Eating Animals

by Jonathan Safran Foer

  they were the two largest chicken processors . . . “Top Broiler Producing Companies: Mid-2008,” National Chicken Council, http://www.nationalchickencouncil.com/statistics/stat_detail.cfm?id=31 (accessed July 17, 2009).

  183 the modern factory sow . . . F. Hollowell and D. Lee, “Management Tips for Reducing Pre-weaning Mortality,” North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service Swine News 25, no. 1 (February 2002), http://www .ncsu.edu/project/swine_extension/swine_news/2002/sn_v2501.htm (accessed July 28, 2009).

  When she is approaching . . . Blackwell, “Production Practices and Well-Being: Swine,” 249; SwineReproNet Staff, “Swine Reproduction Papers; Inducing Farrowing,” SwineReproNet, Online Resource for the Pork Industry, University of Illinois Extenstion, available at http://www.livestocktrail.uiuc.edu/swinerepronet/paperDisplay.cfm? ContentID=6264 (accessed July 17, 2009).

  After her piglets are weaned . . . Marlene Halverson, “The Price We Pay for Corporate Hogs,” Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, July 2000, http://www.iatp.org/hogreport/indextoc.html (accessed July 27, 2009).

  Four out of five times . . . U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Swine 2006, Part I: Reference of swine health and management practices in the United States.”

  Her bone density will decrease . . . G. R. Spencer, “Animal model of human disease: Pregnancy and lactational osteoporosis; Animal model: Porcine lactational osteoporosis,” American Journal of Pathology 95 (1979): 277–280; J. N. Marchent and D. M. Broom, “Effects of dry sow housing conditions on muscle weight and bone strength,” Animal Science 62 (1996): 105–113, as cited in Blackwell, “Production Practices and Well-Being: Swine,” 242.

  A worker at the farm. . . . “Cruel Conditions at a Nebraska Pig Farm,” GoVeg.com, http://www.goveg.com/nebraskapigfarm.asp (accessed July 28, 2009).

  suffering caused by boredom . . . Blackwell, “Production Practices and Well-Being: Swine,” 242.

  would build a nest . . . Ibid., 247.

  will be feed restricted . . . “Sow Housing,” Texas Tech University Pork Industry Institute, http://www.depts.ttu.edu/porkindustryinsti tute/SowHousing_files/sow_housing.htm (accessed July 15, 2009); Jim Mason, Animal Factories (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1990), 10.

  184 The pregnant animals . . . D. C. Coats and M. W. Fox, Old McDonald’s Factory Farm: The Myth of the Traditional Farm and the Shocking Truth About Animal Suffering in Today’s Agribusiness (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 1989), 37.

  lame and diseased animals . . . Blackwell, “Production Practices and Well-Being: Swine,” 242.

  almost invariably be confined in a crate . . . Around 90 percent of farrowing sows are confined in crates. U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Swine 2006, Part I: Reference of swine health and management practices in the United States.”

  185 it’s necessary to “beat the shit . . .” Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse, 219.

  “One guy smashed a sow’s nose . . .’’ Ibid.

  Not surprisingly, when farmers select . . . I am indebted to welfare experts Diane and Marlene Halverson for this analysis of why sows on factory systems are so much more likely to crush their young than those in family farms.

  pigs in crates showed . . . “The Welfare of Intensively Kept Pigs,” Report of the Scientific Veterinary Committee, September 30, 1997, Section 5.2.11, Section 5.2.2, Section 5.2.7, http://ec.europa.eu/food/fs/sc/oldcomm4/out17_en.pdf (accessed July 17, 2009).

  poor genetics, lack of movement . . . Cindy Wood, “Don’t Ignore Feet and Leg Soundness in Pigs,” Virginia Cooperative Extension, June 2001, http://www.ext.vt.edu/news/periodicals/livestock/aps-01_06/aps-0375 .html.

  186 7 percent of breeding sows . . . Ken Stalder, “Getting a Handle on Sow Herd Dropout Rates,” National Hog Farmer, January 15, 2001, http://nationalhogfarmer.com/mag/farming_getting_handle_sow/.

  in some operations the mortality rate . . . Keith Wilson, “Sow Mortality Frustrates Experts,” National Hog Farmer, June 15, 2001, http:// nationalhogfarmer.com/mag/farming_sow_mortality_frustrates/ (accessed July 27, 2009); Halverson, “The Price We Pay for Corporate Hogs.”

  Many pigs go insane . . . A. J. Zanella and O. Duran, “Pig Welfare During Loading and Transport: A North American Perspective,” I Conferencia Vitrual Internacional Sobre Qualidade de Carne Suina, November 16, 2000.

  186 or drink urine . . . Blackwell, “Production Practices and Well-Being: Swine,” 253.

  Others exhibit mourning . . . Halverson, “The Price We Pay for Corporate Hogs.”

  Common congenital diseases . . . “Congenital defects,” PigProgress .net, 2009, http://www.pigprogress.net/health-diseases/c/congenital -defects-17.html (accessed July 17, 2009); B. Rischkowsky and others, “The State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture,” FAO, Rome, 2007, 402, http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a1250e/a1250e00.htm (accessed July 27, 2009); “Quick Disease Guide,” ThePigSite.com, http://www.thepigsite.com/diseaseinfo (accessed July 27, 2009).

  Inguinal hernias are common . . . Blackwell, “Production Practices and Well-Being: Swine,” 251.

  Within the first forty-eight hours . . . See notes for pages 168–170.

  “needle teeth” . . . “Piglets are born with eight fully erupted ‘needle teeth,’ the deciduous canines and third incisors, which the animals use to deliver sideward bites to the faces of litter mates when fighting at the udder.” D. M. Weary and D. Fraser, “Partial tooth-clippings of suckling pigs: Effects on neonatal competition and facial injuries,” Applied Animal Behavior Science 65 (1999): 22.

  so they are more lethargic . . . James Serpell, In the Company of Animals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 9.

  factory-farmed piglets often will be . . . Blackwell, “Production Practices and Well-Being: Swine,” 251.

  187 consumers in America . . . J. L. Xue and G. D. Dial, “Raising intact male pigs for meat: Detecting and preventing boar taint,” American Association of Swine Practitioners, 1997, http://www.aasp.org/shap/issues/v5n4/v5n4p151.html (accessed July 17, 2009).

  By the time farmers begin weaning . . . Hollowell and Lee, “Management Tips for Reducing Pre-weaning Mortality.”

  The sooner the piglets start feeding . . . “Pork Glossary,” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, September 11, 2007, http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/porkglossary.html (accessed July 27, 2009).

  “Solid food” in this case . . . K. J. Touchette and others, “Effect of spray-dried plasma and lipopolysaccharide exposure on weaned piglets: I. Effects on the immune axis of weaned pigs,” Journal of Animal Science 80 (2002): 494–501.

  187 Left alone, piglets tend to wean . . . P. Jensen, “Observations on the Maternal Behavior of Free-

  Ranging Domestic Pigs,” Applied Animal Behavior Science 16 (1968): 131–142.

  but on factory farms . . . Blackwell, “Production Practices and Well-Being: Swine,” 250–251.

  At these young ages . . . L. Y. Yue and S. Y. Qiao, “Effects of low-protein diets supplemented with crystalline amino acids on performance and intestinal development in piglets over the first 2 weeks after weaning,” Livestock Science 115 (2008): 144–152; J. P. Lallès and others, “Gut function and dysfunction in young pigs: Physiology,” Animal Research 53 (2004): 301–316.

  The pens are deliberately overcrowded . . . “Overcrowding Pigs Pays — if It’s Managed Properly,” National Hog Farmer, November 15, 1993, as cited in Michael Greger, “Swine Flu and Factory Farms: Fast Track to Disaster,” Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Advocacy for Animals, May 4, 2009, http://advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2009/05/swine -flu-and-factory-farms-fast-track-to-disaster/ (accessed August 5, 2009).

  “We’ve thumped as many . . .” Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse, 220.

  188 Fully 30 to 70 percent of the pigs . . . L. K. Clark, “Swine respiratory disease,” IPVS Special Report, B Pharmacia & Upjohn Animal Health, November–December 1998, Swine Practitioner, Section B, P6, P7, as cited in Halverson, “The Price We Pay for Corporate Hogs.”

  entire hog
populations of entire states . . . R. J. Webby and others, “Evolution of swine H3N2 influenza viruses in the United States,” Journal of Virology 74 (2000): 8243–8251.

  189 But far from reducing demand . . . R. L. Naylor and others, “Effects of aquaculture on world fish supplies,” Issues in Ecology, no. 8 (Winter 2001): 1018.

  Wild salmon catches worldwide . . . Ibid.

  “key stressors in the aquaculture environment” . . . S. M. Stead and L. Laird, Handbook of Salmon Farming (New York: Springer, 2002), 374–375.

  190 These problems are typical . . . Philip Lymbery, “In Too Deep — Why Fish Farming Needs Urgent Welfare Reform,” 2002, 1, http://www.ciwf.org.uk/includes/documents/cm_docs/2008/i/in_too_deep_summary_2001.pdf (accessed August 12, 2009).

  190 The handbook calls them . . . Stead and Laird, Handbook of Salmon Farming, 375.

  known as the “death crown” . . . “Fish Farms: Underwater Factories,” Fishing Hurts, peta.org, http://www.fishinghurts.com/fishFarms1.asp (accessed July 27, 2009).

  swarming clouds of sea lice . . . University of Alberta study, as cited in “Farm sea lice plague wild salmon,” BBC News, March 29, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4391711.stm (accessed July 27, 2009).

  a 10 to 30 percent death rate . . . Lymbery, “In Too Deep,’’ 1.

  starved for seven to ten days . . . This is a recommended method for killing salmon. See: Stead and Laird, Handbook of Salmon Farming, 188.

  they may be stunned . . . Slicing the gills of conscious fish is not only painful but also a difficult procedure to perform on fully conscious animals. Because of this, some operations render fish unconscious (or at least immobile) before slicing their gills. Two methods are prevalent for salmon: beating the animals on the head and carbon dioxide anesthesia. Beating the salmon unconscious is called “percussive stunning.’’ Hitting fish on the head in the right place to stun them involves a high degree “of skill and dexterity to carry out cleanly on a struggling fish,” according to the Handbook of Salmon Farming. Misplaced blows only cause the fish pain and don’t render the animal unconscious. And the imprecision of this method virtually guarantees that a certain number of animals will become conscious while their gills are cut. The other most common method of stunning involves using carbon dioxide as anesthesia. The fish are transferred ashore into tanks saturated with carbon dioxide and will become unconscious within minutes. Welfare problems in carbon dioxide stunning include the stress of transferring the fish into the chamber and the possibility that not all fish will be rendered fully unconscious. Stead and Laird, Handbook of Salmon Farming, 374–375.

  191 Longlines today . . . “Longline Bycatch,” AIDA, 2007, http://www .aida-americas.org/aida.php?page=turtles.bycatch_longline (accessed July 28, 2009).

  An estimated 27 million . . . Ibid.

  191 4.5 million sea animals . . . “Pillaging the Pacific,” Sea Turtle Restoration Project, 2004, http://www.seaturtles.org/downloads/Pillaging.5.final.pdf (accessed August 19, 2009).

  The most common type . . . “Squandering the Seas: How shrimp trawling is threatening ecological integrity and food security around the world,” Environmental Justice Foundation, London, 2003, 8.

  The trawl is pulled . . . Ibid.

  trawlers sweep up fish . . . Ibid., 14.

  typically about a hundred different fish . . . Ibid., 11.

  The average trawling operation . . . Ibid., 12.

  The least efficient operations . . . Ibid.

  We are literally reducing the diversity . . . See note for page 32 begin- ning with “shapes ocean ecosystems . . .’’

  192 As we gobble up the most desired fish . . . Daniel Pauly et al., “Fishing Down Marine Food Webs,” Science 279 (1998): 860.

  193 fish die slowly and painfully . . . P. J. Ashley, “Fish welfare: Current issues in aquaculture,” Applied Animal Behaviour Science 200, no. 104 (2007): 199–235, 210.

  2.5-foot-long salmon . . . Lymbery, “In Too Deep.’’

  explosions of parasite populations . . . Kenneth R. Weiss, “Fish Farms Become Feedlots of the Sea,” Los Angeles Times, December 9, 2002, http://www.latimes.com/la-me-salmon9dec09,0,7675555,full.story (accessed July 27, 2009).

  You never have to wonder . . . Some may ask how we can be sure fish and other sea animals even experience pain. We have every reason to assume that at least fish do. Comparative anatomy tells us that fish have plenty of the anatomical and neurological gear that seems to play an important role in conscious perception. Most relevantly, fish have abundant nociceptors, the sensory receptors that appear to transmit pain signals to the brain (we can even count them). We also know that fish produce natural opioids, like enkephalins and endorphins, which the human nervous system uses to control pain.

  Fish also exhibit “pain behavior.” This has seemed obvious to me since the first time I was taken fishing as a child by my grandfather, and the people I know who fish recreationally don’t deny fish pain as much as forget about it. As David Foster Wallace put it while reflecting on lobster pain in his magnificent essay “Consider the Lobster,” “The whole animal-cruelty-and-eating issue is not just complex, it’s also uncomfortable. It is, at any rate, uncomfortable for me, and for just about everyone I know who enjoys a variety of foods and yet does not want to see herself as cruel or unfeeling. As far as I can tell, my own main way of dealing with this conflict has been to avoid thinking about the whole unpleasant thing.” Later, he describes the unpleasant thing that he has avoided thinking about: “However stuperous the lobster is from the trip home, for instance, it tends to come alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water. If you’re tilting it from a container into the steaming kettle, the lobster will sometimes try to cling to the container’s sides or even to hook its claws over the kettle’s rim like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof. And worse is when the lobster’s fully immersed. Even if you cover the kettle and turn away, you can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off.’’ This seems — to Wallace, to me, and I have to imagine to most — not only to be physical pain but psychic, too. The lobster is not just thrashing about in agony — it begins fighting for its life before it touches the hot water. It is trying to escape. And it is hard not to identify some of this frantic behavior with some version of fear and panic. Lobsters, unlike fish, are not vertebrates, and so scientific investigations of how they might experience pain — or, more precisely, a type of pain essentially close to that found in humans — are more complicated than investigations into fish. (As it turns out, though, scientific knowledge reveals plenty of reasons to trust the intuitions most of us would have about lobster suffering when sympathizing with a lobster trying to fight his way out of a pot of boiling water. Wallace admirably reviews this science. As they are vertebrates that share the anatomical gear involved in experiencing pain and demonstrate pain behavior, the case for pain in fish is much stronger and leaves little room for skepticism. Kristopher Paul Chandroo, Stephanie Yue, and Richard David Moccia, “An evaluation of current perspectives on consciousness and pain in fishes,” Fish and Fisheries 5 (2004): 281–295; Lynne U. Sneddon, Victoria A. Braithwaite, and Michael J. Gentle, “Do Fishes Have Nociceptors? Evidence for the Evolution of a Vertebrate Sensory System,” Proceedings: Biological Sciences. 270, no. 1520 (June 7, 2003): 1115–1121, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0962-8452%2820030607%29270%3A1520%3C1115%3ADFHNEF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O (accessed August 19, 2009); David Foster Wallace, “Consider the Lobster,” in Consider the Lobster (New York: Little, Brown, 2005), 248.

  I Do

  Page

  201 Less than 1% . . . See page 12.

  203 “There is no reason . . .” Patricia Leigh Brown, “Bolinas Journal; Welcome to Bolinas: Please Keep on Moving,” New York Times, July 9, 2000, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980DE0DA1438F93AA35754C0A9669C8B63 (accessed July 28, 2009).

  211 it takes six to twenty-six calories . . . Bruce Friedrich’s calculation based on US
government and academic sources.

  The UN special envoy on food . . . Grant Ferrett, “Biofuels’ crime against humanity,” BBC News, October 27, 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7065061.stm (accessed July 28, 2009).

  uses 756 million tons . . . “Global cereal supply and demand brief,” FAO, April 2008, http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/ai465e/ai465e04.htm (accessed July 28, 2009).

  to adequately feed . . . “New Data Show 1.4 Billion Live on Less Than US$1.25 a Day,” World Bank, August 26, 2008, http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/0, contentMDK:21883042~menuPK:2643747~pagePK:64020865~piPK:149114~theSitePK:336992,00.html (accessed July 28, 2009); Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty (New York: Random House, 2009), 122.

  And that 756 million tons . . . Singer, The Life You Can Save, 122.

  He won the Nobel Peace Prize . . . Dr. R. K. Pachauri, Blog, June 15, 2009, www.rkpachauri.org (accessed July 28, 2009).

  212 pleasure and pain, happiness and misery . . . Bruce Friedrich is quoting from Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man: “There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties. . . . The lower animals, like man manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery.” As cited in Bernard Rollin, The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain, and Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 33.

  212 The fact that animals are excited . . . Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson, Animals Make Us Human (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009); Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson, Animals in Translation (Fort Washington, PA: Harvest Books, 2006); Marc Bekoff, The Emotional Lives of Animals (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008).

  213 He felt that mistreating animals . . . Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, a Love Story (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988), 145.

  214 the leaders of the “ethical meat” charge . . . Bruce Friedrich’s personal correspondence with Michael Pollan (July 2009). Eric Schlosser eats a factory-farmed burger in the important movie Food, Inc.