Please please research the percentages on what contributes to global warming, and in particular, what percentage factory farming contributes!!! You’re argument, and I am assuming this is an argumentive essay, is one-sided. Thank you.

I’m a person who became vegan after reading Foer’s book. I went through a few stages of processing that all started with the basic premise of the book that spoke to me: applying my true and deeply held ethics to what ends up at the end of my fork. I was already land animal meat-free (which at the time I thought was a Big Fat Deal) specifically because of factory farming practices. But I had never extended that information to dairy. His explanation of eggs changed that for me. I spent the better part of the next three weeks trying to figure out how to get eggs and milk within the context of my personal ethics (no suffering and no death for my food). After extensive hunting and searching, I realized that it was a pipe dream to think I could ever find such a thing. Even the dream of finding chickens who lived out their full lives (and who happened to produce eggs that would otherwise go to waste if we didn’t use them) was dashed when I followed the logical progression of where people get the pullets that they raise. Even in that case, I would be supporting factory farming hatcheries that kill the newborn boys in horrific ways. I had the same problem with dairy, and will never contribute to a baby being killed so that its food can be sold (or even given away). But his approach left space for ME to go through that search, and respected ME enough to trust that I would come to an ethical decision. Most others outright tell people what the only ethical choice is, and chastise anyone who doesn’t follow along. I find that beyond unhelpful to most folks who aren’t easily shocked or hammered into thinking a certain way.

The real point was that the book did not steal my process. It treated me with respect and like an individual who can be trusted to make good choices. THAT is why this book is so successful, IMO. It treats people with kindness and as though they are valuable, ethical beings….it reminds us of our power as thinking, reasoning people able to draw ethical conclusions on our own without predetermined conclusions being imposed onto us, predigested by others. And it eases us into a very scary topic without flooding us all at once with information that would shut people down.

I think this book is one of the more valuable things to happen on the topic of animals used for food in a very long time.

I couldn’t agree more. Perhaps because inroads were being made into exposing factory farming, horrifying people who decided to stop eating animals because of it, the industry and some so-called AR groups turned to “happy meat,” and people quite literally started eating it up.

Asheville, NC is the best small city for vegetarians according to some poll, but I’ll be damned if I can find a large group of vegans here. Everything’s about local, local local — and local meat, no matter where the animals are slaughtered, is the Big Thing. Yoga instructors raise animals “locally” to be eaten at local non-chain restaurants. And I’ll repeat: the demand by consumers for local meat (because “enlightened” consumers don’t want to support the cruelty of factory farming [yet somehow they are unable to understand that the very act of slaughter is cruel; but that's another topic, and this is what we're dealing with now]) has led to the building of a new local slaughterhouse in western North Carolina that will, for starters, increase animal slaughter (basically chickens, with some rabbits, turkeys and goats thrown into the mix) by five times the current rate of what local farmers can do.

The point, as Louie mentioned, is not that factory farming is so heinous (which it is), but that all animal farming is heinous.

Unfortunately Theo, the farmed-animal industry today, with all the vast truckloads of dollars spent by all animal orgs attacking factory farming in the US over the past decade or so, is killing more animals than ever before, according to statistics I’ve seen. Sure these figures are complex but I am not aware of any official source which has provided figures that shows that the numbers of animals killed has declined significantly. Numerous articles written in industry trade journals, food magazines, newspapers, and many other places have acknowledged that happy meat is a boon for the meat industry as this sector has seen remarkable growth in the past decade or so. So long as animal orgs, the meat industry, and a couple of popular authors are convincing people that the problem isn’t eating meat, but rather factory farming, people will be influenced to buy happy meat…that’s exactly what the figures are showing. And of course the industry is going to pass the cost onto the consumer and onto the taxpayers when their powerful lobbyists influence legislators to subsidize farming cost increases.