I was reading this book to my dog. Yes, my dog is buried six feet under outside my bedroom window, but I am sure he is still interested. He was always interested in the books I read.

If he knew all this before, and had a choice of what he ate, would he have still eaten meat? Would he have still devoured every last drop of meat from the bowl and left the three peas i had hidden in there to be thrown away? Or would he have turned up his nose and said "Oy! Weren't you listening? This is tortured flesh!"
For me, I am sure he would have eaten peas for the rest of his life. But could I?

From 2005 I was a vegetarian for three years, and a vegan for one year after. Not for any real reason other than the fact that the sight of meat grossed me out.

I was not even a good vegetarian. I lived off dodgy make-shift meals that involved whatever vegetables I could find... and pasta. Then I became vegan, purely out of a need to challenge myself. As if abstaining from animal products would be 'achieving' something. After being vegan for a year, I started to eat meat again. I'm not sure why, but I am guessing it was because I was just becoming too lazy to think about food. The challenge was over. I had won.

Eating meat again still made me feel sick. I wouldn't eat anything my mother hadn't cooked, and even then I would only take a bite or two before the guilt set in. My Baba (ukranian grandmother) made it worse. She made me kholodets, potted meat. If I didn't take at least a bite, she would issue me a serving of a guilt far more powerful than the one I felt eating meat in the first place. Ukrainian Guilt.(It's about as bad as it gets). So I ate.

I knew that eating meat felt wrong and i knew that the process of it getting to my plate was wrong in some way or another, but I didn't know details. Regardless, I still ate meat. My only rule, NO PIG. Not even a serving of Ukrainian guilt could convince me to do that.
In every situation I found myself faced with someone consuming Pig in any form, there would come my complaint:

“I can’t believe you are eating that! Don’t you know that a Pig has the same emotional capacity as a dog!”

I would say this and think of my little hound and how sickening it would be for anyone to hurt even one tiny hair on his head. But then I thought some more; What about cows and chickens? What do I know about them? Why will I just assume they aren’t as emotionally capable or intelligent as a pig or a dog?

I put these thoughts to the back of my mind and swept them under my “mind rug” (yes, I just made that up, but you get the idea). I continued eating meat, I continued harassing people for eating pig and I continued to feel the shame and guilt that came with it all.

Recently I picked up this book. I didn’t even know what it was about other than that it was written by my favourite author. After reading through the first few chapters I could feel my “mind rug” lifting and all those questions I had, and tried to ignore, were being answered. Reading to the resting place of my little hound, what I was discovering made all the more impact. I couldn’t eat meat anymore. I can’t eat meat anymore.

Thanks Jonathan Safran Foer.

Thank YOU for sharing this.

Ha ha. No worries.
I have given this book as a gift to three people already. They can't stop reading it. I even saw my younger brother google 'factory farms' the other day after asking what the book was about.

FinnNiketan, You write so beautifully...Thank you so much for sharing your story. I am on my way to the library to pick up the book "Eating Animals". I hope it touches me as much as it touched you.