Jonathan Safran Foer

Recent history has averaged a pandemic every twenty-seven and a half years,

the most devastating disease event the world has ever known, and one of the greatest health
threats before us today, has everything to do with the health of the world’s farmed
animals, birds most of all

Of course, consumers might notice that their chickens don’t taste quite right — how
good could a drug-stuffed, disease-ridden, shit-contaminated animal possibly taste? — but the
birds will be injected (or otherwise pumped up) with “broths” and salty solutions to give them
what we have come to think of as the chicken look, smell, and taste.

the workers will regularly feel the birds’ bones
snapping in their hands. (Approximately 30 percent of all live birds arriving at the slaughterhouse
have freshly broken bones as a result of their Frankenstein genetics and rough treatment

Often the birds
will defecate in pain and terror.

Once upon a
time, USDA inspectors had to condemn any bird with such fecal contamination. But about thirty
years ago, the poultry industry convinced the USDA to reclassify feces so that it could continue to
use these automatic eviscerators. Once a dangerous contaminant, feces are now classified as a
“cosmetic blemish.”

One study has shown that simply placing the chicken carcasses in sealed plastic bags during the
chilling stage would eliminate cross-contamination. But that would also eliminate an opportunity
for the industry to turn wastewater into tens of millions of dollars’ worth of additional weight in
poultry products.

Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science I’ve
discussed, that something terribly wrong is happening.

We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror
film.

in parts of the world where milk is not a staple of the diet, people
often have less osteoporosis and fewer bone fractures than Americans do. The highest rates of
osteoporosis are seen in countries where people consume the most dairy foods.