You can't quit meat baby

You know how it is: if you can’t beat them, join them. And that’s exactly what I’ve done after around a decade browbeating vegetarianism. That the turning point should come one Sunday evening, in a Masonic Hall, is as much a surprise to you as it was to me. For the man who got through to me, past the delicious flavours and the tantalising wafts, has turned out to be a most unexpected hero within vegetarian circles: novelist Jonathon Safran-Foer, the author of two of the best novels of the past decade in the dark and hilarious Everything is Illuminated and the challenging and touching Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. And whilst I went to his talk at the Bath Literature Festival purely to see one of my favourite novelists of the past few years in hope of understanding what exactly makes him tick, I come away feeling slightly shellshocked but with a burning desire to actually act on what I’ve heard, an odd feeling for a diehard exponent of the ‘what does it matter anyway’ philosophy. Because Jonathon has come to Bath to talk about his latest book, which is a non-fiction work about the meat industry called Eating Animals. And talk he does, when the increasingly irritating interviewer will let him (no-one cares that you can make references to Brecht in your haughty tones, dear), becoming increasingly convincing without laying the rhetoric on too thick.
What becomes clear is that Eating Animals was a personal voyage of discovery for Jonathon. A several-times-lapsed vegetarian, from a meat-eating Jewish family, who even now relishes the taste of meat, he set out to investigate the meat industry from an entirely objective perspective, and instantly found himself confronted with suspicion and obstructions. What he eventually found, often through illegal or secretive means, horrified him, despite the fact he is ‘no animal lover’. Yet he does not let his disgust with the industry cloud his performance today: he is the idealised philosophy graduate, serene without appearing supercilious and never succumbing to the temptation of telling his audience what to think. And it’s exactly this which probably keeps so many within the audience interested: rather than lecturing us on the ills of society, Jonathon’s approach is simply to say: this is wrong, I think it’s wrong, we all think it’s wrong when confronted with the facts, so let’s act on it. Admittedly, the animal rights side of the argument isn’t what grabs me: call me cold-hearted, but I’m not the type to worry too much about that. What gets to me are the environmental arguments: referring frequently to the UN report Livestock’s Long Shadow (which I highly recommend you read), he lays out the harm done by an industry which rips down rainforests, creates over 40% of annual global emissions, and sells a hamburger which would cost over $200 if environmental causes were factored in for just 49 cents. Our quest for cheap meat is killing more than just animals: it’s killing the planet, more than any other industry or practice in the world. What is also refreshing is his refusal to parcel vegetarianism into a lifestyle: he recognises that human beings have limited time, money and energies to devote towards causes.
This is not something which needs to be done as part of a fair trade, anti-sweatshop, anti-globalisation crusade or a smug, self-satisfied Islington lifestyle: it is a simple act that stands alone on it’s own merit. Such is the fashion by which I’ve determined I must become a vegetarian, or at the very least, a more conscientious and frugal meat-eater. For anyone who is considering a similar step, I can’t do anything other than recommend you get hold of a copy of Eating Animals.