Eating Animals

Foer recounts a trip to a factory farm with C, an animal activist, following California Penal Code 597e, allowing anyone to enter property to feed or water confined animals. Foer includes his unacknowledged letter to Tyson Foods requesting a tour of their farms or facilities. At the farm, C and Foer move quietly, struggling to find unlocked doors. When they get in a shed, Foer appreciates the precision of the machinery, seeing the turkey chicks within as part of the orchestration. He finds the chicks cute but notices that many chicks are dead or struggling. C kills one struggling chick.

Foer presents C’s testimony on factory farms and the development of her activism. She has worked in slaughterhouses and videotaped multiple farms and farm-adjacent locations to spread information on the reality of factory farming. Foer then presents the perspective of an unnamed factory farmer who argues that factory farming is necessary. The farmer claims that more food is needed for a growing population, and that consumer desire has forced the farming industry to increase production.

Foer imagines the first chicken living in the wild, as well as the first humans who hunted animals for food, elevating animals in rituals and art.