you are breathing chicken shit-- a response to Foer's Eating Animals

During a 3am trip to Riva's the other night, I found myself questioned about  being vegetarian.  I used to always defend my diet choice politely by stating why meat is an inefficient way to get nutrients and to feed a global population, but I found myself in an unending monologue—spouting off all the reasons why the meat industry is a destructive and disgusting global disaster.   Before I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals, I would have felt guilty bombarding someone (eating rolled tacos) with what I really felt about what they were doing.  But not now—and it’s really inconvenient to feel this way.

When you try to talk to someone about the meat industry, they simply do not want to know—and they have no problems telling you that.  Honestly, I am the same way.  I wanted to go off into my vegetarian world, be able to sit down with friends and eat and be fine with the fact that I eat one way and they eat another.  Now it’s a little harder. 

The things that bother me now are socially and ecologically conscious friends (meat eating)—you know the folks who grocery shop with canvas bags, ride their bikes whenever they can, and talk shit about people who drive huge SUV’s and Hummers.  The meat industry is the world’s largest contributor to global warming.  The transportation industry comes nowhere close. 

Why do people take such offense when you talk about this stuff?  It’s just another huge industry run by assholes who don’t care about us and just want to make as much money as possible no matter what the cost.  You can talk shit about the oil, healthcare, military, and auto industries.  Would you trust the people at Halliburton or Blackwater to produce your food for you?  Well, we are trusting people just as awful. 

And it would be fine if it didn’t affect me (except for random reminders of the animal cruelty and the ecological destruction).  Meat eaters could go on and eat chicken that nine times out of ten is infected with e.coli, salmonella, or some other type of avian disease before it ever hits the shelves at the grocery store whenever they wanted.  And they can tell themselves that those random 24 bugs are just little fluke flu’s and have nothing to do with their food.  All flu’s are bird flu. They all come from avian flu and we are constantly helping them mutate by putting them in our bodies.  I'm gonna get sick because America can't put down their chicken tenders.

OK…  so this is what I mean.  I meant to write a short response to JSF’s new book about what a craftsman he is-- how his nonfiction is just as touching and powerful as his novels.  Now when I see people eating meat—at restaurants or the break room at work—I get pissed.  It’s a globally destructive thing that according to the American Dietetic Association (ADA) is completely unnecessary (for people of all ages) and increases your chances of a number of life shortening diseases.   All this because people like the taste?  Quitting meat is not hard…  it’s not like getting off of heroin or even like quitting smoking.  I did it years ago.  You don’t go through withdrawals.  You don’t get the shakes.  What’s the deal?

Foer’s new book is not like Michael Pollan.  It’s not there to help rich people feel better about themselves by eating free-range.  It makes you question meat and question yourself.  Why don't we know anything about the thing that’s most important to our survival?  It's ridiculous.  Its like Soylent Green  but the information is easier to obtain.  JSF writes the same themes he’s explored in his novels—shame, family history, sacrifice, and making amends-- though this time, we are not only along for the ride.  It’s brilliantly written—and now eating meat pisses me off.

Oh, and also—factory farms dispose of chicken shit by spraying it into the air as a mist…  gross…