Igloo Dog House Tractor Supply

>>female commentator: hi, everyone. i grew up eating meat. i still eat meat andi cook with meat, and the argument i often make is i-i don't want my palate to be limited,what-what i, the flavors and colors and that i put on a plate, i don't wanna be limitedby. i'm also a mom and i have a beloved dog. istill use the present tense. i had a beloved

Igloo Dog House Tractor Supply, dog, barney, and who i sometimes confusedwith my son who often looked at me and would go, "mom, i'm the two-legged one." [laughter] so i have this completely chaotic relationshipwith animals and i welcomed when i was handed

jonathan safran foer's book, eating animals,i-i welcomed somebody who could, was maybe going to make an argument about vegetarianism.and that is what the book is not. it is a subjective, starting from his childhoodhe describes his relationship to animals and to eating animals and goes from there to avery big view about what maybe our relationship and our responsibilities are and should be. it's a different argument than michael pollan'sargument. michael pollan is some, is somebody who we on the food team refer to often andwe-we often refer to food rules, his book, as-as our bible. so i-i-i really enjoyed reading jonathan'sbook very, very much and-and i can't wait

to hear more from him. so here he is. [applause] >>jonathan safran foer: thank you so much.it was a very thoughtful introduction and i found that i was quite worried when i publishedthe book or when i anticipated the publication of the book because i thought that i wouldhave a certain set of built in natural enemies. and i had assumed that chefs were gonna beone kind of enemy and that farmers were gonna be another kind of enemy. and what i found since the book has been inthe world and i've been able to talk to lots

of different kinds of audiences is that thestrongest or the most enthusiastic response has actually been from chefs and farmers;farmers in particular. and that the most negative responses havecome from where i thought the most positive responses would come which is the animal rightsmovement who-who often feel as if the book didn't go far enough. but it means a lot to me that-that-that youwould speak so generously about the book. and i think that part of the solution to thisproblem and it seems to me whatever side you come down on in terms of eating meat or noteating meat or what kind of meat, you really have to recognize that there's a problem.

we have a serious problem and part of thesolution is gonna be in making visible these presently invisible alliances like betweensomeone who's concerned with animal welfare and a chef who likes to cook meat. we're used to thinking of these people atbeing on opposites ends of a spectrum or a cattle rancher and an activist at peta. wethink that these represent the extremes. and my experience when i met these peopleand heard their stories was-was that i-i was surprised to find that they're on the sameend of the spectrum and opposite people who are willfully ignorant or willfully forgetthat we have this horrible problem in front of us.

well i'm grateful to be speaking to you. it'svery, you, i'm sure you take for granted how unusual a place this is – but it was a real revelation walking in heretoday. i am a layman with computers and technologyand i am i guess still under the impression that google is like a search engine and ifyou need to find something you type google and you enter it and you get a whole bunchof responses. and i can't for the life of me imagine why this requires so many people -- and so many buildings. but as i walked the campus i say, "oh a lotbicycles. they're very colorful." and the

person who was walking me said, "oh, googleprovides us bicycles." and in the lobby there was a-a-a drink, acooler filled with drinks and it was unlocked and it didn't have any place to insert money -- and he said, "oh, google provides those." i started getting this image of a place thatis really nice to work until i went into the men's room and i noticed that there were toothbrusheson shelves. and suddenly i understood everything -- that was going on here. that it's all down payments on your time.and toothbrushes at work. what an absolutely

horrible, miserable thing. my god, i'm so glad i don't have to have atoothbrush where i work. but then again i don't work anywhere so i'm,i guess i'm unusually lucky. so i thought what i would do is talk for alittle bit about this book, the research that went into it and why i decided to write it.i'm not a journalist, i'm not an activist, i'm not a philosopher, i'm not even an animalperson, i'm not really an environmentalist. and most of the people who've become engagedwith this subject in any kind of devoted way are one of those things. i thought i'd talk about why i did get involvedwith it. give you some sense of what the book

is and some of the conclusions that i reachedand then leave as much time as possible for something resembling a conversation, becausethis is a-a subject that is very well served by conversation and very poorly served bya lecture. it's, we perceive it to be very controversial and very touchy. as i was saying when i anticipated the bookcoming out i thought that, i thought it was gonna be a really difficult and trying andmaybe even dangerous experience. i had heard stories from friends of mine whohad written books about food, not even targeting the meat industry in particular, but targeting-targetingthe industrialized food system who at various times had to have body guards when they wouldgive readings because they got so, had so

many threatening people come up to them afterwardsat the signing. and i thought that i was really going forthe bullseye of this unfortunate target and that i had imagined many times, for some reasonmy mind would cling to the image of someone throwing ground beef at me at a reading. and i became so convinced that this wouldhappen. it's probably just narcissism, but i became so convinced it would happen thati would think, i go, "what's the right move if someone should do that? do i pretend itdidn't happen and just read as if -- there weren't meat stuck to the wall behindme? or throw it back?" or when somebody would inevitably in the audience say, "hey, kickthat guy out," would i then say, "no, no,

no let the guy sit. i wanna talk to this person"and try to engage this person. anyway it never happened. and no one ever got angry with me and mostsurprisingly no one ever disagreed with me. and i don't think this is because i'm sucha persuasive arguer. i think it's because the case against factory farming is so persuasive. i spent three years researching it and i'vespent about a year talking about it now and i've yet to meet the person who wants to publiclystand up and defend it. and there's been absolutely no response fromthe industry itself which is perhaps the most shocking thing i've encountered in-in-in theprocess of researching and writing this book.

i mean it's insane if you think about it. if i wrote a book about google and said, "googleis an evil company for these reasons. here are 80 pages of ed notes citing facts aboutgoogle's horrificness and here are testimonies from former google employees explaining whyit's a horrible company and here's why we need less google in the world." if i were do that rest assured google wouldrespond somehow or someone would respond on google's behalf. i'd probably be sued intooblivion first of all, and secondly people would say, somebody would say, "either you'vegot it completely wrong or you're not telling the full story and here's the rest of thestory."

and that never came. there was no responsefrom a meat industry that has one of the most powerful lobbies in the world. and so this suggests one of two things: eitheri got it all right, all of my facts are right; my argument is right and they are effectivelyraising the white flag and submitting, which is not the case. or they are recognizing that the expansionof this conversation will-will, is-is against their interests. that the more people thinkand talk about this and examine what's going on, what we have, and what our choices are,the less inclined they will be to eat meat. now i-i've been a little bit sloppy so farin speaking about meat and speaking about

factory farming as if they were perfectlyinterchangeable, and they're not. everybody knows what meat is. factory farmingis-is quite hard to define because it's not any particular set of technology so much asa mindset that i think is most simply described as farming that takes nature as an obstacleto be overcome, rather than any kind of guide. so the idea that sick animals are better thanhealthy animals. the idea that environmental destruction is-is better in a business modelthan sustainability; the idea that human health is of no great regard. so 99% of the animals that we eat in thiscountry now come from factory farms; less than 1% come from the kinds of farms thatprobably everybody in this room holds an image

of in his or her mind when thinking aboutfarming. we imagine a barn and animals on grass andsunshine and soil and hay and fence posts and a farmer and his wife and so on. and that has no correlation to reality orat least it represents the tiniest little sliver of reality. reality is animals being raised in extremeconcentrations; almost always indoors; almost always fed antibiotics and other drugs frombirth until death; almost always kept in conditions that would be illegal if they were dogs orcats; environmental destruction is built into the business model.

a company like smithfield had 7,000 violationsof the clean water act in one year. so if they'd had 10 we would say, "that's regrettable."if they'd had 100 we would say, "someone needs to keep a better eye on this company." but7,000 starts to seem like it's on purpose; like it's as much as they can get away with.and as it turns out they can get away with really anything. animal agriculture is the number one causeof global warming. the u.n. has said it's one of the top two or three causes of everysignificant environmental problem on the planet locally and globally: air pollution, waterpollution, deforestation, loss of biodiversity. the climate chief of the united kingdom saidin an interview a couple of months ago, and

this is not a henchman of peta and this isnot a vegetarian. he said, "that the only way to save the planet is a global movementtoward vegetarianism." al gore now talks about the need to reducemeat consumption. we're at a point where we know that we cannotcontinue to think of ourselves as environmentalists while eating factory farm meat regularly. and it's a very strange subject because asi was saying we perceive it to be divisive. we think that there's gonna be an argument.we think people are gonna feel aggressive or defensive whenever we talk about meat,despite the fact that it represents our most important relationship to animals. and there'snot a person in this room or not a person

in where ever these other rooms are who isindifferent to animals. such people don't exist. ninety-six percent of americans thinkthat animals deserve legal protection. seventy-six percent of americans think that farmed animalsdeserve strict protection from cruelty. it's pretty wild to think of anything that95% or 75% of americans agree on at this point. whether or not you believe in global warmingor not, you believe it would matter if the globe was warming, and you believe that itmatters that the quality of the air that we breathe and the quality of the water thatwe drink matters. and so as i was saying we're in this odd positionwhere we have this daily act. and for most people it's two times a day and for some peopleit's three times a day that is our most important

relationship to the environment and our mostimportant relationship to the animal world. and yet so many of us find ways not to thinkabout it. so when writing this book i wanted to finda way to think about it and find a way to encourage other people to think about it.it's not any kind of straight forward case for vegetarianism, but it is a very strongcase for engaging with this problem. so i thought what i would do is read a tinybit so you get a sense of what-what the book is like; the ways in which it is sort of journalismand sort of philosophy, but not really either of those things and much more of a story. and then, and then we can have a kind of conversationabout it.

so i'm gonna read, begin by reading a letterthat i wrote near the beginning of the research that i did. i thought that this research wouldtake me a month or two months and that i would do it through google and a little bit of readingand maybe a couple of short trips. it ended up taking three and a half yearsin part because it's such a complicated subject and in part because of letters like this. "to whom it may concern at tyson foods. i'm following up on my previous letters ofjanuary 10th, february 27th, march 15th, april 20th, may 15th, and june 7th. to reiterate, i'm a new father eager to learnas much as i can about the meat industry in

an effort to make informed decisions aboutwhat to feed my son. given that tyson foods is the world's largestprocessor and marketer of chicken, beef, and pork, your company is an obvious place tostart. i'd like to visit some of your farms and speakwith company representatives about everything from the nuts and bolts of how your farmsoperate to animal welfare and environmental issues. if possible, i'd also like to speakwith some of your farmers. i can make myself available at just aboutany time and on relatively short notice and i'm happy to travel as is needed. given your family centered philosophy andrecent, 'it's what your family deserves,'

advertising campaign, i assume you'll appreciatemy desire to see for myself where my son's food comes from. thanks so much for your continued consideration. best, jonathan safran foer" and so tyson food is not any worse than anyother company in the meat industry in america. it's not any better either. i sent dozens of these letters. i made dozensof phone calls and i was met always with evasion or silence or, "we'll get back to you," or"it's not a very good time for us," or "because

of this biosecurity risk we're actually notable to have visitors." and i-i-i basically wasn't able to see anythingthis way. there was a way that i was able to see things which i'll get to in a minute. now this is a quick aside, small and familyfarmers that less than 1% of the industry responded very, very differently. when i wouldask to see a farm they were enthusiastic to-to-to host me and they would answer any questionsi had even when they knew the answers were not flattering. i was always forthright about who i was andwhat i was interested in finding out and what i might write about it.

but it's-it's a worthwhile little test if-ifyou or somebody who eats meat open your refrigerator and look at the label on the first thing youpull out and just for fun call the company or write a letter to them. just because whynot? because in life we feel like we deserve suchanswers especially when we're giving a lot of money to these places and more importantlywe're ingesting their products; we're bringing them into our bodies and feeding them to lovedones quite often. and as far as i can tell the meat industryand the military are the great exceptions in american business; certainly in food. if you wanted to find out where your applejuice came from you could pretty easily get

an invitation to the orchard and the processingfacility. if you wanna know how your bagel is made they'lllet you behind the counter at the bakery or deli, but here there is just nothing to belearned. so i investigated other ways of learning ifthey weren't going to make themselves available there had to be ways of getting into thesefarms. and what i ended up doing was what-what i'm about to read. "i'm wearing black in the middle of the nightin the middle of nowhere." this is, by the way, not all that far fromhere. "there are surgical booties around my disposableshoes and latex gloves on my shaking hands.

i pat myself down quintuple checking thati have everything: red filtered flashlight, picture i.d., 40 dollars cash, video camera,copy of california penal code 597e – bottle of water, not for me, silenced cellphone, and blow horn." "we kill the engine and roll the final 30yards to the spot we scouted out earlier in the day on one of half dozen drive bys. thisisn't the scary part yet." i'm accompanied tonight by an animal activistwho i refer to as c in the book. "it wasn't until i picked her up that i realizedi'd been picturing someone who inspired confidence, but c is short and wispy. she wears aviatorglasses, flip flops, and a retainer." i could be describing half of the people inthe room actually.

"'you have a lot of cars i observed.'" i couldbe describing myself to be frank. "'you have a lot of cars i observed' as wepulled away from her house. 'i live with my parents for now,' she said. as we drove down the highway known to localsas blood run, both because of the frequency of accidents and the number of trucks thatuse the road to transport animals to slaughter, she explained 'that sometimes entry is assimple as walking through an open gate, although this has become increasingly rare given concernsabout biosecurity and trouble makers. more often these days fences have to be hyped.occasionally lights and alarms go off. every now and then there are dogs; every now andthen unleashed.'

she once encountered a bull that was leftto roam among the sheds waiting to impale snooping vegetarians. 'bull' i half echoed,half asked with now obviously linguistic intent. 'male cow,' she said brusquely -- as she, as she sorted through a bag of whatappeared to be dental equipment. 'and if you and i should tonight encounter a bull,' 'wewon't' she said. a tailgater forced me behind a truck packedtight and piled high with chickens on their way to slaughter. 'well hypothetically.' 'standvery still,' she advised, 'i don't think they see stationary objects.' if the question is if things ever gone seriouslywrong one of c's night visits the answer is

a resounding, 'yes.' there was the time she fell into a manurepit a dying rabbit under each arm and found herself up to her neck, literally, in literallydeep shit. and the night she was forced to spend in constructionpaper blackness with 20,000 miserable animals and their fumes, having accidentally lockedherself in the shed. and the near fatal case of campylobacter one of her cohorts pickedup from picking up a chicken. feathers were collecting on the windshield.i turned on the wiper and asked, 'what's all that stuff in your bag?' 'in case we needto make a rescue.' i had no idea what she was referring to andi didn't like it.

'now you said you don't think bulls see stationaryobjects. wouldn't this qualify though as one of those things you absolutely need to know?i don't mean to belabor the point, but -- but what the hell have i gotten myself into?i'm not a journalist, activist, veterinarian, lawyer, or philosopher, as to my knowledgehave been the others who have made such a trip. i'm not up for anything and i'm notsomeone who can stand very still in front of a guard bull.'" i imagined, this is if i imagined the meatcoming at me many times, i also imagined what would actually happen if i did face down thisbull knowing that i had to stand still and what would i think about? baseball or my parentshaving intercourse, or --

something that-that would completely paralyzeme. "we come to a gravelly stop at the plannedupon spot and wait for our synchronized watches to click over to 3:00 a.m., the planned upontime. the dog we'd seen earlier in the day can't be heard, although that's hardly a comfort. i take the scrap of paper from my pocket andread it one last time." and then i give the text of california penalcode 597e which says basically if you come upon an animal that is impounded and withoutproper access to food and water you are allowed to take it upon yourself to provide food andwater and you're not liable for trespassing or any other laws you might break in the process.

so this is how animal activists get on tofarms they-they use this in california. they use this law, this loophole. and it's prettyinteresting why there are laws that, the particular laws that forbid one from having access tofarms are quite extreme. after september 11th the government passedan animal terrorism act which makes trespassing onto a farm not an act of trespass but anact of terrorism. and it's worth investigating what is meant by that. the most generous interpretation i guess isthat the government was legitimately afraid that some terrorist would come and i don'tknow poison our food supply. but when you put it in the context of whatit is this farm system has done, 76 million

americans get food poisoning every year andthe cdc says the prime culprit is animal agriculture. i mean no terrorist is that ambitious. the num, one-one of the top two or three causesof every significant environmental problem on the planet: swine flu, h1n1, which movedacross the united states and the world and killed relatively few, but could have killeda hundred million people. there's absolutely no reason it didn't, it just didn't happento mutate in a particular way; originated on a hog farm in north carolina. so it's-it'spossible that we have our definition of terrorism backwards. so i read california penal code and i say,"which despite being state law is about as

reassuring as cujo's silence. i'm imagining some roused from rem sleep andwell armed farmer coming upon i know the difference between arugula and rugelach scrutinizingthe living conditions of his turkeys. he cocks his double barrel, my sphincter relaxes, andthen what? i whip out california penal code 597e? is that gonna make his finger less or moreitchy? it's time. we use a series of dramatic handsignals to communicate what a simple whisper would have done just as well, but we've takenvows of silence; not a word until we're safely on the way home.

the twirl of a latexed index finger means,'let's roll.' 'you first,' i blurt. and now for the scary part." so i-i ended up seeing this farm which wasa turkey farm and seeing many other farms of all of the food species and i went intolots of processing plants, slaughter houses, and the scary part was really this veil ofsecrecy; just how impossible it was to learn about food. the-the fact that almost every door that iencountered to one of these windowless sheds was locked and not because they were afraidof an animal turning the door knob and escaping, and not because they were afraid of somebodystealing the animals, because that's-that's

not a real concern when it comes to chickensor turkeys. but they're afraid of us. afraid of the peoplewho buy their products and eat their products learning what these products really are; howthey are brought to our tables and what the effects are. and it's infuriating. and there are many times in, when i writingthis book that i regretted that i was writing this book because i like to be a novelist.it's how i think of myself. it's how i like to spend my time. i can't think of a betterway to spend my time. and yet i put aside about three years, threeand a half years to write this. but whenever i was feeling unmotivated and whenever i wasfeeling uninspired or when i felt that maybe

i shouldn't be working on this book, i thinkof those locked doors and they just made me so angry that they would, they would providemore than enough fuel for the engine of the book. so i've now given you some introduction andi think it would be best to try to have a-a kind of conversation as i said, i would loveto hear somebody stand up and say, "you've got it all wrong," but short of that i wouldlove to hear questions, of course, but also any experiences you might have had with meator farming or anything like that. [pause] >>female in audience #1: so my name's annand i wanted to, oh sure.

hi everyone. i wanted to address a piece that i felt likeyou really focused on at-at the beginning of your story, that i think is-is missingin-in this greater conversation and that's the connection between food and meat withinthat and family. and i really appreciated that that's whereyou started because i don't know about any of you who, if you've made choices about whatyou eat or started to think about changes that you've made, i've found that the hardestpart is the family piece. and that when you talk to your friends orco-workers or anyone else in your life they seem to be a lot more accepting of, "oh you'vedecided to do x, y, or z" and-and it can even

be considered cool or appealing or whatever. and family's been the hard one, at least forme. and-and i-i got the impression that it has been to some extent for you in terms ofextended family. and-and i guess i'm just wondering if, not if you have any advice,but just i feel like we need to come up with some sort of safe way to approach some ofthese conversations with the people who started to feed you. and you don't wanna make themfeel guilty because they're you're mom and you're saying, "mushroom soup on everythingis disgusting," or whatever. [chuckles] but i-i-i just, i wanted to bring up thatthat piece of it is i think an important starting point in terms of how we educate is the-thepeople who are closest to home as opposed

to raging activism to these large comp-companiesthat-that aren't so close 'cause it starts local, i guess. >>jonathan safran foer: well i make no effortto educate or persuade people close to me. at least not in any active way because i thinkthat, i think there's a danger in making the person the reference rather than, or the personthe subject of your conversation, rather than what you really wanna be the subject whichis this problem -- >>female in audience: um-hum. >>jonathan safran foer: that faces all ofus. and i-i've just never had any success to be honest in-in a one-on-one conversationtrying to persuade somebody to eat differently

and so i don't try anymore. but what i find is very successful is explainingwhen asked, waiting 'til someone asks and then explaining honestly why i do what i do,trying to give an answer that corresponds to the nature of their question. >>jonathan safran foer: sometimes people say,"oh why didn't you get a burger?" and they don't wanna hear, "do you have any idea wherethat burger comes from and?" >>female in audience: right. >>jonathan safran foer: so you can say somethinglike, "you know i actually don't eat burgers i read this thing now available in paperworkby jonathan safran foer --

>>female in audience: [laughs] >>jonathan safran foer: about the environmentaleffects and i've been thinking a lot about the environment so i'm just trying to eatless." i think actually moving away from the binaryvegetarian or not is-is -- >>jonathan safran foer: one of the most successfultactics and moving toward, "i'm trying to eat less meat.>>female in audience: yeah. >>jonathan safran foer: and for me it happensto be zero. that's how little meat i eat, but i am just somebody trying to eat lessmeat. and i think that's very, it-it creates a huge opening for –

>>jonathan safran foer: people who care, butare not going to care ultimately. which frankly is most people. >>jonathan safran foer: most people are notgoing to become vegetarian any time soon, but i do think that confronted with theserealities most people are ready to eat one serving less a week. i mean i think that'spossible and i think that most people are probably ready to eat three or four or fiveservings less a week. but they have to be given that space without like a fear of beingcalled a hypocrite. >>jonathan safran foer: because the-the dangerwhen talking about these things is to reach right for the extremes, like the margins ofthe conversation, "well you're vegetarian

but you're wearing leather shoes." but, "you'rea vegetarian but i saw you swat a fly the other day and why -- i mean it sounds ridiculous, but this is whathappens in so many of these conversations. and what we, what's happened is we've allowedthe realization that we won't be perfect to be an excuse not to try. and we need to-to think about these thingslike we think about the environment. it's no longer a sensible question to-to ask, "areyou an environmentalist or not?" i mean would you have a good answer for that? it's a weirdquestion. it's almost like asking if you're a feminist or not.

>>female in audience: sure. >>jonathan safran foer: like, "of course,but i guess unless you mean crazy." i meant that, by the way, about the environmentnot about feminism. >>female in audience: [laugh] >>female in audience: good. [unintelligible] >>jonathan safran foer: so i try to buy goodappliances. i don't leave the car idling. i turn off lights when i leave a room. andyet i flew here from new york and i know that that's about as bad as it gets in terms ofmy transportational footprint. but i didn't get off the plane, throw my handsup in the air, call home and say, "turn the

car on. let it idle." because it's not an all or nothing proposition. instead we recognize or we do our best torecognize, the choices that are in front of us and then also our ability to make betterchoices. and so i think it's the exact same thing withfood. we have to get away from this idea, "i was a vegetarian for six years but theni found myself in a bus station at two in the morning and the only thing that was openwas kfc and all they had left were chicken things and so i ate them and that was theend of my vegetarianism." i've heard a lot of that and you've probably heard that too.

>>jonathan safran foer: as if like the slightestencroachment meant it's time to stop trying. >>jonathan safran foer: and if you imagineapplying that standard to any other realm of decision making it's foolish; it's crazy.like, "i used to be someone who tried to tell the truth then my mom came down the stairson the way to a party and asked me if she looked nice in a dress and i said yes, soi now i lie at every available opportunity." >>jonathan safran foer: it just doesn't makeany sense. and so i think guiding the conversation towardthe middle ground like, "you know what i've been thinking about this and jesus, it mattersto me. like it really has to matter to me that-that this is so environmentally destructiveand i'm not really all that into animals but

some things are just wrong. and this is wrong.i know what's goin' on is wrong. so i'm trying to eat less of it." i think that is actually a very successfulapproach. >>female in audience: yeah. >>jonathan safran foer: because it doesn'tmake the-the other person the topic of your conversation. >>female in audience: i-i guess i just thinkthat one of the sort of fall backs is that this is our tradition, this is our tradition,this is our culture, but it's such a short tradition that this factory farming piecehas been a part of the picture, i mean --

>>jonathan safran foer: but you also haveother traditions and cultures like caring, like -- >>jonathan safran foer: like some people findtheir values in the bible, some people find their values in stories their grandparentstaught them, but they all have, they ultimately actually teach the same lessons-- >>jonathan safran foer: about like dominionand stewardship. like what it means to be a human and what responsibilities that entailsand also what it means to be like a citizen of the earth. >>jonathan safran foer: and this is, thisis something that i felt as i was writing

the book and i've been very, very happy infeeling like it's been shown out in the conversations that i've had since which is that we all alreadyshare the values that would inspire one to stop eating -- >>jonathan safran foer: meat, or to eat lessmeat. no one needs to acquire new values. you don't need to persuade anybody to-to careabout these things only to act on the care that they already have. and so then it's aquestion of well, what are the different ways that people can act? how can you expand theaction rather than contract it? and it might be that holding a sign that says,"meat is murder," on a street corner contracts people's desire to act, whereas like offeringthem flexibility they'll say, "ah, that might

feel good. i'll try that." >>female voice: [unintelligible] >>female in audience: oh yeah, absolutely. thank you very much. >>jonathan safran foer: thank you. >>male in audience #1: hi. thanks for thebook and reading it was quite an experience. and then at the end i still felt that therewere a few questions that seemed to me obvious that were left unanswered and i went to youronline forum and still didn't find the answers. so the first one was you talked about factoryfarming of meat but not of dairy and eggs

so much and it seemed that the-the issuesapply identically. the second was somebody must have broughtup the issue that crop agriculture, industrial crop agriculture kills a lot of animals tooand causes animal suffering. and then the third one was -- >>jonathan safran foer: let's do one at atime 'cause i know i'll just forget otherwise. >>male in audience: okay. >>jonathan safran foer: so in terms of eggsand dairy, i didn't include them because they just weren't in the scope of this book. butyou're absolutely right that they're precisely the same problems.

>>jonathan safran foer: i mean i-i made alot of decisions in the interest of having this be accessible and hopefully persuasiveand sometimes that meant sacrificing comprehensiveness or one can state things in many differentways and can be equally truthful. and i made certain choices and sometimes iregretted that i didn't state them in other ways that are maybe more stringent or likeanybody you-you feel differently about the same thing at different times of the day andover the course of a week or month or year. and there are passages i look back at andi regret that i didn't say something more strongly. and there are passages that i lookback and i regret having said is so strongly. but i was trying to strike the balance. thatscene of breaking into the farm i was, i was

conveying a very difficult aspect of writingthis book which was getting the information itself. but a more difficult thing was gettingthe tone right. >>male in audience: um. >>jonathan safren foer: and then crop- >>male in audience: yeah. >>jonathan safran foer: crop growing cropskills animals, basically. >>male in audience: and so i'm sure peoplebrought that up as an argument and -- >>jonathan safran foer: yeah, the goal is-is-isnot to be these kumbaya, perfect, harm- well no perhaps that is the goal, but it's notre, it's not what we're realistically aiming

ourselves toward. there's a big difference between a tractoraccidentally, and it is accidental even if you know it's going to happen in the courseof crop agriculture, killing however many i don't know woodchucks, what lives in theground? >>jonathan safran foer: beavers? i have no idea -- republicans? there's a big difference between that andknowingly creating cages for pregnant animals so small they can't turn around.

part of this has to do with the effects onthe world and part of it has to do with effects on ourselves. and we do pay a price for makingthese decisions individually and as a culture. and then the third one was somebody somewheremust have asked you how do you know plants don't feel pain? >>jonathan safran foer: how do i know plantsdon't feel pain? >>male in audience: hasn't somebody askedyou that question in your -- >>jonathan safran foer: they usually ask itin a, in a, in a more annoying form which is something like, "but you don't you hearthe carrots crying?" >>jonathan safran foer: i don't know thatplants don't feel pain. i don't know that

you feel pain. we make assumptions and our assumptions areusually based in evidence – >>male in audience: um-hum. >>jonathan safran foer: in science so sciencegives us many, many reasons to think that other human beings experience pain in a waythat's sort of similar to the ways that we do. and it also gives us reasons to think thatdogs care when you kick them and that a pig cares when you kick it and that a cow careswhen you kick it and that a fish on a hook that appears to be struggling for its lifeand appears to be squirming in something like

pain is not just giving us false indications. that-that chemistry of its brain, the waysthat the-the nerves are organized resemble those in humans to such an extent that wehave good reason to think that they are having experiences that include suffering or painor whatever you wanna call it. and we don't have any reason to think thatplants experience pain. but as i said, we'll never know so it comes down to what kind ofassumptions you wanna make. and it's better to be someone who makes generous assumptionsthan someone who's miserly with his assumptions. you depend on me to believe you when you slamyour thumb in a car door and say, "ah, jesus christ, that fucking hurts." you want me tosay, "hey, are you okay? do you need to go

to the hospital?" because i could make otherassumptions about you. i could say, "oh there he goes again just showing me all the symptoms;exhibiting all of the pain behavior -- but i know he's not really feeling pain." in fact humans are good at doing this. andhave historically been very good about assuming that other humans don't feel things in thesame way; humans of different races or sexes. so the goal in life is to expand i think our-ourdefinition of pain not to contract it. and if you're proven wrong -- >>male in audience: yes. >>jonathan safran foer: you know if you'reproven wrong and it turns out the pig actually

feels nothing, what have you lost? a bunchof pretty good meals. but if you're proven right, then we have something very, very seriouson our hands. >>female in audience #2: hi there. thank youso much for coming. i love your-your fiction and i read this book and i love your non-fiction. it's also preaching to the choir 'cause i'man 11 year vegetarian who doesn't wear leather. but my question is i learned all these interestingfacts that just further solidified my decisions, but i wanted to see if you had any ideas onhow we can take this to the next step and impact the food industry, and take all thesefacts and make sure that this kind of these atrocities don't happen 'cause they're notonly what i perceive to be cruel, but they're

unhealthy for humans. >>jonathan safran foer: well, farmers growwhat we ask them to grow not what they want to grow. and if you go to any supermarket now you'llsee cage-free or free range eggs and you wouldn't have seen them in any supermarket probablyfive years ago. you see it in gas stations now. i mean everywhere they have them. and it's not because these companies wokeup and said, "it's probably a, like just the right thing to do to get them out of thesecages." they did it because it's what people asked for. it's the fastest growing sectorin the food industry: cage-free and free range

eggs. not in berkeley and not in brooklyn,but in the entire united states. it's a food that doesn't taste any betterand isn't any better for us, but people are buying because it's just the right thing todo. no one needs to be persuaded that it's wrong to keep an animal that's the size ofa football in a cage about the size of this book. it's just not right. so as people have asked for different thingsthey've started producing different things. so at a certain point i think a tipping pointwill be reached in much the same way that it has, was reached with smoking. where we,there was a period where everyone had access to the information and we all knew it butwe just weren't quite acting on it and the

conversation had to cha, expand and changein such a way that if just one thing led to another and suddenly there was legislationhappening at the same time as the consciousness was changing. and-and now it's legal to smoke cigarettes.it will always be legal to eat meat, but i do think that in the not too distant futurethe question won't be why don't you eat it, but why do you eat it? >>female in audience: okay. >>female in audience #3: i have a somewhatsimilar question to the question that she just asked. i feel really lucky that i can,that i live in san francisco; that i have

access to all of these free-range eggs, organicmeat, no hormone, no antibiotics. and one of the things that-that changed theway i eat and i'm not, i'm not a vegetarian but i try to limit or i try to at least knowwhere my meat comes from, was the monterey bay aquarium seafood watch card for-for seafood. so every time i go to a restaurant or i-i'meating fish somewhere i look up to see that fish species and it's totally revolutionizedmy purchasing and my consumption. and-and again i feel in a way like this islike i'm a little bit in a, in a igloo because i'm lucky enough to have -- >>jonathan safran foer: did you say an iglooor an emu? i didn't hear what you said.

>>female in audience: igloo. that i, becausei'm -- >>jonathan safran foer: igloo? >>female in audience: or like a bubble. >>jonathan safran foer: like an eskimo house? is that what you're saying? i just , i honestlycan't hear what you're saying. >>female in audience: my point is that i'mlucky enough -- >>jonathan safran foer: yeah. >>female in audience: to be able to make thesepurchasing decisions about the food that i eat.

>>jonathan safran foer: right. >>female in audience: so i guess my questionis if there were some kind of an app where i could say, "okay, foster farms, chicken.what's the condition of living for that animal versus i don't know petaluma poultry or somethinglike that?" >>jonathan safran foer: it's very difficultbecause these are not individual farms; they're farm conglomerates. and even on the best farmsi mean what you would really want is to be able to trace an individual animal and tonote was this animal given antibiotics at any point in its life. and it's not alwaysbad to give an animal antibiotics. i mean a sick animal should be given antibioticsand a healthy animal should not.

we give eight times the amount of antibioticsto healthy animals as we do to sick people. not only because they've been bred in sucha way that they are destined for illness, but because it makes them grow faster. that'sthe real reason antibiotics are given to animals. so the challenge would not be to identifywhich brands are good or bad, but which animals are raised under what conditions and there'sjust too much information that we can never know. was this animal's slaughter botched? that'sa really important thing to most people. like if you found out that the steak you are aboutto eat came from a cow that for two and a half minutes experienced its own slaughter,let's just say had like its skin pulled up

over its head, you wouldn't, you probablywouldn't wanna eat it, right? i mean most people wouldn't. so that would be a useful piece of informationto you. but you'll never get that piece of information. and so what happens is when you eat meat youmake a wager like, "i think this is probably good enough," or "i don't think it's goodenough." and we don't have nearly enough information to know. i mean temple grandin who's the mostimportant person in the livestock industry did an audit of-of cattle processing plantsand found that about 32% of the time during her announced audits, her pre-announced audits,there were deliberate acts of cruelty happening

on a regular basis. and that's a really crazy thing to hear. thatwhen they knew someone was gonna be there watching, about a third of the time they werenot accidental acts of cruelty, but deliberate acts of cruelty not happening rarely but ona regular basis. so numbers have improved, i should say, since she made that audit. but maybe should we think one out of three,one out of two, everyone has his or her own calculus. what i know is when i don't eatmeat i don't get involved with that wager. i get it right every time. that i don't have to worry about, was thisa farm where they keep the manure in lagoons

outside and it inevitably runs off into localwaterways and gets sprayed through aerosol over neighboring fields, or was this a farmwhere they have proper waste management? was this a farm where farm workers are pushedto such an extent that they become at least sloppy and at most sadistic? or is this afarm where workers are treated well; get a decent wage, are allowed to have some controlover the techniques and do their job thoughtfully and respectfully? we just can't know all of that stuff and thereis no way that we will ever know. fish are quite different because you're justlooking to see if a species is right or not. it's not, by the way, one shouldn't necessarilyfeel perfect confidence in just knowing that

a certain kind of tilapia is okay. it saysnothing about how that specific fish was caught. what the buy catch rate was. or what the fish itself went through whichmight seem like a silly or flakey suggestion that i'm making, but we have very, very goodreasons to think that they feel quite a bit and perhaps every bit as much as like a chickendoes or maybe even a cow. and some people say, "that's regrettable.i don't care that much." some people say, "i care enough to order something else." but my only point is you're always going tobe largely ignorant. and that's something i'm not comfortable with three times a dayor two times a day or even once a day.

>>male in audience #2: hey. thanks for coming.i really appreciate it. so i'd actually kind of like to make an argumentfor factory farming in some cases. i think there's, all the cases that you've been talkingabout have been very easily demonizable like beef slaughter, chicken slaughter, hard toargue with a lot of those cases. but what about where the lifestyle of thisanimal in the wild is threatened by there not being a factory farm situation. i'm thinking in particular like, well youjust brought up fish. so where tuna is becoming extinct, certain species of salmon are becomingextinct. and without factory farming institutions thedemand is such that the fish farmers or the

fish-fisherman are driven to want to drivethese-these animals into extinction. so -- >>jonathan safran foer: alright. so just tobe clear we'll only talk about fish unless you can think of an example -- >>male in audience: well people keep thatbarrier set up -- >>jonathan safran foer: okay. >>maler in audience: and we won't go intothat. >>jonathan safran foer: so -- >>male in audience: wildlife of cows. >>jonathan safran foer: salmon farming wasdeveloped for the reason you're describing

to take pressure off wild salmon population.and it's a kind of smart idea. like if we're gonna fish these things into extinction, andby the way, fisheries scientists now estimate that in the year 2048 we will have fishedall wild fish into extinction. all wild fish in every ocean; there'll be zero wild fish. and if that sounds, they're not saying inabout 50 years or midway into the century; in 2048. it's based on very precise calculations. so fisherman said just out of self interest,"we need more supply somehow; we can't, there will be no business if we use all of theseup." and so salmon farming was developed. but it curiously happened which was that assalmon farming took off the-the pressure on

wild salmon populations increased rather thandecreased, because eating is habit forming. and as there was more supply of salmon therewas a-a demand rose faster than the supply because you'd see it on more menus and youwould see someone eating it at a table next to you. and the way most people eat is not, does notinvolve lots of inquiry. maybe people here it does, but most people you see somebodyeating salmon and you think, "that looks pretty good. i'll get the salmon." and you don'tsay, "is this farmed or is it wild caught?" and this gets to a point that the consumercan't be responsible for asking that question. we are, we are --

>>male in audience: except when it tastesbetter. wild typically -- >>jonathan safran foer: i mean there's a – >>male in audience: tastes better. >>jonathan safran foer: the question doesit taste infinitely good? >>male in audience: sure. >>jonathan safran foer: i mean things cantaste better and better and better but do they taste infinitely good and is there anythingthat, is there anything that brings us more pleasure than the taste of salmon? most peoplewould say, "yes." so we don't need all of the choices that wehave. this is like, we don't need the choice

to buy children's toys that are painted withlead paint. it's just not a choice we need. it doesn't make our lives richer; it doesn'tmake us feel more free or in touch with our constitution. and we don't need the choice to buy chileansea bass. we just don't need it in supermarkets or restaurants. we shouldn't have it. andthis is what should happen with seafood is certain seafood should just become illegal. foods where it falls upon the consumer's responsibilityto be knowledgeable and make the decisions about things that one couldn't conceivablybe expected to. >>commentator: we have time for one more question.[inaudible]

>>jonathan safran foer: oh, sure. i don'tknow exactly, i've never addressed the screen before but -- >>commentator: [inaudible] >>jonathan safran foer: how do we know theiractually there? look they're not responding when i say that. >>commentator: does anybody have a questionfrom our [unintelligible] -- >>male in audience #3: hi, we're here. >>commentator: to prove you exist? we have time for one last question.

>>jonathan safran foer: well, someone hasone here so we might as well. >>commentator: okay. last question. >>male in audience #4: hi. thanks very muchfor coming. if what you said near the beginning duringthe introduction is true, then almost everybody, at least in the united states, knows at leastsome of the reasons why eating meat is the end of a chain of causes and effects thathas all sorts of bad consequences. and so eating meat is for many people a willfulact of setting aside what they think or what they know. and that's an uncomfortable thingto think about. it-it just seems to me that it's-it's prettyimportant to-to address how people feel about

eating meat in addition to how they thinkabout eating meat. and i-i think this is the way people invest their own sense of virtueand their own sense of personal morality into what they do is what leads to questions like:why are you wearing leather shoes if you're a vegetarian? it's this feeling that there-thereare virtue points to be scrabbled over and-and that you can't let the other person have allof them. and so i just, i just wanted to get more ofyour thoughts on how to make thinking about that less uncomfortable, less-less of somethingthat people want to run away from not because of what they think but because of their emotions. >>jonathan safran foer: i guess i would justreturn to what i said before and-and finding

a way to make it participatory and inclusionaryrather than exclusionary, rather than who is getting it more right than somebody else. we all depend on a certain like i don't knowif you call it forgiveness or generosity from our friends not to call us out every timethat we fall short, like i don't give as much money to charity as i should. i don't volunteeras much as i should. and yet if-if my friends were to point that out i don't think thati would do those things more. i might even do them less. but if my friends said, "you know what on-onsaturday i was thinking about going to this like homeless shelter to make some sandwiches.i've just been bothered, i've just been like

feeling really guilty by how many homelesspeople i've been seeing in the neighborhood recently and i thought i would do something."i would say, "i'll go too." i just would 'cause it would be participatory and inclusionaryand i know that the experience would make me feel better. and so the challenge is to present it in away that it is not a deprivation but that it is something that gives you more. whereyou end, of course there's, you're gonna remove certain choices from your life and you'realso gonna remove certain pleasures from your life. that-that's something we haven't reallytalked about but meat smells good and tastes good. it does. i think, i'm glad in your introductionyou said what you did, that you want to have

as full a palate as you can when performingyour art. but we don't have a full palate as it is.i mean there are foods you would not serve ever. you wouldn't serve chimp, for example. so humans are very good at saying no to thingswe want in the interest of other things we want, and saying no to things that we wanta lot more than we want meat. so we just have to, i think it's-it's a questionof getting used to it, like acclimating to a different world. the world 50 years agowas not this world. we didn't have, there wasn't the same urgency in the problem, wedidn't have. also the-the knowledge that we now have entailsa responsibility because like we can't plead

ignorance like people could have 10 or 20years ago. and i-i really, i wrote this in the book and i believe it that it will beasked of us what did you do when you learned about this. and i would much rather say, "iwithdrew" than, "i forgot about it." >>commentator: i wanted to thank jonathanfor being here today and let you know that we have books from books, inc., in the backas well as t-shirts that are, the t-shirts are free, the books are five dollars. andjonathan will be available to do some signing. thank you so much for being such a great audiencetoo.