Mildly irritating in parts, but not bad. I liked this response to a question from Jeffrey Goldberg quite a bit:
JG: Yes, assuming that there was a farm somewhere where the animals, from birth to painless, unknowing death, where everything was as humane and gentle and kind as possible, would you then eat that animal?
JF: I wouldn’t, for two reasons. One, because endorsing the exception is to endorse the rule. People would see me as another person eating meat. You know, it’s like what happened with farmed fish. Salmon farming was originally created to take pressure off of wild salmon populations, because it’s been clear for a long time that they’re going to run out. But what happened was, when more supply was created, there was more demand for wild salmon, because our eating habits are contagious. There was more salmon on the menu suddenly, and you see your friends eating salmon, and so you eat salmon – that has more power than does conscientious eating.
There’s also the fact that the kind of farming you’re talking about can’t be scaled. There’s enough humane chicken now raised in America to feed Staten Island, at the rate we’re eating chicken. You can use child labor as an analogy. It’s easily conceivable that there are many situations in which giving a six-year-old a job would improve that six-year-old’s life and, on a case-by-case basis, would be a good thing. But we don’t create systems for the exceptions, we create them for the rule.
