Book Reviews & Giveaway: Eating Animals

THIS IS THIS REVIEWER’S OPINIONS ONLY. THIS IS DIFFICULT READING MATERIAL.

Chickens, chickens, chickens! Cows, turkeys, ducks, pigs, fish – Animal Eating portends about cruel ethics towards our food chain. Our cruel ethics. Since I first read “Foods Pets Die For” by Ann Martin, right after the huge pet food recall where thousands of pets died, I have been amazed and horrified at our overall loss of morals and ethical values in the breeding, feeding, slaughtering, and cruel environments that we impose on the animals we eat (and feed) today. Normally an easy going person, I am fanatical about our degeneration into a society that treats our animal food chain in such a murderous fashion that most of us could not read “Eating Animals” by Mr. Foer. And we are killing our own bodies and children’s bodies by consuming deathly ill animals. As well as losing good karma towards Planet Earth.

My tirade is over, but Mr. Foer’s has just begun. A new father, Mr. Foer started out to research the best diet for his newborn son. What he found is frightful. In cool rational tones, well founded and documented research, personal (illegal) forays into chicken, turkey and pork “factory farm” operations (the multinational corporations selling and processing animals) both on the raising end and the slaughter end, Mr. Foer tells us nothing we do not know. These factory farms are like the walls of hidden torture chambers – they are secret, enclosed facilities that allow no one in. Inspectors cannot even see the slaughter areas. However he brings it into our living rooms. It’s like reading about the Holocaust – because we have seen the pictures and had to deny our visceral shame and humiliation, now we just turn the page. The obscene cruelty and horrible lives that these domestic animals – OUR domestic animals – that we put into our stomachs experience, is just the tip of the iceberg. Their suffering and pain is more than important – it is shattering to think that an animal lover like myself have shut my eyes to this. The diseased and antibiotic ridden carcasses are what we eat. When will the viral endemic hit us when we no longer have antibiotics to cure our ills? We are ingesting these carcasses. The suffering of these animals infiltrates their very cells. As well as what is put in their feed. I am in the pet food industry and I know what garbage goes into many pet foods. I feed my dog a raw diet. Now I will rethink that.

A review is too little too late to cover the topics that this book covers. That the genetics of our food supply has been so misaligned and manipulated by man to create fatter animals that cannot stand. That domestic turkeys cannot reproduce any longer. That they kill these animals between 36-42 days because they can survive no longer. That these animals never see daylight and squat 33,000 chicken in a space where they can’t move or defecate. That the vats they lie in after a tortuous death are contaminated. That’s the surface.

The other layers are worse. The slaughtering of these animals makes the Roman gladiator arenas looks like a peaceful death. They are tortured, skinned alive, have electric shock guns pushed into every orifice (while alive). Many are boiled alive.

I had to put this book down and go out into fresh air so as not to get sick. Mr. Foer’s personal choice is to be vegetarian for himself and his family. I applaud him. But that is fixing the symptoms not the problem. But if you have the courage and want to save our integrity as humans (after all, we are animals too and this is about power and dominion) you must read this book. I have to stop, I am too emotional about this, with absolutely no apologies. I only thank Mr. Foer for writing a book that must be read.

Eating Animals may be purchased at Amazon.com for under $17.

Review by Broad "A" - Ava
Thank you to the Hachette Book Group for providing our free review copy as well as copies to give away.

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