Jonathan Safran Foer,

Thinking outside the lunch box ... Foer spent three years dissecting animal agriculture, including an undercover raid on a turkey farm. Photo: Caroll Taveras

You wouldn't think being a vegetarian is a dangerous idea. Well, says the American author Jonathan Safran Foer, that depends on what you mean by a dangerous idea.

''There are ideas that can literally put you in physical danger, which this one can,'' he says. ''There are ideas that are socially dangerous, which this one is. There are ideas that are dangerous because of their potential to change things in a dramatic way, which this one also is. So by most definitions, I would say that not eating animals is a dangerous idea.''

By most definitions, I would say that not eating animals is a dangerous idea. 

The slightly built 34-year-old New Yorker knows this firsthand. He went on a hair-raising, middle-of-the-night raid on a Californian factory farm complex to see for himself the conditions of industrialised turkey growing.

''If you want to get onto a factory farm in America, you have to go in the middle of the night and that's what I did,'' he says.

''Believe me, it was not my first choice. It was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.''

He wrote about his not-so-bucolic encounter with barbed wire and locked farm doors in Eating Animals, an imaginative, personal, journalistic and philosophical story, which actor Natalie Portman claimed ''changed me from a 20-year vegetarian to a vegan activist''.

Foer will be in Sydney at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, speaking about eating traditions, eating fictions and not eating animals. He wrote Eating Animals after he published his internationally acclaimed novels, Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. He spent three years immersed in animal agriculture and the consequences of cheap chicken and fast-food beef.

''There is no place on Earth that is not touched by factory farming or is not dominated by factory farming,'' he says.

Modern industrial farming comes at the cost, Foer says, of animal welfare, the environment and our health. In Eating Animals, he writes of chicken factory farms in the US where ''illness is always rampant; suffering is always the rule … death is invariably cruel''. Every year, 50 billion birds worldwide live and die like this, he says.

Foer spent his youth as an on-again, off-again vegetarian. After his first child was born, he realised he would face inevitable questions of why we eat some animals and not others. So he set out to examine and address a subject that speaks to the heart of humanity.

''It has the quality of feeling electric,'' the softly spoken Foer says. ''It appeals to some of our most basic ideas about ourselves, about the world, and certainly risks being a very upsetting subject. It's amazing how many conversations about meat end up as fights.

''Occasionally at [my] readings somebody will stand up and say, 'Who do you think you are?' etc, and get quite worked up. And I'll say, 'Obviously we agree this is an important subject.' If I had said, 'We should all think about changing the paper towels we use,' people might disagree with me, they might think I am an idiot for raising the subject but nobody is going to get worked up.

''With [the question of eating meat], even if you give it as generous and humble approach as you can, it's almost impossible not to avoid heated feelings. It speaks to a shared awareness that something really big is going on. Even if you think it's a fine thing to do.''

Clearly, Foer doesn't believe eating meat is a fine thing to do. He is a vegetarian, as are his wife, the novelist Nicole Krauss, and their children. Yet he is under no illusion that everyone will become herbivores.

''One of the things I want to do in my book is move away from this harmful dichotomy that has been set up: you either care or you don't care at all. You're vegetarian or you are a carnivore. Most people do care about these issues and the reality is that most people are not going to become vegetarian.''

Foer's aim is to open a middle ground where people can make a difference. ''Do I think there is any chance in the world that half of Americans will be vegetarians in 10 years? I would say there is virtually no chance in the world of that. Do I think there is any chance that half of the meals eaten in America will be vegetarian in 10 years? I think there is a good chance of that.

''And that would have the same impact on the world - whether it's half the people or half the meals. It's just that we are not used to thinking about that second way because we've become so convinced that it's a question of identity or lifestyle as opposed to the end that we want.''

He would love to see more people thinking about the end, not the means.

''There is a wonderful food writer in America named Mark Bittman and he doesn't eat meat until 5pm. After five, he eats everything. Almost everybody's response is to chuckle at that because it makes us uncomfortable, somehow. It seems radically hypocritical.

''On the other hand, he is somebody who doesn't eat any animal products for two-thirds of his meals. I think it's amazing. If more people could think like that, we would solve the problem.''

After Eating Animals was published two years ago, Foer steeled himself for flak from agribusiness. There was silence. He expected anger from farmers. There wasn't any.

''I've found that the more someone cares about food, the more they care about this. So chefs and farmers have actually been some of the biggest allies of the book.''

His biggest surprise was how much he aggravated animal-rights activists. ''Most of the heat I get is from animal rights groups: 'Why are you leaving so much room for people to eat meat? You make such a strong case against meat and you don't eat meat.'

''They basically see it as giving permission. There is diversity, of course, within every group but their disappointment was it felt way too much like I was encouraging people to keep eating meat.''

He was also surprised at the general consensus he found that ''the farming system we have isn't the farming system we want'', he says.

''I don't mean that everyone thinks we should become vegetarian, because that's clearly not true. What I mean is when [we factor in] … the environmental effect, the human health effect, the effect on animals, you just don't meet people who are OK with them. I have yet to find people who don't care.''

One of the worst aspects of factory farming is not just its practices, Foer says, it's that most of the meat is produced this way.

''We have something that is the most destructive thing we do to the environment, to animals and, at some point, the most destructive thing we do to ourselves and we have virtually no alternative. That's really surprising to people.

''They are aware of it [factory farming] being out there and aware of it being pretty bad but not aware that any time they eat in a restaurant or go shopping in the supermarket [they have no other choice].''

He says there is an alternative and it doesn't mean food will become prohibitively expensive, less available, less profitable or less safe.

''I think there is a future in small, animal-friendly farming - and it's not so small, by the way.

''It's how all farming was done only 70 years ago. It's one of the most impressive things about factory farming: how quickly it radicalised a system that is as old as human history. We'd been farming in one way, pretty much without huge changes, forever. And all of a sudden we are farming in this radically different way.

''It gives the appearance of being incredibly profitable and efficient, even though it's not. It's not profitable if the costs weren't externalised. If you simply made them pay for their environmental clean-ups, they would all go out of business tomorrow.''

Foer puts some caveats on the prospect of small farms feeding the world.

''We have to eat much, much, much less, just because there isn't enough earth on Earth. And the other caveat is we pay the real cost - and people would eat a lot less.''

Is that such a bad thing? Given our losing battle with obesity in First World countries such as Australia, eating less seems like a positive. Foer says: ''The bad thing is the rich people would get to eat what they want, the poor people wouldn't. But that's already true.''

Jonathan Safran Foer appears at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas on October 1.

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