The Ojai Post

Jonathan Safran Foer has been widely hailed as one of the greatest novelists of his generation, was one of Rolling Stone's "People of the Year," and Esquire's "Best and Brightest" -- and after just two extraordinary works.

As Nobel Prize-winning novelist J.M. Coetzee puts it about Foer's latest work, [Eating Animals]"The everyday horrors of factory farming are evoked so vividly, and the case against the people who run the system presented so convincingly, that anyone who, after reading Foer's book, continues to consume the industry's products must be without a heart, or impervious to reason, or both."

In his interview with Mother Jones Magazine (the entire interview is worth reading), Foer points out that Americans "now eat 150 times as much chicken as we did 80 years ago," and that it "takes between 6 and 26 calories to make one calorie of meat. It is an incredibly inefficient protein because we are cycling through all of these other grains that humans could eat."

Suza,

You may find the research of the Weston Price Foundation regarding the history of earth based people and their diets interesting. His extensive field research sheds light on the misapprehensions regarding the long term impacts of the vegetarian / vegan diet on the direct health of humans.

"1. World Bank scientists conclude that eating meat causes more than half of global warming (conservatively)".

The author has discredited herself with her first listed "fact". No need to read the article any further. The study that she refers to was published by the privately funded Worldwatch Institute, not the World Bank.

Any large scale food production is detrimental to the environment. Fertilizer must be used in large scale vegetable farming and the fertilizer comes from either livestock or petroleum sources.

To Anonymous, Comment #2,

Thank you for your Comment about Dr. Weston Price.
I am very familiar with his sudies of primitive people and have his book, "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration." I am also familiar with the research of the Price-Pottenger Foundation.

My vegan/vegetarian friends have their blind spots,just as meat-eaters do. I personally think that there is ample evidence that human beings can be healthy on a wide range of native diets, provided the food is grown on healthy soil, without pesticides, etc.

But from a moral viewpoint I cannot justify the extreme cruelty of factory farming and slaughterhouses. We have our own chickens and I eat their eggs when they are available, but, unless I was starving, right now where I am in Life I could no more eat a pig, cow, chicken, horse or goat than a dog, cat or a monkey.

But I understand what you are saying. Things are not so simple!

Tim, I will check out your Comment. I'm curious to know how/why the author would mix up the World Bank and Worldwatch Institute.

But even if she got this first point mixed up, does that really discredit the rest of the article?

Perhaps this sheds a little light on the Worldwatch Institute/World Bank confusion:

"In a paper published by a respected US thinktank, the Worldwatch Institute, two World Bank environmental advisers claim that instead of 18 per cent of global emissions being caused by meat, the true figure is 51 per cent."

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/study-claims-meat-creates-half-of-all-greenhouse-gases-1812909.html

Also this from Lord Stern, The former World Bank chief economist:

The peer, who wrote an influential review of climate change in 2006, advocated a meat-free diet and called on people to think more about the effect of what they eat.

He predicted people’s attitudes to eating meat would change so much with time that it would eventually become unacceptable - in the same way as drink driving.

The former World Bank chief economist spoke to The Times ahead of the climate change summit in Copenhagen.

‘I think it’s important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating,’ the London School of Economics professor said.

‘I am 61 now and attitudes towards drinking and driving have changed radically since I was a student.

‘People change their notion of what is responsible. They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food.’

http://www.wiseupjournal.com/?p=1199

THANKS so much for these clarifications, Wayne.

I hope that Tim (Comment #3) reads this!

will be back later to look up the website...