Why?
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Jonathan Safran Foer asked this question in his recent essay on vegetarianism:
“Why doesn’t a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to confining, killing and eating it? It’s easy to dismiss that question but hard to respond to it. Try to imagine any end other than taste for which it would be justifiable to do what we do to farmed animals.”
I think the question hits the nail on the head. What do you think?
Raping an animal – sticking your you-know-what into a dirty cow, pig or chicken, well that’s just sick!
But ripping the flesh off the bones of a dead animal with your teeth, and wiggling your tongue and sucking all the meat, tendons and other bits off a dead animal’s wing or rib, that’s just normal.
When you actually describe the act of eating meat, it’s pretty disgusting. Foer makes a good analogy.