Journal 18—Against Meat 

 

  1. For the author, Jonathan Foer, giving up meat has been a give-and-take battle. He explains that some of his happiest childhood memories revolve around lunch dates with his mother, having his father’s grilled concoctions at cookouts, and especially his esteemed grandmother’s chicken and carrots. What he lost from giving up meat were these really close connections and celebrations with family around a “rich” compilation of meaty foods. However, he gains more than he loses in my opinion. For starters, he talks about how one of the biggest factors driving him from meat are the animal factories that scour the nation, providing 99% of all meat sold at supermarkets. He explains how these factories consume a lot of fossil fuels, treat their animals terribly, and destroy biodiversity. Foer and I both agree that the pros certainly outweigh the cons; giving up meat helps consciously control the beliefs that we possess regarding the cruelty and asinine corporations that are animal farms.  
  1. The question that the Foer poses is “Why doesn’t a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to confining and killing it?” Now, I think this is a very provocative question that has multiple parts in which need to be addressed, but I understand where he’s coming from. Our morals are purely based on the society in which we were brought up in. Raping an animal is unequivocally bestiality. That’s simply wrong. But he asks this question because we treat animals with such horrible conditions to begin with (especially in the animal factories). The problem we come to is what others believe is right or wrong. It’s all subjective. Perhaps someone may feel as though raping an animal is right. While I, and most people, will consider the action immoral and outwardly terrible, the person in question may not. This brings me to my belief of eating animals to be wrong. I know I’m in the minority. I believe eating animals to be immoral, personally, because why would I need to take the life of a sentient being for nutrition when I can obtain the same nutrition from plants and other non-sentient lifeforms? Others may argue that we need meat to survive because it’s the way we became human. We, for most of our history, have survived off killing and eating our daily catch. Meat possesses a high yield of calories and protein—nutrients that humans require to grow and function optimally. In order to gain the same nutrition from plants, you would need to eat a much higher volume of such. What I’m trying to get at is that everyone has their own perspective, and everything is utterly subjective. There is never a right or wrong to most subjects, as everyone can back their own opinions up with valid points. This is, as author Herzog from Animals Like Us would say, the “troubled middle.”