There are many disturbing phrases bandied about in “Eating Animals,” the Natalie Portman-narrated documentary about the morality of meat-eating, based on the 2009 nonfiction bestseller by Jonathan Safran Foer.
Some involve wonk-speak, such as “CAFO,” an acronym for “concentrated animal feeding operation.” (The name itself is less upsetting than the inhumane reality.) Others terms, such as “fecal marinade” — a reference to what one interview subject calls the Pepto-Bismol-pink “hog lagoons” that dot the countryside where pork is produced, and where lakes of animal waste bake in the sun — are simply disgusting.
That visceral reaction, I suspect, will not be an uncommon one to this provocative — and ultimately persuasive — film, which aims to make viewers re-evaluate their relationship to carnivorism not merely by shocking, but by positing that there may be an ethical middle ground between vegan abolitionism and the mindless scarfing-down of burgers from factory-farmed cows.
Reading sometimes-portentous texts taken from Foer’s book, Portman, a vegan, is the main tour guide to this challenging excursion to the world of slaughterhouses and CAFOs, which one commentator likens to petri dishes for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But it’s wordsmiths like that commentator and others who appear throughout the film (such as veterinarian and animal-welfare whistleblower Jim Keen, who once worked at the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center) that make the film’s strongest and most eloquent points.
