Observer: Safran Foer on giving up meat for the sake of the planet
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...rove-your-life
You have to scroll down a bit so I'll post what it says here, this was in the Observer in their "30 ways to improve your life" feature:
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER ON GIVING UP MEAT FOR THE SAKE OF THE PLANET
Having already inspired Natalie Portman to turn vegan, New York novelist Safran Foer's grisly, hard-hitting excursion into non-fiction, Eating Animals, will be published here in March. In it, Safran Foer takes the case for vegetarianism into the 21st century. It's not just about eating something with a face any more. It's also about global warming, food-borne illnesses and pandemics. Not to mention obesity, cancer, hypertension and heart disease.
When his wife became pregnant, the prospect of making decisions on behalf of someone else prompted Safran Foer to spend three years examining an issue that had been nagging since boyhood. He met scientists, animal activists, farmers, slaughterhouse workers, cattle ranchers, vegans and carnivores. "What I found," he says, "was no more horrible than I'd imagined – or seen on Peta videos – but so much more far reaching."
Eating Animals graphically describes factory farms – responsible for 99 per cent of America's meat and also the great bulk of ours – where genetically uniform, feeble creatures are crammed into overcrowded, stressful, faeces-infested conditions and routinely fed antibiotics with every meal to prevent sickness. Their homes are petri-dishes for emerging "zoonotic illnesses" (such as Sars and swine flu) and directly responsible for our increasing resistance to antibiotics. They also generate more greenhouse-gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined.
In America, Safran Foer has created a storm – regularly appearing on prime time TV. He, of course, is delighted by the impact. "We used to view the issue as something that had vegetarians and meat eaters at opposite ends of the spectrum," he says. "Now, I think, a consensus is becoming visible – and most of us are in the same side. On the opposite side is an industry that nobody really likes." AM
ADVICE We need to eat less meat. In America, they eat 150 times more chicken than they did 80 years ago and the only way to save the planet is a global move towards vegetarianism. If and when you do eat meat, buy it from a farmers' market or a place where the farmer would let you see the farm.
IN A NUTSHELL Step away from the Big Mac or the world gets it.
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer is published by Hamish Hamilton, £20, on 4 March
Anyone heard of this guy or his book before?
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