Eating Animals

One of Jonathan Safran Foer’s main arguments is that shame and guilt are useful in balancing the desires people have with the moral and ethical implications of their actions. Citing Kafka at an aquarium, Foer focuses on Kafka’s sense of relief upon confronting a fish, knowing that he has become a vegetarian. The relief that Kafka feels is a relief from the shame of knowing that he was eating creatures like the fish, and Foer expands on this feeling with the idea of “forgetting.” According to Foer, people must willfully forget that the meat they are eating was once a living creature. This forgetting has become easier as factory farming has increased the distance, both physically and emotionally, between consumers and the animals they consume. For many, the picture of a traditional farm with a limited number of animals and a dedicated, humane farmer is still the dominant image of farming, but the atrocities Foer details in this book are shown to be the norm across the farming industry. As such, Foer places a measurement of his own desire to eat meat and animal products against his shame after finding out more about the inhumane treatment and processing of animals.