In 'Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows', Melanie Joy introduces the concept of carnism, a belief system that enables us to selectively choose which animals become our food. The book delves into the psychological and social mechanisms behind this phenomenon, offering insights into how we can make more informed choices about food and animal welfare. John Robbins contributes a foreword to this thought-provoking work.
In 'Eating Animals', Jonathan Safran Foer delves into the complexities of meat consumption, driven by his decision as a new father to determine whether his child should eat meat. The book examines the history and current practices of animal farming, highlighting the suffering of animals, environmental degradation, and health risks associated with factory farming. Foer weaves together personal narratives, interviews with various stakeholders, and historical context to discuss the moral and ethical implications of food choices. He emphasizes the importance of storytelling in understanding our relationship with food and the world around us, concluding that the detriments of factory farming outweigh the benefits of meat consumption, leading him to choose a vegetarian lifestyle for his family.
In 'Clean Meat', Paul Shapiro chronicles the entrepreneurs and scientists working to revolutionize the food industry by growing real meat from animal cells, offering a sustainable alternative to traditional livestock farming. This approach promises to reduce environmental impact, improve food safety, and enhance animal welfare. Shapiro provides a compelling narrative of this emerging technology and its potential to transform the way we produce and consume meat.
You often hear that eating animals is natural. And it is. But not the way we do it.
The industrial animal agriculture system is a technological marvel. It relies on engineering broiler chickens that grow almost seven times as quickly as they would naturally, and that could never survive in the wild. It relies on pumping a majority of all the antibiotics used in the United States into farm animals to stop the die-offs that overcrowding would otherwise cause. A list like this could go on endlessly, but the point is simple: Industrial animal agriculture is not a natural food system. It is a triumph of engineering.
But though we live in a moment when technology has made animal cruelty possible on a scale never imagined in human history, we also live in a moment when technology may be about to make animal cruelty unnecessary. And nothing changes a society’s values as quickly as innovations that make a new moral system easy and cheap to adopt. And that’s what this podcast is about.
Bruce Friedrich is the head of the Good Food Institute, which invests, connects, advises, and advocates for the plant and cell-based meat industries. That work puts him at the hot center of one of the most exciting and important technological stories of our age: the possible replacement of a cruel, environmentally unsustainable form of food production with a system that’s better for the planet, better for animals, and better for our health.
I talk a lot about animal suffering issues on this podcast, and I do so because they’re important. We’re causing a lot of suffering right now. But I don’t believe that it’ll be a change in morality or ideology that transforms our system. I think it’ll be a change in technology, and Friedrich knows better than just about anyone else alive how fast that technology is becoming a reality. In a rare change of pace for the Ezra Klein Show, this conversation will leave you, dare I say it, optimistic.
Book Recommendations:
Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism by Melanie Joy
Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World by Paul Shapiro
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
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The Gray Area with Sean Illing 
