Why Don't We Eat Pets?

Rabbi David Wolpe @ The Huffington Post - Once in my life I worked on a political campaign and once in my life met someone who called himself a "goop scooper." My candidate and I were touring a chicken processing factory. As chicken carcasses acrobatically clung to the rotating belt that dropped them in a vat, the man who removed their insides told me he was the "goop scooper."

The vividness of the picture has not faded. Not since the high school assignment of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle had I been forced to confront the prelude to the cellophane wrap. Shortly after visiting the factory I wrote a humor column about it for my college newspaper. After all, if you want to dash a feeling, nothing works better than a joke. "Wit" as Nietzsche observed, "closes the coffin on an emotion."

But can one investigate the whole question of eating other animals unflinchingly, movingly but with wit? Can it be made interesting, readable, compelling -- powerful without self-righteousness? In other words is there a book to be written that might change the way we eat that vegetarians and devoted carnivores alike would want to read? Read more.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-david-wolpe/ieating-animalsi-jonathan_b_337578.html