Journal

Stunning Show,I am looking forward to Cooked 5.You are living the dream of many caught in the rat-race. When will Cooked 5 be aired?

I’ve recently started a blog, the information you provide on this site has helped me tremendously. Thank you for all of your time & work.

Justin
Thank you for putting the “omnivore’s dilemma” in the public domain. However, I am curious to know why you were unable to broadcast the abattoir sequence on your show. By doing this, you shied away from pulling aside a veil that needs to be rent if we are to become truly informed consumers of animal products. I have been a lacto-vegetarian for 27 years and my husband is en route to full veganism. Our three daughters (aged 3, 10 and 13) have been raised in a vegetarian household (we are slowly phasing out dairy and eggs) but we have encouraged them to make their own decision on the matter. For us, our decision to become vegetarian is personal and deeply felt, but we’re not fascist about it. I don’t believe the choice about eating animals need be an extreme one. Jonathan Saffran Foer (a novelist), on the birth of his son, set out to find out where the food he was going to put into his son’s body was coming from. It lead him to write “Eating Animals” and to become a vegetarian. But that is not the central message of his book. He argues that we need to withhold our support for cattle factory farming, which not only is grossly inhumane, contributes more to global warming than all the motor vehicles in the world but – like the Tobacco, Alcohol and Drug Pharmaceutical industries – is self-regulating. In these industries there are no watchdogs and whistle-blowers, and many board members sit in the US senate. The same, incidentally, is true of the chicken, pork and lamb factory farming industries. Foer suggests that we source ethical, genuinely free-range, healthy animal products and step up our demand for these. It is only through changes in consumer behaviour that we will be able to usher in a more humane, healthier animal farming industry. We South Africans are appallingly passive, unthinking consumers. Your show goes a long way towards educating the public, yet still you balked at sharing the footage with us. Why, oh why, Justin? I look forward to your response, but in the meantime, you can check out J M Coetzee’s “Elizabeth Costello” and “The Lives of Animals” for this Nobel Laureate’s very articulate comments on the issue, and if you want to go hardcore (well, you have been in an abattoir) try PETA’s website or simply google “Meet the Meat.”