Eating Animals

"Why is taste, the crudest of our senses, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other sense?"

I am continuously surprised by how much we sacrificed for money. Even though all of us have above average standards of living (by the simple fact that we live in America) and have more than surpassed our basic needs for sustenance, we continue to strive for more wealth even though it means unnecessarily sacrificing our youth, energy, and time. Often, I get caught up in it too because wealth is often equated with success and respect, and who doesn't want to be successful and respected? I've also found that sometimes being at Yale makes me forget how lucky I am because everyone is so smart and hard-working that it takes a lot of effort to simply not be a slacker (relatively).

Through reading Eating Animals, I have learned about something else that we've sacrificed for money--our responsibility to the animals we eat which we've grown to treat like parts of a machine instead of living creatures. We don't have to treat the animals that we eat like our pets (even though Foer makes the argument that the animals that we eat, ie pigs, are every bit as smart and charismatic as the animals that we take for pets, ie dogs), but treat them as we should treat creatures that can feel suffering and pain.

I have to admit that I do have a soft spot for social responsibility arguments, but I don't think that it takes any exceptional sense of social responsibility to want to end the exceptional suffering of millions of animals, especially if the only cost is eating less meat or paying higher meat prices that accurate reflect the cost of humanely raising an animal. Today, the animals that we eat live unnatural and mutated lives because of our increasing demand for cheap meat. To meet our consumer demand, animals have been genetically engineered so that they grow faster and bigger than ever before, all the while eating less food, which any pea pod of common sense will tell you is impossible without compromising other aspects of their wellbeing. Instead of blaming the animal agricultural industry or the farmers, it has been our consumer demand for cheap meat that has driven them to this practice.

In the meantime, here's to being a better vegetarian. Oh yeah, Nattie, I hope that you don't mind that I'm reading your birthday present...

A good excerpt from Eating Animals: I am the last Poultry Farmer