Summary Of Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals

When we are eating meat, we do not stop and think about what the real cost of its production has been. The cost is not a sum of money, the cost is the one humans and animals have to pay in order for us to consume meat. In his book Fast Food Nation , Eric Schlosser discusses the unsatisfactory treatment workers and animals receive when being at a slaughterhouse, which lack proper inspections, due to the absence of government oversight. Jonathan Safran Foer, in his book Eating Animals, also discusses the horrendous treatment animals receive inside and outside these slaughterhouses, and the terrible process of killing and skinning they have to go through. The inhumane treatment of animals is a problem that could be improved, Sam Gazdziak in his article “Effective
They are not just treated bad in the slaughterhouses but also when they are being transported to it: “[C]attle face a journey of up to forty-eight hours, during which they are deprived of water and food. As a result, virtually all of them lose weight and many show signs of dehydration. They are often exposed to extremes of heat and cold. A number of animals will die from the conditions or arrive at the slaughterhouse too sick to be considered fit for human consumption” (Foer 227). It is a bad treatment, but it is not as horrendous as the treatment they receive once in the slaughterhouse. The cattle are led through a chute into a knocking box, the stun operator presses a large pneumatic gun between the cow’s eyes, a steel bolt shoots into the cattle’s head, and retracts into the gun. Sometimes the cattle are only dazed and not killed, and wake up when they are being “processed” (Foer 229). Sometimes the gun is not effective, which leads into the horrendous process of the cattle being skinned alive. It is a definitely a sad thing to hear as well as to see the suffering a living cattle goes through when it is not killed in the proper