Interrogating the ‘Natural Food Chain’ in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals

Some friends and I have often lamented the bizarre state of question that is 'Why are you reading?' Not 'what', not 'who', but 'why'. The frustation that such a question presents to me must not be unlike that which my dearest friend, Nicole, must go through on a weekly basis, when justifying her response to 'But why are you a vegetarian?'

It's not that I have a problem with a line of questioning. By all means, I invite people to be curious and ask away. But when that line of questioning takes the form of an affront, that's when I get a little worried. Being able to enjoy a book, choosing not to eat dead animals... These things are not altogether unreasonable choices to be making, let alone defending.
But I can relate to the meat-eating individuals who would want to antagonise the vegetarian, would want to call him, or her, a 'tree-hugger', a 'bunny-lover'. Let's face it, it's just easier to ridicule others than to deal with an ethical house of sticks.

But, as I said, I can relate. Food-joy for me is a soft-boiled egg, golden-yolked, with buttery finger-soldiers thrown in for good measure... A slow-roasted chicken stuffed with garlic cloves and lemon wedges... Spaghetti Carbonara with the extra egg yolk and a dollop of Creme Fraiche... These are my comforting, 'home-coming meals'. And nothing quite embodies 'satisfaction' for me as a steak bordering on bleu, hold the sauce.
So believe me, animal-produce lover, I am not unaware of the cost that comes with feeling ashamed.

Nonetheless, the bright green cover of Jonathan Safran Foer's latest book, Eating Animals, has been staring at me for quite some time from the 'New Non-Fiction' shelves of Fogarty's Bookshop. First the unread, largely untouched, stack of them only nagged at me a little, tugging at the frayed edges of my conscience. But they have been there, unread and untouched, since Christmas.

At Christmas time, everyone wanted Captain in the Cauldron, and not Eating Animals, for presents for loved ones. Now that the time of year for book-clubs to stock up has once again arrived, everyone wants Lesley Pearse's Stolen, and not Eating Animals. There's even our secretly dubbed 'Misery Memoirs' section that gets a great deal more love from customers, from its tales of family-incest, to substance abuse, to misunderstood serial killers. But still no love for Eating Animals.

So on behalf of all the omnivores out there who want so desperately to defend their right to a Traditional English Breakfast on a Sunday morning, I took the plunge you all seemed a little hesitant to make.

It helped that I am a big fan of Safran Foer (of Everything Is Illuminated, and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close fame). His humour is always intimately infectious, in the way of 'I have a crazy uncle just like that, too'. Also, he manages to navigate ethically difficult and painful terrains without ever making the reader feel alienated (as in Everything Is Illuminated where the protagonist - sharing the author's own name - visits Europe to track his grandfather's escape to America during WWII). And in this, Eating Animals is no different.

Safran Foer is not a lofty, self-righteous sort. He's the mate who popped in for a beer just a minute ago and watched some of the five day international with you. The only thing that sets him apart is that he took the time to scratch at the surface of something we all knew to be pretty damn rotten anyway.

A non-committal, part-time omnivore/lapsed vegetarian, it is only when Foer and his wife are expecting their first-born child, that he resolves to get to the bottom of this animal-eating business, mindful of all childhood's Why's to come, and wanting more than the answer: Just Because.

As the author remarks, "[e]ating animals has an invisible quality," and the subject's investigation slowly emerges in light of Foer's suggestion that "one way" to solve this is by "looking askance and making something invisible visible" again.

From a "Filipino recipe" on "Stewed Dog, Wedding Style," to the facts that appear at the bottom of every chapter's title page ("Less than 1% of the animals killed for meat in America come from family farms," where factory farms that 'optimise' production lines have become the rule of the day), to the visual aids as with the square block that contains the chapter title, "Hiding/Seeking" - just in case readers weren't able to picture what 67 square inches looks like ("In the typical cage for egg-laying hens, each bird has 67 square inches of space... Nearly all cage-free birds have approximately the same amount of space.") - and things start coming slowly into focus.

The omnivore's safe-holds for grocery shopping are similarly made all-too-visible as we learn that "free range" only stipulates that "chickens raised for meat must have 'access to the outdoors'" (while Foer then asks readers to "[i]magine a shed containing thirty thousand chickens, with a small door at one end that opens to a five-by-five dirt patch - and the door is closed all but occasionally").

But again, please do not let the statistics scare you from picking this book off the shelf. From tracing the origins of the word 'animal', to relating to Kafka's feelings on 'animal suffering', the book is nothing if not a refreshingly articulate take on a subject long governed by polarising rhetoric.

This said, there will be priceless moments where you'll be hard-pressed not to chuckle aloud as our author finds himself in chapter four investigating a factory farm by night (with a seasoned perpetrator by the name of C), wondering what the outcome will be when "some roused-from-REM-sleep-and-well-armed farmer" comes upon Foer's "I-know-the-difference-between-arugula-and-rugelach" self "scrutinizing the living conditions of his turkeys." Our author well imagines the farmer as he "cocks his double-barrle" while the former's "sphincter relaxes."
"And then what?" Foer asks, "I whip out California penal code 597e? Is that going to make his trigger finger more or less itchy?"

Ultimately, Foer admits early on in his exploration that, by no means, does he expect everyone to start agreeing on the subject of whether or not to 'eat animals'. However, he does call upon the need to "reframe" the topic so that it can become an open one. And I have to pat this brave man on the back for embracing the issue as personally and as honestly as he has. Without engaged writers like Foer, conscious consumerism could be as meaningless a term as the "farm fresh" label on a frozen packet of chicken wings.
His is the kind of book to be read again, and again, and again, and to have its passages underlined and its margins scribbled in on dog-eared pages.