The locked doors
I’m currently reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals, which I received as a gift from a good friend. I am not currently a vegetarian, although it’s something I’ve wrestled with over the last few years. In recent months, however, I’ve realized I need to make a change to put my conscience at ease.
But I’m not writing to proselytize. I just wanted to talk about a good book.
Unlike the dozen-or-so books I’ve read and handful of documentaries I’ve watched on ConAgra, Monsanto, factory farming, genetically modified food and so forth, Foer’s book makes a case that isn’t motivated by a private agenda or hidden ambition.
Eating Animals is a book motivated by personal curiosity and an unexpected duty he encountered as an expecting father to figure out what to feed his child. It’s brilliantly written and compelling. It doesn’t preach; it doesn’t judge; it just pokes and prods and stands on its own. I’m about halfway through it, but I can’t get it out of my head.
A quote that I think sums it up well:
Why would a farmer lock the doors of his farm?
It can’t be because he’s afraid someone will steal his equipment or animals. There’s no equipment to steal in the sheds, and the animals aren’t worth the herculean effort it would take to illicitly transport a significant number. A farmer doesn’t lock his doors because he’s afraid his animals will escape. (Turkeys can’t turn doorknobs.) And despite the signage, it isn’t because of biosecurity, either. (Barbed wire is enough to keep out the merely curious.) So why?
In the three years I will spend immersed in animal agriculture, nothing will unsettle me more than the locked doors. Nothing will better capture the whole sad business of factory farming. And nothing will more strongly convince me to write this book.
