Chef Parker Bosley responds to our review of Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer:
Do we really need another book dealing with meat production? No. Anyone who has interest or curiosity regarding meat production can educate and inform himself quite easily. Industrial agriculture, agri-industries and their mouthpiece, the Farm Bureau, are a kind of evil empire. Their system of “food” production is wrong on every level. We know this. Tell the literary crowd, the left-wing radicals and the vegetarians and vegans to give it a rest.
Industrial agriculture is harmful to the environment because it destroys natural resources; wrong because it practices inhumane animal confinement, sends cheap food to the masses that is making us sick and obese. Also, huge confinement systems destroy the family farm which in turn erodes the economic base of rural America. This list could go on and on with contributions from many quarters. There is no end to the atrocities of our food production system. Rather than writing another book about it we should be interested in educating and changing the consumers who have come to love and expect cheap, convenient food.
As I read your review I was confused at times. (Perhaps I have limited comprehension skills.) It appeared that you were more interested in sharing your writing skills, your knowledge and your ability to include the word shit again and again. Why, I do not know. The review of this book, another in the parade of anti-meat-eating, could have been summed-up easily. “Eating Animals is a book that recycles the same old story.” With this brief, one-sentence review, you would have had plenty of space to talk about real farms and real farming.
This article appears in Jan 20-26, 2010.
What the hell is Bosley so cheesed off about? I read that review and it seemed negative to me – hell, very near the beginning, the author’s qualifications to even touch the subject are cast into serious doubt. And neither the book nor its author even advocate for veganism, Foer eats meat and readily admits it. But I guess when it’s been three years since your overpraised restaurant tanked (I ate there a few times – I wonder what his local source was on those scallops?) you have all the time in the world to fire off self aggrandizing angrygrams. Also: shitfucky fuck fuck.