Forward.com

"Eating Animals Are Wrong" This was the heading for your article. Does it mean that animals who consume anything are wrong? I do believe that it was supposed to be Eating Animals IS Wrong.

Nonsense! Man has evolved as an omnivore. Eating meat is as natural as breathing air. Of course, geographic location will influence one's choice of diet. Colder climes will require a heavier meat-based diet while warmer climes will be favorable for a heavier proportion of non-meat foods. I speak as a former vegan of 8 years in my youth when, like the author and others of the same bent, an intoxication with the 'idea' that avoiding meat elevated me to a 'higher' moral plane than my carnivorously-inclined peers. Nothing soothes a searching soul better than 'choices' which mark the chooser as a being of 'superior moral compassion.'

I'm really torn about this issue. The comment by Paul is absolutely correct: man is designed, evolutionarily, to eat meat. It's one of the few attributes that separates us from our kin, the apes.

But what about all the numerous interpretations of Torah that point DO point to vegetarianism as being of high moral value (paul's other point)? Many Jews believe not eating meat helps usher in the messianic age because it harkens back to the garden of Eden; man's initial state was that of an herbivore.

I'm interested to know if Foer ties in this religious aspect. But, as far as I can see, he is dead on (pun?) with the more secular, ethical ties to vegetarianism.

Although, some would say, "go vegan or go home". Regardless, I love this topic.

I am very driven by the horrific issues with factory farming that are brought up in this book. Industrial animal production is toxic to our environment, our health (ie: E.coli), and our values. All this on top of being completely inhumane. However, the title of this blog and much of the text missed a major point of the book. The problem is factory animal production, not meat consumption. All these issues do not have only one solution (vegetarianism). It is this reasoning that led me to start a kosher, non-industrial, grass-fed meat business (KOL Foods). It is a very needed as the kosher meat business is virtually entirely industrial - even the kosher organic chicken producers are industrial. If you are interested in learning more about these issues, I have a blog (www.kolfoods.blogspot.com). And one more FYI... we are having a pasture-raised turkey sale and raffle until Nov. 3 (go to www.kolfoods.com).

At the risk of sounding politically ( but not religiously) incorrect, I think that a careful study of the Torah will demonstrate that man was encouraged to be the center of God's world and that he was permitted to eat meat as part of that role and especially as a means of celebrating special days. Yes, Rav Kook ZTL felt that man would not eat in a rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem, but one can maintain that such an opinion is a minority opinion within Halacha and that man was told after the Flood that one of the means of asserting his differences from the animal world was by the consumption of animal flesh. If the author had ever studied Chulin and Yoreh Deah as well as the many discussions within the Talmud and its commentators, I tend to doubt that he would have realized that Kosher slaughter is a highly disciplined and specialized halachic requirement as well as the interplay with the related Halachic discussions of Tzaar Baalei Chaim which by no means probibit the slaughter or consumption of animals. It is unfortunately true that the road to hell is paved with the best of intentions-it is a historical fact that anti Semitism in Germany in the early stages of the Third Reich, may its name and memory be erased, was marked by a ban on Kosher slaughter. It is indeed a tragedy that the liberal left with its view that man is no better than an animal, is gravitating to a perspective that was adopted by the Nazis.

An obvious fact stands: humans have he digestive tract of apes (not of carnivores). Meat eating belongs to the cultural evolution of man, not to the biological one. Is meat eating what separates human from non-human primates? Or rather, social structure, using tools, language (characteristics that, although present in the animal world, are crudely rudimentary)?

If one wants to defend meat eating, there is no need to recur to evolution.

Food is fuel, period. Discover through experimentation what combinations work best for you. I was a vegetarian for 5 years, then moved to a very cold climate where it didn't work any more in maintaining a required level of energy and vigor. After moving back down South, I was able to reduce the amount of flesh food. Getting hung up on Food intake is an obsessive syndrome associated with the American and European culture and the growth of its leisure class. In the rest of the world, food is fuel and whatever one is lucky enough to be able to pick, hunt or catch is what's on the table. In India, the climate allowed for the developement of a Hindu culture and religion which extolls vegetarianism. Nothing wrong with that. Meat spoils quickly in the heat and there is an abundance of grains, fruits, vegetables and spices.

Eating meat is as natural as breathing air? Where are your claws and fangs, Paul? Are you fast enough and strong enough to chase down an elk, sink your 'canines' into his neck and underbelly, bite straight through the fur, and just start gleefully chomping and tearing through fat and sinew like a real carnivore would? Would that hit the spot? And how long could you store the left-overs for? Do you really have such a "natural" inclination?

And if not meat, perhaps you have a natural inclination to sneak up on an aboriginal ox, push her suckling calves out of the way, and start suckling yourself?

From a religious perspective the permission to eat meat is exegetically linked to man's inclination being "evil from his youth" and to the prohibition on murder. It was concession to man's wickedness. If eating meat was clearly a good, desirable thing, the Torah would have commanded it!

The Torah commands what is good, and prohibits that which is bad. In the case of eating meat, it was prohibited for the first ten generations of humanity, then permitted to all humanity with certain restrictions, and then later on, for the Jews, restricted even further. That which the Torah permits and restricts (rather than commanding) from the beginning of time is itself in a morally questionable category, but that which it reverses course on from initial prohibition, really should be held very suspect morally. Eating meat was only ever commanded to be done at very precise times and locations -other than at those times, eating meat cannot be considered "Good." People often ask me what I'll do if the Temple is rebuilt and I have to eat meat at that time, and I tell them, that if it turns out we'll have to do that (and it isn't clear whether we will or won't), that sure, I'll eat the meat. But the difference between eating something because God commanded it, and eating something just because it tastes good (and I do love the taste of meat) are very, very different categories of moral motive.

The Torah is so ambivalent about food of animal origin that it doesn't even have a specific blessing to say of them, like it does fruit, vegetables, and grains -the original (and still optimal) foods. Instead, you say a generic blessing, "shehakol."

Yes, Steve, all humans including Jews have Divine permission to eat to meat, but the inhumane horrors of industrial farming make kashrut a joke. Even assuming that a shochet could have the right reverent mindset to slaughter many dozens of animals perfectly a day on a noisy, chaotic, mechanized (dis)assembly line(which I don't believe is possible) the way the animals are raised is not regulated by halacha -the animals live awful tortured lives (coming from the same battery cages, egg and milk factories, and intensive feed-lots as non-kosher animals) just so that we can relish the taste.

If the Rabbis really gave the smallest darn about animal suffering, they wouldn't allow us to use animals raised in this system. Certainly you'd be better off exclusively patronizing a business like Devora's although there couldn't be enough such businesses to supply enough meat for our collective gluttony, and frankly, even the grass-fed stuff ain't health food. Morally speaking though, if you have a choice between meat or eating something that didn't endure suffering, that didn't squander resources and pollute the environment, and doesn't predispose you to cancer and heart-disease, then the latter is the absolutely preferable choice.

Paul, perhaps for you being vegan was about "being on a higher moral plane" than your fellow human beings, but for me and for many vegans, its about doing the bare minimum (abstaining) required not to be complicit in causing massive unnecessary suffering -for humans, animals, and the environment. We'd be very happy to lose the objectively "higher" moral distinction by having the rest of humanity join us. This is a truly human higher value, and frankly, an intrinsically Jewish higher value too -minimizing suffering, and maximizing health and happiness.

There are many omnivores who are great, serious moral people, in many instances far more so than I am, but in this small respect, on this issue, I sincerely believe that someone who doesn't at minimum take the time to really examine deeply the issues, and who doesn't want to know how his food gets to his plate is not acting morally, and someone who does examine the issue and can continue to eat industrial animal products without concern is acting unethically. The question is, "What do you live for?" Are you a hedonist, who does things because they feel good, or are you someone who wants to do what is right?

And Steve, there certainly are some vegans and vegetarians who hold the premise that man is no better than an animal, but it isn't a necessary tenet for a vegan to hold. It is precisely because we are superior that we have an obligation to be merciful. Matthew Scully's book, "Dominion" makes this case powerfully. (Scully was a speechwriter for President Bush and Sarah Palin, interestingly enough.)

Shabbat Shalom.

Anthropologists and human paleontologists have found that modern Homosapiens, despite our advanced technology and civilization, are notsignificantly different either physiologically or psychologically from our Paleolithic ancestors.

The diet of Paleolithic man consisted of a wide variety of vegetables, fruit, and wild game to recommend a modern diet similar to the American Dietary Guidelines.To propose humans as basically vegetarian in nature, is clearly unsupported by human history. Meat is, and has always been, a major constituent of the human diet.

Humans have evolved for the past two million years as omnivorous hunters/gatherers and have as much right to eat meat as any other predator on this planet. However, unlike other modern predators, many of whom often begin eating their prey while it is still alive and conscious, we treat our prey far more humanely.

Instead of trying to rewrite or deny our evolutionary and dietary heritage, it would make more sense to adopt an animal welfare approach that advocates the humane use of our animal food sources rather than an animal "rights" position which ultimately seeks no use of animal food stock.

Eating animals ARE wrong! Only animals who derive nourishment from photosynthesis are right. Hey, just kidding. I didn't actually read the article, but the rest of it looked pretty good.

I'm a longtime member of PETA, People Eating tasty Animals.

I've been vegetarian - most of that time vegan - for over 40 years now. No debate necessary to not participate in animal abuse & terrible suffering. Just do it. Stay healthy, stay kosher, stay cruelty-free - go veg!!

Mr Ackland,

I agree with your conclusions about vegansim, but I believe you are wrong about the evolutionary progress of man.

Just because we are no longer inclined to rend animals with our hands and teeth, does not negate our status as INTELLIGENT hunters. Humans are inclined, and have been for eons, towards "chomping and tearing through fat and sinew like a real carnivore would". We just kill and cook our food first. Our appetites haven't evolved, but our minds have. Just because we, or our ancestors, never had claws or fangs doesn't make us herbivores.

Mr Ackland, do you use your appendix? The fact that that organ is obsolete is another testament to the evolutionary shift away from a solely plant eating species.

The most amazing thing about vegan is that it seems to have evaporated my melancholia. Could this be because meat / dairy is chock-filled with chemicals from tortured / maltreated animals?

Next up, Foer's anxiously awaited polemic, Wearing Clothes. See how becoming a father raised his awareness about child labor. Journey with him to the factories of the world and witness the deplorable conditions that allow us to buy Polo shirts at affordable prices. Agree with his insightful conclusion that we must learn to sew or walk around naked.

And after that is Buying Mansions, Foer's expose on gentrification. Foer will report on the history of my and his neighborhood of fourteen years, Park Slope. He will tell you how fatherhood awaked his need to chronicle the displacement of black, Hispanic, and Asian families, by white, well to do bankers and writers that purchase seven million dollar mansions and five dollar lattes. Then he will tell you why you shouldn't buy a home in a safe, upper class neighborhood with private schools, and should instead live in the streets.

And finally, there’s Reading Books, on the environmental devastation caused by book and magazine paper, and the plastic and computer chip factories that make book readers. See how his transformation into fatherhood awakened his concern for rain forests and their native populations, leading him to realize that we shouldn’t read.

Hi Eliezer,

Thanks for your comments. Glad you're on the right side of the issue.

Just so you're aware, the appendix is not a vestigial organ -google it and see. Science has revised itself on this issue. There is no such thing as an obsolete organ -there are only organs whose purpose we have yet to discover. It is classical medical hubris that causes us to suppose that things like the appendix or the tonsils are useless.

In fact, Eliezer, just like every other creature on the planet, the question of what kind of 'vore we "are" is contingent upon what we would naturally eat without tools and fire. We certainly can eat meat and Twinkies and pizza but this neither makes us carnivores or twinkivores or pizzavores or even, dare I say, omnivores. No more than feeding white-bread to geese or pasta to dogs or rendered cows back to cows makes them Wonderbreadivores or gramnivores (grain eaters) or carnivores. The capacity to eat almost anything doesn't make us omnivores any more than it makes a dog an omnivore -it just makes us adaptable. It is God's (or nature's) mercy to us that we are able to eat almost anything, and hunting and agriculture have certainly helped humanity survive outside of ideal circumstances. Like all other animals though, we do have a specific, biologically appropriate diet of foods in their natural state that we were designed, or evolved, if you prefer, to eat.

And we're not herbivores. We're really frugivores -fruit eaters. As famously formulated by people such T.C. Fry and Doug Graham, our natural food will be attractive to us in nature, as well as tasty, aromatic, abundant, calorically sufficient, nutrient rich, water rich, and easily edible without alteration or tools. Only fruit meets all of those criteria, while some leafy greens, and very limited amounts of nuts are the only other foods that are essentially edible, palatable, and nutritious in their natural state. Grains require cooking and are unpalatable without additional seasonings. Legumes require cooking. Meat and fish require tools and (usually) cooking. Milk, eggs, and insects, while edible don't meet those criteria. Nor do root vegetables. Only fruit, greens, and nuts are truly food for us -everything else is merely sub-optimal survival-level sustenance. And fruit is also the only food source other than mother's milk and honey that is actually designed/evolved specifically to be food -it has no other function -it needs to be eaten for it to propagate. Everything else is only food incidentally.

The great truth is that the foods that the simple reasoning above indicates are most natural for us, are also the foods that modern nutritional science has identified as the healthiest, most nutritionally dense and important foods for us, and not only that, but they are the foods that waste the fewest resources, and involve the least suffering to animals (the modern harvesting of grains and beans, for example involves the mangling deaths of millions of animals in harvesting machinery every year.)

Even more fascinating, is the fact that fruits and leafy greens were the very things that the Torah tells us our diet was restricted to in the garden of Eden. Once we were forced to leave that perfect environment, we were shunted to inferior food sources, first, grains (see Genesis 3:17-19), and then 10 generations in, we were permitted meat.

If you prefer to look at things evolutionarily, surely you agree that there was time that human-beings or even proto-humans had not developed fire or tools, and so they must have evolved in an environment sufficient in their natural foods (see above), to get to the point of being intelligent enough to develop tools and harness fire without previously having had substantial access to meat, grains, and so forth. Once again, when for whatever reason, their natural environment was no longer able to sustain them, they were forced to resort to hunting and agriculture. We can eat almost anything, but nutritional science, logic, and the Torah all indicate that fruits and leafy greens are not only what we're meant to eat, but they remain the nutritionally optimal things for us to eat, and they're the least harmful and most socially and environmentally responsible things to eat, and there's really no need to eat anything else when fruits and vegetables are abundant. Eating all else is necessity become perversion and fetish once the necessity has passed. Our addiction to the taste of flesh and other cooked items blinds us to what is real, true, and good and so otherwise intelligent, good people are forced to speak like amoral beasts, saying, "but it tastes so good!"

Hi I am an animal lover and very seldom eat meat, but that being said today I did so, and it makes me feel dirty and unethical, I wish I could take the pledge to never again touch flesh, your decency and respect towards life made strive to listen to my inner voice that says:" All life wants to keep on living", I will try to be stronger in the future. I admire your decency very much.

Foer's value system is informed by secular values. Shechitah, melichah, and nikkur, are mitsvot whether one likes the taste or not.

The comments by these angry, patronizing orthodox readers, so clearly deaf to Safran Foer's illuminated thoughts, are repetitive, exhausting and guess what? contribute nothing.

Orthodox preaching and hijacking of entire threads on sophisticated, thinking Jewish websites is truly a regrettable phenomenon (happens on every single one...)

As president of Jewish Vegetarians of North America, I am very pleased at the publication of Foer's book and all the positive reviews and publicity it has been getting.

When will the Jewish community start addressing the many moral issues related to animal-based diets? The production and consumption of meat and other animal products arguably violate basic Jewish mandates to preserve our health, treat animals with compassion, protect the environment, conserve natural resources, help hungry people and pursue peace.

Time for a dialog/debate on "Should Jews Be Vegetarians?"

We should also consider an inconvenient truth that even Al Gore has been generally ignoring: the major impact that animal-based agriculture has on climate change, A UN FAO 2006 report indicated that animal-based agriculture emits more greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalents) than all the cars, planes and other means of transportation worldwide combined. And a recent cover article by two environmentalists in World watch magazine argues that the livestock' sector is responsible for over half of the human-caused greenhouse gases. Hence to avoid the impending climate catastrophe and shift our imperiled world to a sustainable path, a major societal shift to plant-based diets is essential. Such a shift would reduce the many other negative effects of animal-based diets: disease, increased hunger, water pollution, deforestation, soil erosion, rapid species extinction, desertification and many others.

Naysayers about global climate change should please explain why the glaciers and polar ice caps are melting faster than climate scientists' worst scenarios, why so many areas are experiencing such severe droughts, why there are more and larger wild fires, why this century is the warmest on record and much more.

For further information, please visit JewishVeg.com/Schwartz, where I have over 140 articles and 25 podcasts of my talks and interviews and ASacredDuty.com, to see our acclaimed documentary “A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World .”

As a vegetarian, I would like to point out that apes DO eat meat, particularly chimpanzees. However, in Judaism the point is not what we CAN do (Jews can physically digest pork, for example), but what we SHOULD do. I have made a choice not to eat animals because I live in 21st century America, where we have the means (fresh produce available year-round, "exotic" foodstuffs fairly easy to purchase, etc.) to make this choice. And yes, I do it for the animals.

As a vegetarian, I would like to point out that apes DO eat meat, particularly chimpanzees. However, in Judaism the point is not what we CAN do (Jews can physically digest pork, for example), but what we SHOULD do. I have made a choice not to eat animals because I live in 21st century America, where we have the means (fresh produce available year-round, "exotic" foodstuffs fairly easy to purchase, etc.) to make this choice. And yes, I do it for the animals.

For example, just because I CAN hit the button and post a comment twice doesn't mean I SHOULD. Oops - sorry!

Ivanete,

Glad we inspire you -you can do it too! There's lots of good books and resources on the subject, from both humane, health, and ecological/social perspectives including the one by Foer, and the Jewish-oriented sources by Richard Schwartz. The more you learn, the easier eating compassionately and healthily becomes.

Erik Marcus's book, "Vegan: a new Ethics of Eating" is a good one. "Diet for a New America" by John Robbins, "Eat to Live" by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, "Mad Cowboy" by Howard Lyman, and "The China Study" by T. Collin Campbell are all well worth reading too.

Jennifer -succinct and to the point. Well said.

Eating animals is a JEWISH issue. “Auschwitz begins whenever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.” --Theodor Adorno. As Jews, we must expand our circle of compassion to include ALL of G-d's creatures. Going vegan is an absolute truth for any truly pious Jew.