Is "The New Yorker" Anti-Vegetarian?

Regarding "The Mail" (letters to the editor) in the November 30, 2009 issue, I'm disappointed but hardly surprised that none of the four letters that refer to the Jonathan Safran Foer book review (Eating Animals) of November 9^th makes the case for either ethical vegetarianism or veganism. In fact, the first and longest letter is from a Mr. Jablonski, a rather defensive former vegan/animal rights activist who is critical of, and patronizing to, those who choose not to participate in the consumption of animal products. Surely out of the hundreds of letters from readers that you receive every week, there were a few that vigorously defended plant-based living, rather than those who support so-called "compassionately raised" food animals, believing they're helping animals that way. It's enough to make one conclude that like Fox News, which claims to be fair and balanced, The New Yorker is anything but.

My own experience with the editorial department of The New Yorker is that animal rights advocates need not bother writing because their letters will be tossed in the round cyberfile. This has been my own experience and is the reason why I no longer submit letters to your magazine for publication. You have occasionally presented articles on leading animal rights advocates, but IMO with a certain superior attitude, as if you feel you need to be careful about offending your readers by wasting ink on such unimportant matters. For example, I recall your wink-wink, nudge-nudge piece written about PETA's founder, Ingrid Newkirk, a few years ago.

BTW, the word "carnivores" in your "Conscious Carnivores" title is misleading. We all should realize by now that humans are not carnivores but omnivores. (I'm not one of those vegans who thinks that eating animals is unnatural for humans, but I do recognize from personal experience that we can choose to eat vegan and actually be healthier than the average omnivore).

To get back to the first letter, Jablonski's comment on vegetarians denying the reality of death is curious, because in my experience, it's the animal eaters who are in denial. I was an omnivore for fifty years (with occasional forays into vegetarianism) before becoming an ethical vegan, so I've lived in both worlds. I know how easy it is to go to the supermarket and buy dead animal flesh without a twinge of conscience because the commercial product doesn't resemble the living animal. Sealed in plastic and styrofoam, boxes or cans, fur and feathers removed, the animal's body parts are for sale and completely divorced from the living animal. This, to me, is what denial of death is all about. A further curiosity is Jablonski's suggestion that slaughtering animals is a transcendent experience, which reminds me of hunters who claim that blowing away an animal brings them closer to Nature, or God, or something.

Yes, Jablonski is correct that industrial agriculture, be it animal or vegetable, can be environmentally damaging and does kill other animals. In the case of plant agriculture, wildlife and insects are killed in the process. And yes, for that and other reasons, it's not possible to be a perfect ethical vegan. If you drive a car or bike, if you live in a house or apartment or work in a building, if you participate in virtually any way in our consumer society, you're culpable for animal deaths. So the best you can do is to mindfully reduce the mortality numbers and the animal suffering you inevitably cause as one human among too many other humans on Planet Earth. There's no such thing as a pure vegan, but that doesn't mean you should give up the fight. Buy local, buy organic, buy from small farms as much as possible, so that your negative impact on animals will be considerably smaller than your animal eater neighbors.

Another letter, from a Mr. Gahlinger, a self-described former farm boy, insinuates that if you like meat, you are obliged to eat it, in order to be counted as part of "nature", although I don't see how the genetically manipulated and heavily drugged creatures who are imprisoned in crowded warehouses and feedlots, or even "compassionately raised" chickens, turkeys, pigs, cows, sheep, etc., who are presumably but not necessarily kept more cozily confined by boutique farmers, have much in common with their wild cousins. Gahlinger also suggests that killing these animals at a young age is merciful. I could almost agree with that because their brief lives are filled with pain and suffering, but not because, as he insists, they're grateful for slaughter. We animals all have a life wish, even those of us bred for food. It would be far more merciful to allow nonhuman beings intended for human consumption to live out their lives in peace and comfort, and to die without the smell, sight and sound of other terrified, doomed creatures being slaughtered around them.

The other two letters, somewhat less extreme in tone, nevertheless attempt to defend the Michael Pollan approach to animal-eating guilt as discussed in The Omnivore's Dilemma: buying "free-range" animal products from small, supposedly more humane farmers or buying local (I have no problem with buying local as long as it's plant-based local).

In conclusion, I have to confess that for me, Foer's book doesn't go nearly far enough in presenting a cogent argument for not eating animals. And strangely, he says nothing about the dairy or egg industries. Despite all the research he's done that should have changed his mind about what he chooses to eat, he's settled for the squishy ovo- lacto- vegetarianism compromise, a substantial ethical step beyond omnivore Pollan's, but still not far enough. As a meticulously informed consumer on matters of agriculture, food choices and animal suffering, Foer of all people should know better.

Unfortunately, only Mr. Jablonski's letter is available on-line:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/letters/2009/11/30/091130mama_mail1