ISBN-13: 9780241144251
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009
341 pgs
Source: Personal Library
Eating Animals may sound like a dry reading material at a glance, but let me assure you that this is not the case. Jonathan Safran Foer wrote this book with a personal, memoir approach in an honest and straightforward manner (in other words - pull no punches) and I find the tone fitting to the subject.
Since his teenage years, Jonathan Safran Foer struggles with the decisions between an omnivore and a vegetarian. He also shares with us bits of his teenage years with his grandmother who had survived the holocaust and her perspective on food thereafter. While their opinions may not be the same, it has made him question on the meaning of food, the consumption and everything else that comes with it. It was only on the brink of fatherhood that prompts Foer to search for the answers to his questions instead of listening to myths and making assumptions. Eating Animals is the end result after his several visits to the factory farms and through his extensive research (not to mention doing his own detective work and getting some workers' opinions from the factory farms and slaughterhouses).
His topics varies from the general aspects of the agriculture industry (all meat products such as cattle, pigs and poultry) as well as commercial fisheries, and how they attribute to the world global warming right down to the slaughtering methods and how the biological effects on the animals (feeding them with growth hormones, antibiotics even though they are not sick and so forth) will all affect us in return.
I understand that the facts are not pretty and they are totally mind-blowing, and while I am definitely not writing this to try to convince you to become a vegetarian or a vegan (though I’d be glad if you do) but I feel it is important that we should be cautious and pay more attention to the food we are eating, where they come from and how they are being handled (treated). I have been an omnivorous person in all my life until two years ago I decided to become a vegetarian, and reading this book has further strengthened my decision of becoming one.
Thank you, Mr Foer, for making this book an engrossing and an ‘eye-opening’ reading experience for me!
Since his teenage years, Jonathan Safran Foer struggles with the decisions between an omnivore and a vegetarian. He also shares with us bits of his teenage years with his grandmother who had survived the holocaust and her perspective on food thereafter. While their opinions may not be the same, it has made him question on the meaning of food, the consumption and everything else that comes with it. It was only on the brink of fatherhood that prompts Foer to search for the answers to his questions instead of listening to myths and making assumptions. Eating Animals is the end result after his several visits to the factory farms and through his extensive research (not to mention doing his own detective work and getting some workers' opinions from the factory farms and slaughterhouses).
His topics varies from the general aspects of the agriculture industry (all meat products such as cattle, pigs and poultry) as well as commercial fisheries, and how they attribute to the world global warming right down to the slaughtering methods and how the biological effects on the animals (feeding them with growth hormones, antibiotics even though they are not sick and so forth) will all affect us in return.
I understand that the facts are not pretty and they are totally mind-blowing, and while I am definitely not writing this to try to convince you to become a vegetarian or a vegan (though I’d be glad if you do) but I feel it is important that we should be cautious and pay more attention to the food we are eating, where they come from and how they are being handled (treated). I have been an omnivorous person in all my life until two years ago I decided to become a vegetarian, and reading this book has further strengthened my decision of becoming one.Thank you, Mr Foer, for making this book an engrossing and an ‘eye-opening’ reading experience for me!