Eating Animals summary

As per the factory farmer’s efficiency ethos, chickens are divided into broilers (fast-growing chickens bred for meat) and layers (fast-laying chickens bred for laying eggs).

Due to optimized breeding used since the advent of factory farming, layers now lay eggs at twice the rate they used to, and broilers’ daily growth rate has increased by 400 percent.

Pigs reared on factory farms suffer on a multitude of levels. Perhaps the most stress-inducing is the way that pigs’ so-called species-specific behaviors are suppressed. Pigs naturally want to act like pigs, rooting around in mud, playing, building nests and sleeping communally in hay. When they are confined to cramped, steel-and-concrete-lined multi-tiered factory farms, they can do none of those things and suffer greatly.

Sows endure the worst of this. They are hormonally manipulated to be pregnant virtually constantly and are forced into tiny gestation crates where they cannot move, much less nest and prepare for their piglets as is their natural instinct.

Modern industrial fishing methods and fish farming share the same efficiency ethos as factory farms.

We easily ignore the suffering of fish, seeing them more as a faceless commodity than as individual animals. Thus they are often treated even more cruelly than many other animals, and are in fact being systematically annihilated. Scientists predict a complete collapse of all fished species within the next 50 years.

There are no real farmers at factory farms.

Labor has been automated so thoroughly that only desk jobs and menial tasks, such as slaughter, remain. Low-paying work in highly stressful and dehumanizing working conditions can brutalize the employees, making them sadistic towards the already suffering animals.

Whether to eat meat or not is one of the most significant environmental choices you make. According to the UN, livestock produces around 18 % of global greenhouse gas emissions, a full 40% more than the transportation sector.

An omnivore contributes seven times the greenhouse gas a vegan does. Meat-heavy diets are becoming more common globally in countries with rapidly expanding populations like China. As this trend continues, greenhouse gas emissions are set to grow radically.

Food companies exert tremendous influence over public institutions. Much like tobacco companies, they lobby congress to eliminate unfavorable regulations, press authorities not to enforce ones that exist and challenge any unfavorable court decisions.

Consider the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA): It is charged with promoting the health of the nation through its nutritional guidelines, but paradoxically also with promoting the agricultural industry.

From an economic perspective, factory farming has made meat very cheap – impossibly cheap, in fact.

In the past 50 years, the prices of houses and cars have increased around 1500 percent, but the price of eggs and chicken meat haven’t even doubled. Why?

Factory farming is making us sick. According to consumer reports, 83% of chicken meat sold is infected with either salmonella or campylobacter. Some 76 million cases of food-borne illness occur in the US alone every year.

Since factory farms use almost 25 million pounds of antibiotics annually for non-therapeutic use (i.e. not to actually treat sickness), we can expect more antibiotic resistant strains of pathogens emerging from factory farms.

Most people think of dogs as intelligent, emotional creatures, more companions than mere animals. Suffering inflicted on dogs would make most of us angry, because we know that dogs are evolved enough to experience pain and fear, just like humans. We empathize and would certainly think twice about eating a dog (at least in a Western culinary context).

But step back for a moment and consider why we afford dogs this special status in our hearts? Is it because of their intelligence?

For anyone even remotely interested in preserving the environment, protecting the welfare of other living things or just avoiding the next global flu pandemic, becoming a vegetarian is really the only ethical and rational choice.

Choosing what to eat (and what not to) is one of the most powerful ways we can demonstrate our values, and stop meat industry giants from wielding the power they do today.