According to Jonathan Safran Foer, humans would make water undrinkable, eliminate fish from the ocean, destroy topsoil and fashion useless antibiotics, unless, somewhere along the way, they stop craving the Chicken McNugget.
In his first of eight webinar sessions with Farm Forward, a nonprofit that advocates against factory farming to change the way people cultivate and consume food, Foer, author of “Everything is Illuminated” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” led a discussion on what eating animals, the topic and title of his 2009 book, is really about.
Students from USF, Broward College on the East Coast, Philadelphia’s Central High School and beyond — even a university in Germany — greeted one another. Though all enrolled in different courses, they entered the chat around 10 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 10, for a similar purpose.
Conversations about food, according to Foer, tend to create divisions that isolate people, deterring them from engaging in thoughtful dialogue. However, since food involves culture, shapes our identities, frames the way we perceive the world and more, our journeys with food are arguably endless. And Foer agrees the journey isn’t finished.
The question of whether meat is murder wasn’t what he sought to answer through his book. In fact, Foer used more than 300 pages to argue against the notion. No matter how much this concern vexes people, he said he doesn’t consider it to be the imperative question because “we live in the world of factory farming.”
Instead, having shifted to and fro between vegetarian, vegan and meat-eating lifestyles while growing up, he asked, and continues to ask: Do we want to support an industry that’s more disastrous to the Earth than many other contributors to environmental problems?
He said most people view themselves as some sort of environmentalist, that they believe our elected officials should restructure plans in order to preserve natural resources. In “Eating Animals,” Foer furthered this idea, noting that 96 percent of Americans think animals deserve legal protection, and 76 percent care about animal welfare over low meat prices.
So what’s stopping these people from seizing a diet that’s vegan or vegetarian?
“It’s a set persona,” he said.
The terms leave no room for intermediacy, and he explained that neither would become approachable when structured this way.
When the webinar’s Q-and-A portion opened, Central High School student Christine MacArthur asked, “Would there be vegans or vegetarians if factory farming didn’t exist?”
Foer said people embrace vegetarianism for a number of reasons, and there will always be those who feel using animals for human benefit is wrong. But since everyone has a different perspective, it’s not fair to simplify beliefs.
“Everyone draws a line somewhere,” he said. “Starting to recognize where they are, and drawing them yourself, is a great thing.”
Allison Finn, a student from Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, Md., asked, “Can the transition to traditional farms compensate for the rapidly growing population?”
Yes and no was Foer’s response.
Factory farming has motivated people to eat more meat, and we won’t be able to get enough regardless of if they’re around or not. This was also where he made the McNugget comment.
For Foer, the choices surrounding what we consume are available, so a decision needs to be made. He said meals are an opportunity to bring people closer to who they want to be and how they want the world to be.
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