Eating Animals complements recent books from Michael Pollan, Barbara
Kingsolver, and others, building a new literature of conscientious
consumption. On-again, off-again vegetarian Foer sets out to separate
fact from fiction regarding the meat industry, in order to make
responsible dietary choices for his new baby. Though he appears to have
an impartial agenda at the beginning of the quest, he quickly becomes
mired in overwhelming evidence of atrocities that rightfully engender a
sense of bewilderment and outrage, and make his decision clear. Is the
greater public truly unaware of the dire health-hazards (both short and
long term) that we are creating through factory farming? The
institutionalized torture of animals? The global depletion of fisheries?
The wanton waste of “by-catches”? Or are we tacitly complicit in the
name of convenience and profit? Most poignantly, Foer juxtaposes his
grandmother’s near starvation in WWII Germany with his own ethical
dilemmas about food. He deliberately invokes one of the most potent
lessons of the Holocaust. There were criminals, and there were victims,
but it was the bystanders that let it happen. Eating Animals is not
without its flaws, but it is an impassioned and timely call to action
that we ignore at our peril.
Jonathan Safran Foer won the National Jewish Book Award and the Guardian First Book Award for his debut novel Everything Is Illuminated (which was also made into a major motion picture). In Eating Animals, Foer continues to dazzle listeners and critics alike with a writing style that is both precise and continually inventive.