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Jonathan Safran Foer: Eating Animals

I think the question of meat-eating as remarkably similar to that of slavery a few centuries ago. It is an issue of power and exploitation - and 200 years from now people will perhaps look back and think how strange that it was so widely accepted by society when so obviously barbaric.  I also sometimes wonder why I don't do anything abut it, and maybe that makes me culpable in some way, too.  Being a vegetarian is not really enough.

Foer's book is a personal deliberation upon modern animal farming that cuts to the chase and addresses our relationship to (other) animals.  Un-sentimental and not intended to be particularly proselytizing the careful examination of the scale and methods and ramifications of the issue build in a measured way that inevitably calls the human race to account.

On the life of battery hens:

'Step your mind into a crowded elevator, an elevator so crowded you cannot turn around without bumping into (and aggravating) your neighbor. The elevator is so crowded you are often held aloft. This is a kind of blessing, as the slanted floor is made of wire, which cuts into your feet.
'After some time, those in the elevator will lose the ability to work in the interest of the group. Some will become violent; others will go mad. A few, deprived of food and hope, will become cannabalistic.
'There is no respite, no relief. No elevator repairman is coming. The doors will open once, at the end of your life, for your journey to the only place worse (see: PROCESSING).'