. (I'm not talking about farmers, hunter-gatherers, or people who don't otherwise have the resources to do so, I'm talking about comfortably middle-class city dwellers whose idea of "chicken" comes in the form of sterilized, pre-breaded nuggets handed to them through a drive-up window.) Eating Animals seems to be a wonderful introduction to that process.
Farm Sanctuary does amazing work with animals rescued from pseudo-agrarian torture chambers. And yes, oh, yes, I could talk about this all day. ;)
Y'know, I don't think meat eaters necessarily need to experience a slaughterhouse or be comfortable dealing a death blow themselves. We're social animals. We have specialized roles. Why demand that the job of butcher be treated differently than the job of, say, Web application project manager? I don't demand you to be able to write a data dictionary as the price of using the Internets.
Yes, if I had to raise/kill the pig myself, I would never eat bacon again. But that's the beauty of a market economy: I don't have to. I will pay farmers and meat packers to do something I'm unwilling or unable to do myself.
I do agree, though, that everyone who eats meat should be willing to shoulder the responsibility of decent animal husbandry. I think it's the right thing to keep food animals healthy and happy while they're raised and to kill them as quickly and painlessly as possible. I am willing and able to pay what it costs to do this for the meat I buy.
Now: why is it possible to buy, for a lesser price, meat that was raised and slaughtered to a lesser standard of quality? What makes it possible to take these shortcuts? Are consumers bearing the true costs anyway in the form of subsidies and tax breaks for giant farms? Are some costs, i.e. the costs of environmental stewardship, simply not being paid because no one makes or enforces effective laws against pollution? And what can an individual consumer do about it?
Wow, great discussion, thanks folks. Kris, thanks - I agree! Stephanie, I applaud your willingness to take a stand and make tough decisions, and I thank you for saying so. Amy, I agree with lots of what you wrote too.
I'm especially interested in the point about our collective creation of a system that allows such mistreatment of animals as part of the process, simply - or largely - so we can eat less expensive food (the idea of feeding the world with this kind of food has been discredited so many times that I won't give it an airing here). Here there has been a real willingness - even a desire - on the part of many of us to overlook (deny?) what we know to be true when we're at the grocery store. (Q: Want to know about how our food is made? A: No way!)
Reading the book, I couldn't help but wonder how people would shop if the labels made this more clear:
Would we still seek out the least expensive option? Maybe, but it'd be harder to deny what we were doing.
"Why demand that the job of butcher be treated differently than the job of, say, Web application project manager? I don't demand you to be able to write a data dictionary as the price of using the Internets."
Butchers simply prepare the meat for sale; slaughterhouse workers do the killing. I'm not saying that everyone should be able to do every job, I'm saying that people should be willing to witness and/or inflict the pain and suffering their dietary preferences necessitate.
Personally, I'd like to see people get more involved in the actual slaughtering because meat consumption inherently requires and encourages the violent deaths of sentient beings; it's very far from being something as cut and dry as data and/or the internet. Allowing people to become detached from where their food comes from is unfair to both humans and the creatures they're slathering in gravy and hoisting onto their plates.
At the bottom line, there really is no such thing as truly "decent" animal husbandry, only "slightly less awful" -- anything more than minuscule-scale meat production is an egregious waste of resources/grain/land, and while I know that people truly do feel this way, it's a bit impossible for me to comprehend the idea that anyone would feel better thinking that the animal s/he is eating was "happy" before it had its throat slit or a bolt shot through its brain.
(I'm not trying to be Preachy Vegan, here... I'm speaking more as someone who grew up in exceedingly rural Wisconsin farmland than anything else.)
"Here there has been a real willingness - even a desire - on the part of many of us to overlook (deny?) what we know to be true when we're at the grocery store. (Q: Want to know about how our food is made? A: No way!)
Reading the book, I couldn't help but wonder how people would shop if the labels made this more clear:
* FRESH! Chicken tortured terribly: $2.99/lb
* FRESH! Chicken tortured slightly: $4.99/lb
* FRESH! Chicken slaughtered quickly: $6.59/lb
Would we still seek out the least expensive option? Maybe, but it'd be harder to deny what we were doing."
I do so love and applaud all of this.
Good discussion!
Stephanie, to me, the principles ARE as cut and dried as the Internet. I appreciate your point--I simply, absolutely disagree with it.
If I am reading you right, you think that raising and killing animals for food is necessarily cruel and immoral because the animals have just as much right to life and freedom as human beings.
I don't think that. I think the relationship between me and my bacon is very similar to the one between me and my broccoli. If I expect to live, I must cause other beings to be killed so I can eat them. You draw the "not OK to kill and eat" line at animals (leaving in plants) because you identify with them and feel they share enough characteristics with humans to make their killing unconscionable. I don't draw the line there.
And no, I reject wholesale the notion that I have to be able to kill something to be allowed to eat it. The relationship between predator and prey, in its purest sense, is not a moral one where everyone has rights and responsibilities. Eating is not a dare or a right to be won. It is a matter of pure necessity and ability. I accept that I am not in a consensual relationship with chickens. I accept that I am exploiting them by eating them. This is the true difference between a vegan and a carnivore: you find this arrangement repugnant and I find it natural.
Stephanie, could you send your e-mail address to me?
Shari@simplegoodandtasty.com
Amy, I already have yours.
I'm thinking of an idea for a blog post that features the two of you continuing your discussion, a la this:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/how-safe-is-safe-enough/...
I'll be in touch once I get Stephanie's address.
I just want to keep the record straight. I grew up in the Philippines and neither my friends, family nor I have ever experienced or even heard of dog meat prepared as human food. Many years ago, this may have been the case with certain remote tribal peoples but never in mainstream society. In any case, this practice is outlawed in the Philippines under the Animal Welfare Act.
It's true that the book is so incredibly compelling, that the arguments so well reasoned, and the descriptions so very vivid. It's true that the simple disposal of these euthanized dogs is an enormous ecological and economic problem.
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