Eating Animals: Semiotics and Suffering

I am another chapter into Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, and having waded carefully into this book of introspection and macro-views, am pleased to find I'm learning new things. In this chapter Foer discusses words and their meanings (appropriate, as the chapter's name is "Words/Meaning"). Words like fresh and free-range on food packaging normally conjure up images of lush green valleys, healthy animals, and general peace and happiness. Foer dispels the illusion in just a few quick blows. First, however, he talks about humanity and how we view animals as separate from ourselves. Most humans are anthropocentric, we believe we are the "pinnacle of evolution, the appropriate yardstick by which to measure the lives of other animals, and the rightful owners of everything that lives" (46). Does this give us the right to be cruel? To most widely accepted religions and moral codes, no. And yet, we turn a blind eye to the harsh realities of animal treatment, especially treatment of those unlucky creatures that will become breakfast, lunch, and dinner for so many.

Lets talk about chickens. Lots of folks eat chicken. Chicken was the last land-based meat substance I gave up as a child. I used to enjoy chicken nuggets with the best of 'em. Then, I began to equate the little breaded dinosaur shapes with the fluffy, yellow chicks I saw on farms and at petting zoos. Too cute. Then I thought about the feathered birds, their beady black eyes, their squawks and flapping. Too real. Too alive. Nothing like the little breaded lumps that were in the oven and then on my dinner plate. Chicken went off the menu.  Eggs, however, stayed on.

"The typical cage for egg-laying hens allows each sixty-seven square inches of floor space. . .[the size of] a sheet of printer paper." (47). These cages are piled one on top of another for stories and stories of cramped, frightened, birds. The wire floors cut their feet. Some can't even stand, their cages are so tight. In order to get a feeling for the bird's feelings, Foer asks us to imagine an elevator, "an elevator so crowded you cannot turn around without bumping into (and aggravating) you neighbor. The elevator is so crowded you are often held aloft. This is kind of a blessing, as the slanted floor is made of wire, which cuts into your feet. After some time, . . . some will become violent; others will go mad. A few, deprived of food and hope, will become cannibalistic. . . No elevator repairman is coming. The doors will open once, at the end of your life, for your journey to the only place worse (see: Processing)." (47).

But that's okay. One can just eat free-range chicken and eggs. No sweat. No cruelty. Right? RIGHT???
Wrong, says Foer. Free range implies room to roam, sunshine, food, all the comforts your future chicken nuggets/ omelette layers could ask for. What it really means is this: "access to the outdoors,' which, if you take those words literally, means nothing." Chickens that are free-range simply are not in cages. They can be cramped, stuffed, crawling over and under each other, in their own feces, starving for air in a warehouse, but they are not in cages. And that outdoor access? There's a little window at the top of the warehouse that someone theoretically could open to let in a little light. Maybe.

Well that's just disgusting, one might say. It's a good thing my chicken comes fresh in nice, clean packages at the grocery, shiny and ready to be cooked/eaten. That's another word. Fresh. Which Foer tells us is "more bullshit. According to USDA, 'fresh' poultry has never had an internal temp. below 26 degrees or above 40 degrees Fahrenheit. . . Pathogen-infested, feces-splattered chicken can technically be fresh, cage-free, and free-range, and sold in the supermarket legally (the shit does not need to be rinsed off first)." This is the last time I put eggs on the grocery list, assuming they're from a factory farm.

Factory farming is a term that "is sure to fall out of use in the next generation or so, either because there will be no more factory farms, or because there will be no more family farms to compare them to" (59). This generation is the food industry's animals' last chance. If we continue to purchase and promote goods from factory farms which privately ignore and even condone animal suffering (when it makes the corporation more money to starve chickens or put male chicks from egg layers in a shredder, why not?), we may see any truly humane farms die out.

If that doesn't make you put down the nuggets and the egg carton, I don't know what will.