Underwater Factory Farming...? "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Foer

When I started this book, I expected it to be a book about the typical abuses of a typical farm animal e.g. the pig, cow, chicken. What I wasn't expecting was to here about was aquaculture, which Foer defines as, "the intensive rearing of sea animals in confinement...essentially underwater factory farming" (Foer 189). Our society doesn't usually group tuna and salmon as those suffering abuse due to our food industry, but Foer spends a lot of his book talking about this issue. Foer cites several sources of suffering for salmon and other sea creatures on page 189-190:

1) Water so fouled that it makes it hard to breathe; 2)crowding so intense that animals begin to cannibalize one another; 3)handling so invasive that physiological measures of stress are evident a day later; 4) disturbance by farm workers and wild animals; 5)nutritional deficiencies that weaken the immune system; 6) the inability to form a stable social hierarchy, resulting in more cannibalization...A major source of suffering for salmon and other farmed fish is the abundant presence of sea lice...These lice create open lesions and sometimes eat down to teh bones on a fish's face.

Who dares to say that this isn't just as cruel, if not more cruel, then what the other "typical" animals face in their factories? All of these animals face very cruel suffering, suffering that we really should not turn our backs on any longer. Foer brings light to these misdeeds created by the meat industry. Our society really can't turn our backs any longer. Otherwise we could face dreadful consequences.

-KW