Great segment. Long time listener and found this great story quite intriguing. Keep up the good work Brian!

Nancy is completely right, except for one small item. It's not 20% of the population that's producing the food for everyone; in the United States, Europe, Japan, it's more like 2%. No wonder the majority of the population has no idea what animals are like!

Chickens are nasty cannibals; that's why it's healthier for THEM when laying hens are kept in small groups. Did you hear that one big egg producer in California has said that it will house its hens in larger groups in larger enclosures -- and Wayne Pacelle President of HSUS has essentially said, "That's not good enough!"

This puts the lie to his statements that he just wants production animals to "have a better life." He wants them to have no life at all. If we do not use animals to produce food, they will not be born or hatched, and there will be LESS animal life on the planet, not more!

I love Brian's show generally, but what a disappointing segment this was. Brian seemed determined to steer the conversation towards questions about which type of meat is the best to eat, while author Foer rambled vaguely about the nasty slaughterhouse he once visited, and the time he changed his mind about liking dogs. Meanwhile, the nutritional, environmental and ethical arguments for vegetarianism went unmentioned.

Continued: Raising animals for food is fast becoming the most thankless job in the world and you'd better open your eyes fast if you don't want to see farmers finally throw in the towel and you find out what some of us already know. We do not live in a world that can be sustained on a vegan diet. There is only enough tillable land in the world to sustain 1/3 of the world population. Which of the remaining 2/3 of the population are willing to give up your lives so the other 1/3 can eat?
If you want raising animals to go back to the smaller farms, which of you are willing to go back to being farmers? How many of you are willing to give up the free time you now have to go back to the hard life of farming for food..animals as well as fruits and vegetables (which were also living before they were killed to feed you)?
America is fast turning from land of the free to land of the ungrateful. Humans seem to be the worst of the worst when it comes to biting the hand that feeds you. Instead of ridiculing the farmers, get your butt in gear and go help them. Maybe if some of you bleeding hearts would go help on the farms, our farmers wouldn't occasionally end up hiring those animal abusers who make the news. If you went and helped our farmers, you would also get a much needed education into why animals are housed the way they are. You would find out they are not pet puppies going onto your plate, but are dangerous animals that can and do kill each other, their young, and sometimes the farmer who raises them. You might find that the way they are housed is humane in the protection it provides to the animals, their young, and those farmers brave enough to raise them, while keeping the food that crosses your plate the safest in the world. Walk a mile in their shoes and then MAYBE you will be in a better position to criticize.

If people are so worried about how farm animals are raised that end up as food on your plates, the only way that will happen is if you get off your citified butts and go back to having 80% of the population helping to raise the meat for themselves and the other 20% on smaller farms.
So many of you have lost your roots in farming and have left only 20% to feed everyone else. Then you sit back from your high and mighty position and try to 'supervise' how something should be done that you no longer have even a modicum of experience in, or what it takes to be one of the brave few who do their best to make sure you have food to eat. The large factory farms, as you like to call them, have been left to find ways to feed those of you who no longer desire to be anywhere but on the receiving end of a full stomach. Now that you've left 20% to feed 100%, you have nothing better to do than criticize methods that have come into play so that you CAN eat. You ridicule people who for generations have worked from before sunup to after sunset 24/7/365 to keep food available for not only you, but for the animals you eat, while you have your 9-5 job that allows you free time to enjoy life and vacations.

Tom
i wish u and your heart a lot of luck

This interview made me think JSF has been living in a hole for the last decade. There have been many books on this subject, including fast food nation. I think his anecdote about his dog showed that he really does think that all of his insights, no matter how callow, are important and interesting. It's new to me, so I've gotta share it. At least this is narcissism for a good cause, though I can't help but feel like the main cause is JSF (and his biological progeny).

I love beef, but I hate the way these animals are treated. the kind of farming the author talked about on the show this morning should be outlawed.It's time this stopped. Eugenia Renskoff

Does he mention the Eunice Superette in the book? Where did he or WNYC get that photo from? Just asking because my mom is from that small town in south Louisiana.

Given that our closest evolutionary relatives -- chimps & bonobos -- hunt, and have even been observed creating weapons to kill prey, it what sense did we NOT evolve as omnivores? We do not have a vegetarian's teeth; just compare our teeth to those of a gorilla, which is a vegetarian species.

Also, since an organism is just a gene's way of reproducing itself, animal species that we domesticated are extraordinarily successful in their population growth. How many aurochs (ancestor of domestic cattle) are still around? There are millions upon millions of domestic cattle today. How many jungle fowl (ancestor of domestic chickens) are there, compared to the billions of chickens hatched every year? These animals were *born* to become meat or to produce milk or eggs.

I am a vegetarian for 10 years and recently turned vegan. Thinking of how animals are treated by human makes me feel a deep sadness.

We are not only harming animals by eating meat. We are harming ourselves since many diseases are results of animal eating and animal raising. Swine flu, mad cow diseases and many cancers are dieectly or indirectly related to animal eating.

Now more and more scientific evidences are showing up that point to our animal eating habit as the main contributor of global warming since methane and other green house gases are emitted during livestock raising.

Choice of what we eat literally lead to the the kind of future we choose for ourselves, our children and for planet earth.

There is going to be a Climate Change Conference in Washington D.C. on Sunday, Nov. 8. I hope WNYC would do some coverage for us listeners. Thanks.

Unfortunately I missed this interview, but I have heard JSF interviewed about this elsewhere where he was asked about the "elitism" of asking people to pay higher costs for either well-treated cattle etc. or other healthily produced food. His response has been that it may seem that way out of pocket but the costs in increased health care and to other aspects of the economy and people's lives. All of that is true--and I completely agree--but for people making minimum wage, esp in an expensive city like NY, when they walk up to the cash register with minimum wage dollars in their pockets, the future costs of health care are literally irrelevant--they can't pay the grocer in future health care savings.

So, I would hope that JSF would also advocate for an increase in the minimum wage--to a *living wage*--that is indexed to inflation, so that those dollars in people's pockets can actually help people pay for better food--and have those future benefits in health care etc.

Unfortunately I missed this interview, but I have heard JSF interviewed about this elsewhere where he was asked about the "elitism" of asking people to pay higher costs for either well-treated cattle etc. or other healthily produced food. His response has been that it may seem that way out of pocket but the costs in increased health care and to other aspects of the economy and people's lives. All of that is true--and I completely agree--but for people making minimum wage, esp in an expensive city like NY, when they walk up to the cash register with minimum wage dollars in their pockets, the future costs of health care are literally irrelevant--they can't pay the grocer in future health care savings.

So, I would hope that JSF would also advocate for an increase in the minimum wage--to a *living wage*--that is indexed to inflation, so that those dollars in people's pockets can actually help people pay for better food--and have those future benefits in health care etc.

I listened to this while eating a delicious half-pound cheeseburger patty topped with four slices of bacon. Yes, meat is murder -- delicious, juicy murder.

Dairy cows are treated just as poorly as meat producing cows. what is so profoundly sad to me is how they are forced to be pregnant and then once the calf is born it is taken from them. this is so unnatural to any animal. the cow bellows for days after. and this happens to them over and over and over. until they don't produce enough milk and then they are meat cows. vegetarian really isn't enough. you think you can't go vegan, but you can. i said the same thing. it's just a matter of doing it. it's a little hard at first, but now, 9 years later, i can't imagine drinking another animal's lactation. any woman who has breast fed thier child should think about this.

We are animals but most animals are not carnivores. Humans are not physically created for consuming other animals. We have blunt teeth, soft nails and skin. We cannot hunt without deception, tools and weapons. We usually get sick from uncooked meat. Our digestive tract is too long to properly digest meat before it putrifies in our systems (this often part of what creates disease in the body.)

#14 Sandra --

Charles Fort, American writer, compiler of anomalous phenomena and founder of "The Fortean Times":

"The Earth is a farm. We are someone else's property."

Also, all the seemingly "little" legislative bills (e.g. increasing cage size etc.) are not necessarily to take "little" steps towards more humane treatment of farm animals, but to make factory farming less economical and ultimately impossible for these massive factory farms. That will be the only way to end this cruel and unhealthy practice.

I listened to this while eating a delicious half-pound cheeseburger patty topped with four slices of bacon. Meat isn't murder. It's delicious.

Eating vegetables is vegetable murder. save the carrots!

KFC doesn't stand for anything? Go to KFC and up at top it says, Kentucky Fried Chicken clear as day. Not saying there aren't probably huge problems with modern industrial animal food production, but I'm afraid after that gaffe, I can't really take anything else Jonathan Safran Foer says as credible.

There was a bill last year in Congress that would not allow pictures to be taken at slaughterhouses under the rubric of "trade secrets".

Boy, I struggle with this every day! I was a vegetarian for 10 years, been eating meat again for 10 years. I went back to meat because I felt that, as animals ourselves, it was natural to eat other animals. But I totally object to the inhumane conditions of factory farming, so I'm thinking of going back to vegetarianism. If all animals were raised in humane places like Stone Barns, it would be different.

Then again, I've been wondering about the emotional lives of animals--if they have an inner life, is it moral to eat them?

And the dominion issue--it's easy when we stand at the top of the food chain. But like Milan Kundera said in TULoB: what if an alien race came down to earth and started using humans for food?

For another great take on the factory farming movement (from an anti- factory farming and animal rights perspective) read Gene Baur's "Farm Sanctuary." It will turn you vegan, wehether you're a Big Mac eater or occasional vegetarian.

I'm a vegetarian. I'm not the food police. I don't preach that people shouldn't eat meat. What I don't really get is how any animal consumption could ever be considered humane.

Brian
Can your guest comment of the "new" gras feed beef appearing that incluses corn sillage as grass so that the same old grain fed factory beef qualify as healthier.
thanks
Paul

People who are getting into this new I'm going to "butcher my own" meat movement are still murdering the animal. I wonder what is chemically occuring to the meat as the animal suffers and dies? Besides the karmic act of killing a sentient being, meat is bad for the colon and bad for the planet. I used to be a big meat eater but am a vegan now and feel soooo much better as a result.

I am just tuning in and may have missed it, but doesn't Omnivore's Dilemma say that the massive amounts of food produced by factory farming allow the world's vastly increased population to live without starving (more than it does)? Could everyone in the world be a localvore, or is some factory farming necessary?

Why is the guest only speaking about how badly factory farmed meat is, and neglecting to speak about how poorly dairy cows and laying hens are treated?

Maybe the security is because of the violence in the animal rights movement

What does JSF think about cheese?

When I've been a vegetarian I've relied heavily on cheese. (Veganism is way byond me.) Is cheese produced at a factory farm produced in as horrific a manner?

lol! bacon as the gateway meat - im a veg for 13 yrs, i occasionally sneak a little corner of burnt bacon...

I love that Jonathan speaks so much about the challenges of ethical eating, and often from a Jewish perspective. These are all of the issues we'll be talking about at the Hazon Food Conference - the home of the New Jewish Food Movement. Learn more by visiting www.hazon.org/foodconference and join us on the Monterey Coast of California on December 24-27, 2009.

Still want more about Jews, Food and Sustainability? visit our blog, the Jew and the Carrot -- www.jcarrot.org.

stop drinking cow's milk and there won't be anymore old milk cows. go vegan. we don't need to eat, wear or drink animal products.

eat moe ckin!!!

let's make an exception for eating supermarket ground beef -- this is natural.

it is capitalism's way of dealing with of the millions of old milk cows that stop producing milk each week.