Should I feel bad for eating meat?

Oh man, I should be a vegetarian.

That's what I thought yesterday after listening to Patt Morrison interview Jonathan Safran Foer about his new book, Eating Animals, and why the way meat is processed in this country led him to become a vegetarian.

The interview (listen to it here) grabbed my attention because of who Foer is. He's the author of one of the most original and brilliant books I've read in a while, Everything Is Illuminated. Since he writes fiction, I was surprised he was taking a stab at (no pun intended) nonfiction. And nothing in his previous novels hints at his environmental activism. But as he explained in the interview, after he became a parent he started thinking about the food he was feeding his son and where it came from. And that journey, which included spending time on factory farms, led him to become a vegetarian. (When asked by Morrison about the term "factory farm," he said it's accurate because the food industry views animals as widgets rather than living things -- well said, Jonathan!). He isn't an extreme health nut or an avowed environmentalist. As he said, he's just a regular, moral American and if everyone was aware of the suffering endured by the animals that become our food, more would chose this lifestyle, too. Which is why I thought, "I should be a vegetarian." If I thought about it as much as he did, I think I would reach the same conclusion.

He did say that he supports farmers who raise animals humanely but that it's hard to know exactly what you're buying because of misleading packaging. So for him, it was easier to become a vegetarian than to spend tons of time determining which meat is morally OK to eat. I've wondered about that when I've bought chicken at Whole Foods. The organic chicken is a whoppin' $9.99 a pound, so I've skipped that and bought "natural" chicken that is $4.99 a pound. The package says it's free of hormones (but all meat is by law, so that's meaningless), antibiotics-free and fed a vegetarian diet. That sounds good but in a squishy, what-do-those-terms-really-mean way. But still, I figure it's healthier than whatever I usually buy at Ralphs and ignorance is bliss. At least, for now.