vegetarianism
I was reading an article written by Natalie Portman about how reading Jonathan Safran Foer's book 'Eating Animals' (author of Everything Is Illuminated) turned her from being a vegetarian to being a vegan. Helena has kind of been persuading me to read this book, but I haven't yet simply because I know that my eating habits will change from reading this book and I've been opting to be blissfully ignorant about the negative impacts that are connected to meat consumption. Well I've decided that is a very sucky excuse and it's extremely irresponsible on my part as a consumer and animal/nature lover.
This interview with Jonathan Safran Foer has been a turning point for me.
Q: So should everyone be a vegetarian?
A: My book is not a case for vegetarianism. It's a case against factory-farmed meat. Basically, that's meat where animals are raised in enclosures, where they don't get to see the sun, don't get to touch the Earth, and they're almost always fed drugs to keep them from getting sick or make them grow faster.
I think there are a lot of responsible conclusions one could reach (about whether to eat animals). There's selective meat-eating (from responsible growers), there's being a vegetarian.
The thing I can't respect is the willful forgetting, the kind of people who say "I simply don't want to think about it."
Q: What about people who can't afford to buy expensive meat from small farms?
A: It's exactly the opposite that's true. Factory-farmed food is an elitist food; it's a food that's making hundreds of millions of dollars for CEOs of corporations at the expense of normal people. Yes, it seems cheap when we go to the supermarket, but that's because we're being lied to about the true costs. We pay for them in our health care costs, the destruction of the environment and our values. What we call cheap food is the most expensive food in American history.
To be honest, I don't think I could ever be a pure vegetarian. Not only do I love eating meat, it's just too damn difficult on a social level, eg going out to people's homes and needing them to cater for you especially. But eating meat just because it's tasty and convenient and because everyone else is doing it does not justify the environmental damage it is causing, nor the shocking conditions that the animals are going through. It's just not ethical. (I have to point out, there's nothing innately wrong about eating meat, I just have a problem with the majority of processes out there.) A while back I was horrified almost to tears about the chicken industry after watching Jamie Oliver's Fowl Dinners, a show uncovering the methods used in the chicken and egg industry. Initially I vowed never to eat chicken again but after considering the implications of that, I compromised by paying $20 more in my board fee so my mum can buy free-range eggs and chicken. However, there is still a long way to go with everything else but my aim is that by the end of the year, I will be leaning more on the vegetarian scale in my diet.
Now I'm off to lunch with my Hainanese chicken rice...
This interview with Jonathan Safran Foer has been a turning point for me.
Q: So should everyone be a vegetarian?
A: My book is not a case for vegetarianism. It's a case against factory-farmed meat. Basically, that's meat where animals are raised in enclosures, where they don't get to see the sun, don't get to touch the Earth, and they're almost always fed drugs to keep them from getting sick or make them grow faster.
I think there are a lot of responsible conclusions one could reach (about whether to eat animals). There's selective meat-eating (from responsible growers), there's being a vegetarian.
The thing I can't respect is the willful forgetting, the kind of people who say "I simply don't want to think about it."
Q: What about people who can't afford to buy expensive meat from small farms?
A: It's exactly the opposite that's true. Factory-farmed food is an elitist food; it's a food that's making hundreds of millions of dollars for CEOs of corporations at the expense of normal people. Yes, it seems cheap when we go to the supermarket, but that's because we're being lied to about the true costs. We pay for them in our health care costs, the destruction of the environment and our values. What we call cheap food is the most expensive food in American history.
To be honest, I don't think I could ever be a pure vegetarian. Not only do I love eating meat, it's just too damn difficult on a social level, eg going out to people's homes and needing them to cater for you especially. But eating meat just because it's tasty and convenient and because everyone else is doing it does not justify the environmental damage it is causing, nor the shocking conditions that the animals are going through. It's just not ethical. (I have to point out, there's nothing innately wrong about eating meat, I just have a problem with the majority of processes out there.) A while back I was horrified almost to tears about the chicken industry after watching Jamie Oliver's Fowl Dinners, a show uncovering the methods used in the chicken and egg industry. Initially I vowed never to eat chicken again but after considering the implications of that, I compromised by paying $20 more in my board fee so my mum can buy free-range eggs and chicken. However, there is still a long way to go with everything else but my aim is that by the end of the year, I will be leaning more on the vegetarian scale in my diet.
Now I'm off to lunch with my Hainanese chicken rice...