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Reviews tagging 'Animal death'
Mercy for Animals: One Man's Quest to Inspire Compassion and Improve the Lives of Farm Animals by Nathan Runkle, Gene Stone
1 review
heatherreads10's review
medium-paced
2.0
I wanted to learn more about MFA and have been meaning to read this for a long time. I don’t think it’s an inherently bad book and it’s clear the author cares deeply about animals. I didn’t realize there would be so many graphic descriptions of what happens to animals which I didn’t enjoy reading about as I already knew all of this information and have read about/watched it many times before so it's often gratuitous to me at this point, but that's more of a personal thing. I more so wanted to learn about how the organization started, although I should’ve realized it would’ve included a lot about the undercover investigations. I did like the look into how the author got started in activism.
My biggest issue with this book is that it is so incredibly… capitalist. Therefore, I don’t agree with many of the things that the author thinks will make big change in the world for animals – in a system that is built around profit and infinite growth, there will ALWAYS be exploitation of both human and non-human animals. I appreciate that there’s a need in this current society for organizations like MFA to improve welfare in the short term and small steps can be important, but we also have to think far beyond just welfare. Instead, the author ended the book by talking about innovation and profit potential in the plant-based sector of the market. He wants to create a “humane economy” where plant-based foods are cheaper and the norm but says nothing about how most of the companies he mentions (many of which are large/multinational corporations) creating plant-based products would still be incredibly unethical and unsustainable – animal liberation must account for ALL animals. For example, he briefly talked about the abuse that migrant workers in slaughterhouses go through but in his version of a "humane economy," those people would simply be pushed to other exploitative and degrading work. Similarly, in the case of companies like Nestle which he talked quite a bit about, even if they somehow stopped producing all animal products, they are still a multinational corporation that greatly impacts wildlife habitats and exploits humans and nature at an incredibly frightening degree. A capitalist food system and economy will never be a “humane” one.
I do appreciate the lengths that the author and MFA have gone to to protect farm animals and doing what they can, but I think so many more things in this book needed to be discussed that were just left out. I think we have similar intent but a very different path and end goal so this book was not my cup of tea.
My biggest issue with this book is that it is so incredibly… capitalist. Therefore, I don’t agree with many of the things that the author thinks will make big change in the world for animals – in a system that is built around profit and infinite growth, there will ALWAYS be exploitation of both human and non-human animals. I appreciate that there’s a need in this current society for organizations like MFA to improve welfare in the short term and small steps can be important, but we also have to think far beyond just welfare. Instead, the author ended the book by talking about innovation and profit potential in the plant-based sector of the market. He wants to create a “humane economy” where plant-based foods are cheaper and the norm but says nothing about how most of the companies he mentions (many of which are large/multinational corporations) creating plant-based products would still be incredibly unethical and unsustainable – animal liberation must account for ALL animals. For example, he briefly talked about the abuse that migrant workers in slaughterhouses go through but in his version of a "humane economy," those people would simply be pushed to other exploitative and degrading work. Similarly, in the case of companies like Nestle which he talked quite a bit about, even if they somehow stopped producing all animal products, they are still a multinational corporation that greatly impacts wildlife habitats and exploits humans and nature at an incredibly frightening degree. A capitalist food system and economy will never be a “humane” one.
I do appreciate the lengths that the author and MFA have gone to to protect farm animals and doing what they can, but I think so many more things in this book needed to be discussed that were just left out. I think we have similar intent but a very different path and end goal so this book was not my cup of tea.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty and Animal death
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