On Reading "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer

I am going to stop a moment today and write an update on my impression so far of the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. I am not someone who goes lightly into a book like this. I have my own beliefs that guide me on the choices I have made thus far regarding my reasons for becoming vegan. I am not going to be an "activist" about it, I told myself when I went from being vegetarian to being vegan. (But I have been called an activist.) Typically, I am unable to finish books whose content deals with any mistreatment of animals--be it fiction or non-fiction. This stems from a long-ago hurt I encountered as a young child and from volunteering for animal rescue organizations as well as having worked in the ag industry. I own several books on the "animal" industry: Dominion, Animals in Translation to name a few. I was unable to finish either one. I am half way through Eating Animals. It has not been an easy read. I will say that if you ever wondered how animals make their way to your plate--how creative our animal eating industry has gotten with "recycling" animals to eliminate waste, you will never look at the statistic of euthanized dogs and cats again the same again. I know I won't. Let me share a quote Jonathan shares in his book made by contemporary philosopher Jacques Derrida:
Such a subjection. . . can be called violence in the most morally neutral sense of the term. . . No one can deny seriously, or for very long, that men do all they can in order to dissimulate this cruelty or to hide it from themselves, in order to organize on a global scale the forgetting or misunderstanding of this violence.