Jonathan Foer Eating Animals Analysis

Throughout Eating Animals, Jonathan Foer illustrates all the different elements that go into the production of animal meat, showing different perspectives and emphasizing on the inhumane aspects. When consuming meats, people do not generally think about where that meat is coming from, but instead how good it tastes. They blind themselves from the diseases that meat could be carrying and the pain in which the animal probably endured, ignoring these facts for the sake of pleasure. Throughout a segment of Foer’s book, “Slices of Paradise/Pieces of Shit”, Foer provides his research on the different farming industries, the industries repercussions, and identifies the consumers of these products as those responsible to putting these inhumane ways …show more content…
Pork industries have led pigs to suffer from severe anxiety and stress in the facilities in which they’re kept, leading multiple pigs to drop dead of heart attacks. The factories have began to genetically alter the pigs, leading them to have to be kept in climate controlled buildings cut off from all sun and seasons. “We are breeding creatures incapable of surviving in any place other than the most artificial of settings.” (Foer, 159) All of the genetic alterations and breeding has caused these animals to suffer. Foer then goes into discussing his visit to a pasture farm, learning about Paul Willis’s farm and his free range farming methods. The way Foer illustrates Paul’s farm is the way people wish to think of farms. People think of animals roaming around, and getting treated well by farmers, rather than the alternative way Foer illustrates as cold and heartless within factory farms. He comments how Paul’s farming methods to not include giving animals hormones or antibiotics unless they have a medical problem that needs them. Unfortunately, these free range farms like Paul’s are declining, as factories take …show more content…
Not only does this farming inflict inhumane violence and fear upon the animals within the system, but contributes significantly to health issues among humans and the warming of our climate. Foer engages in the idea that a lot of social bonds that are created between humans are made of the sharing of a meal, much of the time that includes meat. Foers call to action includes a change in culture, and not just to stop eating factory farmed meats, but to stop eating meat in general. He questions the readers, “Given that eating animals is absolutely no way necessary for my family- unlike some in the world, we have easy access to a wide variety of other foods- should we eat animals?”(Foer, 196) Even though Paul Willis’s farm may be humane and the ideal farming method, Foer remarks that eating any kind of meat, even raised from Paul’s farm, supports the demand for meat, ultimately supporting factory farming. Throughout the text, Foer provides no investigation of why humans eat meat or what the reasons are of whys it’s such an evolutionary trend. He has compelled my to change the contemporary food habits, but I believe with information on why so many humans eat meat and what it does for us could have made his argument much more