Eating Animals

Starred review from November 2, 2009
The latest from novelist Foer is a surprising but characteristically brilliant memoir-investigation, boasting an exhaustively-argued account of one man-child's decade-long struggle with vegetarianism. On the eve of becoming a father, Foer takes all the arguments for and against vegetarianism a neurotic step beyond and, to decide how to feed his coming baby, investigates everything from the intelligence level of our most popular meat providers-cattle, pigs, and poultry-to the specious self-justifications (his own included) for eating some meat products and not others. Foer offers a lighthearted counterpoint to his investigation in doting portraits of his loving grandmother, and her meat-and-potatoes comfort food, leaving him to wrestle with the comparative weight of food's socio-cultural significance and its economic-moral-political meaning. Without pulling any punches-factory farming is given the full expose treatment-Foer combines an array of facts, astutely-written anecdotes, and his furious, inward-spinning energy to make a personal, highly entertaining take on an increasingly visible (and book-selling) moral question; call it, perhaps, An Omnivore's Dilemma.

Starred review from November 1, 2009
Celebrated novelist Foer (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, 2005, etc.) examines the ethics and practical realities of eating things with faces.

The author's first book-length work of nonfiction opens with a reminiscence of a grandmother who scraped for food to stay alive during the dark years of the Holocaust, yet refused to violate kashrut law to eat a proffered piece of pork, saying,"If nothing matters, there's nothing to save." Against that time of want and the food insecurity his grandmother expressed for the rest of her life, Foer examines this time of too-muchness, of cupboards full of luxuries and days full of meaty meals made possible by an elaborate system of factories, stockyards and slaughterhouses."Eating animals," he writes,"is one of those topics, like abortion, where it is impossible to definitively know some of the most important details…and that cuts right to one's deepest discomforts, often provoking defensiveness or aggression." To his credit, the author is not shy of exploring his own discomforts while engaging in near-Talmudic analyses of the finer points of being a carnivore: If a pig is as smart as, if not smarter, than a dog and just as fond of playing with toys, then why aren't they allowed to curl up next to the fire with us? Of course, Foer allows, there are cultures where eating dogs is considered a good thing, though none that come to mind where having pigs as pets is common. Given the environmental costs of eating meat—"for every ten tuna, sharks, and other large predatory fish that were in our oceans fifty to a hundred years ago, only one is left"—and the looming sense that a time of scarcity is again in the offing, Foer's case for ethical vegetarianism is wholly compelling.

A blend of solid—and discomforting—reportage with fierce advocacy that will make committed carnivores squeal.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 2, 2009
In his first work of nonfiction, Foer (Everything Is Illuminated; Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) turns his attention to the meat production industry. Like Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson in The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food, Foer exposes the role factory farming and aquaculture plays in global warming and environmental degradation but takes a less radical approach. Advocating for a vegetarian instead of a vegan diet and insisting that measures be taken to lessen the negative impacts of our current means for producing meat, Foer isn't demanding drastic dietary changes but rather asking readers to explore the origins of their eating habits. An on-again, off-again vegetarian, Foer is using his book not as a polemical soapbox but as a means to explore philosophical and ethical issues that have become more urgent to him in his new role as a father. Adding balance, he incorporates the opinions of an animal rights activist, an independent poultry farmer, a vegetarian rancher, and even a vegan who helps design slaughterhouses. Verdict This is sure to attract animal welfare and animal rights advocates as well as Foer's fans and general readers interested in learning more about the meat they eat. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 7/09.]-Diana Hartle, Univ. of Georgia Lib., Athens, GA

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 15, 2009
If this book were packaged like a loaf of bread, its Nutrition Facts box would list high percentages of graphic descriptions of factory farm methods of animal breeding, mass confinement, and assembly-line slaughter as well as the brutality and waste of high-tech fishing methods; fresh studies of animal (fish included) intelligence and their capacity for suffering; and undiluted facts about industrial animal agricultures major role in global warming. Sensitive to the centrality of food in culture and family life, Foer, author of the novels Everything Is Illuminated (2002) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), frames his first nonfiction book within the story of his Holocaust survivor grandmothers complex relationship with food and his response to fatherhood. He presents assiduously assembled facts (supported by70 pages of end notes) about the miserable lives and deaths of industrialized chickens, pigs, fish, and cattle and about agricultural pollution and how factory farming engenders species-leaping flu pandemics. He also asks philosophical questions, such as why we eat such smart and affectionate animals as pigs but not dogs. Foer brings extraordinary artistry, clarity, valor, and compassion to this staggering investigation into the ethics, horrors, and dangers of factory farming. An indelible book that should reach a diverse audience and deepen the conversation about how best to live on a rapidly changing planet.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)