Eating Animals

The main theme of this chapter is health, as Foer covers pandemics, diseases within factory farming, and the health of consumers as it relates to the foods they consume. Foer’s play on the etymology, or origins of the word, “influenza,” notes how the term itself means a kind of influence toward momentous change. The 1918 Spanish Flu was a pandemic of large scale, and like most widespread flu outbreaks, it was traced back to eating animals with the disease. Foer brings up this health concern because the most common means of zoonotic diseases is consumption of animals that are infected with the disease. The topic of zoonotic disease is particularly relevant in the modern day, since the pandemic Foer predicts in Eating Animals has already happened in the form of COVID-19. The argument of this chapter diversifies the focus of Foer’s argument, discussing impacts on people within the factory farming industry, as well as consumers, animals, and global welfare. Discussing issues of antibiotics and antimicrobials, Foer is layering on the previous ethical and moral arguments about the treatment of animals and adding in the risks to consumers that factory farming presents. Essentially, while the argument prior to this chapter largely focused on how animals are treated and how people should feel about animals, this chapter broadens that argument by including the threat of devastating consequences if factory farming is allowed to continue as it is.

Foer does still discuss the inhumane treatment of animals, but this discussion is tilted toward a claim on human health and wellbeing, easing The Balance of Personal Shame and Desires. Though the confinement and abuse of chickens is shocking and graphic, which serves as a part of Foer’s pathos argument to encourage shame, the specifics of the methodology involved in raising, slaughtering, and processing chickens reveals health risks bringing to light his thesis on Social Responsibility, the Environment, and Starvation. For example, Foer’s use of the terms “fecal soup” and “fouled, chlorinated water” (135), which are intended to be repulsive, make an obvious link between processing and health by following how chickens are maintained in dirty environments, put through processing without sanitation, then shipped out for purchase with up to “11 percent liquid absorption” (135). The inclusion of this description after a discussion of zoonotic diseases connects the methods of factory farming to the 76 million cases of foodborne illness, and Foer concludes that factory farming is directly responsible for the spread of illnesses like E. coli and salmonella. Foer also addresses the attempts to slow the spread of these diseases, such as antibiotics, and he reveals the complications of these methods in the form of resistance. By presenting the solution offered by the industry, which is the nontherapeutic use of drugs, and refuting it with the pattern of increased resistances among bacteria and microbes, Foer is undermining the potential counterargument to his position.

However, the full argument of the chapter resolves in the final sections discussing vegetarianism as an alternative, as well as an explanation of why vegetarianism has been kept out of mainstream dieting. Foer follows his discussion of disease by broadening the scope on health, bringing in factors like cholesterol and heart disease, specifically to note how many organizations have discovered vegetarianism to be an overall healthier lifestyle. Presenting the overall health benefits of vegetarianism is meant to layer over the diseases and medical conflicts of the preceding sections, showing first how meat consumption contributes to disease and then how vegetarianism improves overall health while avoiding those diseases. Foer expands his understanding of the antagonist in this narrative, though, as he implicates the USDA in efforts to prevent vegetarianism from becoming a common lifestyle choice. Highlighting the economic nature of factory farming, Foer points out that the USDA is motivated to keep sales numbers high in order to foster greater economic growth and perception in the meat industry. It is better for the USDA to have large sales of unhealthy meat, which might spread disease, than to speak out against factory farming at the cost of profits. Involving government agencies in the argument clarifies the system Foer is positioning himself against, developing an argument both for the individual to lead a healthier, more humane lifestyle and against organizations and systems that prevent the dissemination of valuable information that can sway consumers.