In the sixth chapter of Eating Animals, I personally think that the moment that had the greatest impact on my thinking is when it describes the important concept when one talks about animal rights. Many changes could be made to the living conditions of a battery cage hen - such as it could be given three more square inches of living space, for example. But is this a difference that matters? Or just a thinly veiled attempt by industry to get do-gooders to shut up about animal welfare and go away, without industry having made any real change? This idea ties in nicely with one of my personal beliefs: being just adequate doesn't mean its good
On top of that, the facts in this chapter are very scary. How they use artificial insemination to get 90% of their pigs. Pig farm produces 7.2 million pounds of pig manure per year, 344 million for cows, and 6.6 million for chickens. The waste is then dumped into lagoons that can cause quicksand. Concurrently, since we're going to discuss about "pork", there's no way to avoid the name Smithfield, leading pork producer in the U.S. One could run a Google search for "Smithfield Farms pork", and among the first entries that he or she will find is a Rolling Stone article entitled Boss Hog: Pork's Dirty Secret. Similar to others, Foer has found this article to be somewhat enlightening regarding the manure "lagoons" that go hand in hand with pig factories.
As Foer points out, the pits are filled not only with animal feces but also with "whatever will fit through the slatted floors of the factory farm buildings. This includes stillborn piglets, afterbirths, dead piglets,"... et cetera. It pretty much explains why neighbors get upset when an industrial pig "farm" gets built nearby. The presence of these lagoons shifts from nauseating to enraging when one understands that accidents do happen, and sometimes these awful pools "spill" into nearby lakes and rivers.
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