We burned with love for ourselves, all of us, starters of the fire we suffered- our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.
What the meat industry figured out is that you don't need healthy animals to make a profit. Sick animals are more profitable... Factory farms calculate how close to death they can keep animals without killing them. That's the business model. How quickly they can be made to grow, how tightly they can be packed, how much or how little can they eat, how sick they can get without dying...We live in a world in which it's conventional to treat an animal like a block of wood.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote critiques the meat industry's profit-driven approach, emphasizing the dehumanization of animals in factory farming.
Jonathan Safran Foer’s quote highlights the disturbing ethics of the meat industry, illustrating how profit maximization often comes at the expense of animal welfare. It reveals a harsh reality in which the health and well-being of animals are sacrificed for economic gain, showing how factory farms prioritize efficiency and output over humane treatment. This perspective encourages reflection on the moral implications of industrialized meat production and the way society views animals.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about ethical sourcing, one could reference this quote to highlight animal rights issues.
More from Jonathan Safran Foer
All quotes →Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled. Each second was two hundred yards, to be walked, crawled. You couldn't see the next hour, it was so far in the distance. Tomorrow was over the horizon, and would take an entire day to reach.
She was not crying Which surprised me very much But I understand now That she had found places For her melancholy That were behind more masks Than only her eyes
What do babies dream of? She must be dreaming of the before-life, just as I dream of the afterlife.
A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don't know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter.
What is being awake if not interpreting our dreams, or dreaming if not interpreting our wake?
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