Eating Animals

Jonathan Safran Foer?s Eating Animals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_animals) is being published in the UK in March. Pretty timely for me; the arguments for turning vegetarian are stacking up at the moment and I suspect by March I won?t need much pushing.

I?ve never been a vegetarian, which I think surprises some people. I?m a girl, I love animals, I?m fairly left-leaning and I had a troubled adolescence ? classic ingredients really. I have played with the idea on several occasions but always fallen short of making that step. I?d like to say that I had really justified my omnivourousness to myself but in recent years I?ve realised that my half-hearted arguments about the incompleteness of the vegetarian diet were just that. Laziness and a lack of willingness to submit to inconvenience have taken me so far, not because the arguments for vegetarianism have been (for me) compelling, but because I was unwilling to research them properly.


A friend once pointedly told me that for every gram of cocaine sold in the UK someone in the developing nations involved in it?s production died. I doubt the exactitude of this fact but the fact remains ? non-medicinal drugs are totally unnecceasry luxury of those who can afford to subsidise the killing of other human beings for their pleasure. Meat is a totally unnecceasry luxury for those who can afford it. I suspect that when the cost is laid out for me my conclusions will be inevitable?

More to follow, I guess?