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ramonacecillia's review against another edition
5.0
turned me vegan for a year, during which the excessive fiber from an unhinged about of vegetables resulted in atrocious gas and stomach pains. yet i preserved for a whole twelve months because of this book (i am now a conscious omnivore).
eeno's review against another edition
5.0
I cannot stress how informative this book was. I'd love to make it required reading for everyone. The manufacturing of our food (mostly meat in this context) has reached insane proportions and we are all turing a blind eye. This is not a book that beats you over the head about vegetarianism-REPEAT-it's not propaganda material. Real farms are almost extinct, and it would behoove our planet and our bodies to return to them again. If you care about what you put in your body and where it's coming from, please check out this book.
bart_gunn's review against another edition
4.0
An excellent read and the subject matter should be essential to all school curriculums. This would drive the required change for the better within society's eating habits far quicker.
The elephant in the room is the continual theme of promoting vegetarianism as an alternative to consuming factory farmed meat produce. The key differential between vegetarianism and veganism is that vegetarians consume eggs and dairy produce whereas vegans do not. Both modern dairy and egg production methods are akin to the disgusting and cruel methods used for in factory farming meat. This book seems to be short sighted with regards to the wider picture of factory farming as a whole. Well written and well made arguments nonetheless.
The elephant in the room is the continual theme of promoting vegetarianism as an alternative to consuming factory farmed meat produce. The key differential between vegetarianism and veganism is that vegetarians consume eggs and dairy produce whereas vegans do not. Both modern dairy and egg production methods are akin to the disgusting and cruel methods used for in factory farming meat. This book seems to be short sighted with regards to the wider picture of factory farming as a whole. Well written and well made arguments nonetheless.
abbywebb's review against another edition
3.0
“The justification for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them.” (p. 63)
I finished reading this book weeks ago and have been pondering how to write the review ever since. [a:Jonathan Safran Foer|2617|Jonathan Safran Foer|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1274633302p2/2617.jpg], known in the literature world for writing [b:Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close|4588|Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close|Jonathan Safran Foer|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165446871s/4588.jpg|1940137] and [b:Everything Is Illuminated|256566|Everything Is Illuminated|Jonathan Safran Foer|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519wWf5ZgkL._SL75_.jpg|886727], has been a fleeting vegetarian for many years and a full-on practicing veg-head for the past few. When he had his first child, he decided to research animals, including why we eat them, how they are farmed, and what the possible health concerns may be.
He has crafted a book of facts that is not too wordy and is definitely not preachy. Although not completely unbiased, he did a remarkable job of explaining the story of eating animals from several points of view: the carnivore and the vegetarian; the family farmer and the “factory farmer.”
This is the first book of its kind that I read and I am certainly glad that it was this one. I can see how a lot of anti-cannibalism books could be overwhelming with too many facts, present a bias viewpoint, and not add any personal introspection. JSF toured the US talking to farmers, workers from factory farms, animal activists. He even broke onto a farm in the middle of the night to see exactly what was happening (many factory farms do not allow people onto their properties very easily, not to mention anyone in the media).
Here are a few facts and quotes that I took from the book that I thought were important to remember for one reason or another (don’t worry, I didn’t include the gruesome, gory info):
- Ninety-nine percent of all land animals eaten or used to produce milk and eggs in the United States are factory farmed. (34)
- Less than 1% of the animals killed for meat in America come from family farms. (201)
- Animal agriculture makes a 40% greater contribution to global warming than all transportation in the world combined; it is the number one cause of climate change. (43)
- Nearly one-third of the land surface of the planet is dedicated to livestock. (149)
- By 2050, the world’s livestock will consume as much food as four billion people. (262)
- On average, Americans eat the equivalent of 21,000 entire animals in a lifetime (121)
- Americans eat 150 times as many chickens as we did only eighty years ago. (137)
- KFC buys nearly a billion chickens a year – if you packed those chickens body to body, they would blanket Manhattan from river to river and spill from the windows of the higher floors of office buildings (67)
- If India and China started to eat poultry in the same quantities as Americans (twenty-seven to twenty-eight birds annually), they alone would consume as many chickens as the entire world does today. (148)
- The typical cage for egg-laying hens allows each sixty-seven square inches of floor space – somewhere between the size of this page [in the book] and a sheet of printer paper. (47)
- The average shrimp-trawling operation throws 80 to 90 percent of the sea animals it captures overboard, dead or dying, as bycatch… What if there were labelling on our food letting us know how many animals were killed to bring our desired animal to our plate? So, with trawled shrimp from Indonesia, for example, the label might read: 26 POUNDS OF OTHER SEA ANIMALS WERE KILLED AND TOSSED BACK INTO THE OCEAN FOR EVERY 1 POUND OF THIS SHRIMP. (49)
- Imagine being served a plate of sushi. But this plate also holds all of the animals that were killed for your serving of sushi. The plate might have to be five feet across. (50)
- To be considered free-range, chickens raised for meat must have “access to the outdoors,” which, if you take those words literally, means nothing. (Imagine a shed containing thirty thousand chickens, with a small door at one end that opens to a five-by-five dirt patch – and the door is closed all but occasionally). The USDA doesn’t even have a definition of free-range for laying hens (61)
- According to the USDA, “fresh” poultry has never had an internal temperature below 26 degrees or above 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Fresh chicken can be frozen (thus the oxymoron “fresh frozen”), and there is no time component to food freshness. (61)
- Organic foods in general are almost certainly safer and often have a smaller ecological footprint and better health value. They are not, though, necessarily more humane… You can call your turkey organic and torture it daily. (70)
- Turkey hens now lay 120 eggs a year and chickens lay over 300. That’s two or even three times as many as in nature. After that first year, they are killed because they won’t lay as many eggs in the second year – the industry figured out that it’s cheaper to slaughter them and start over than it is feed and house birds that lay fewer eggs. These practices are a big part of why poultry meat is so cheap today, but the birds suffer for it. (60)
- From 1935 to 1995, the average weight of “broilers” [chickens raised for meat] increased by 65 percent, while their time-to-market dropped 60 percent and their feed requirements dropped 57 percent. To gain a sense of the radicalness of this change, imagine human children growing to be three hundred pounds in ten years, while eating only granola bars and Flintstones vitamins. (106-107)
- We are breeding creatures incapable of surviving in any place other than the most artificial settings. We have focused the awesome power of modern genetic knowledge to bring into being animals that suffer more. (159).
- In the past fifty years, as factory farming spread from poultry to beef, dairy, and pork producers, the average cost of a new house increased nearly 1,500 percent; new cars climbed more than 1,400 percent; but the price of milk is up only 350 percent, and eggs and chicken meat haven’t even doubled. Taking inflation into account, animal protein costs less today than at any time in history. (That is, unless one also takes into account the externalized costs – farm subsidies, environmental impact, human disease, and so on – which make the price historically high.) (109)
- In the National School Lunch Program…more than half a billion of our tax dollars are given to the dairy, beef, egg, and poultry industries to provide animal products to children despite the fact that nutritional data would suggest we should reduce these foods in our diets. Meanwhile, a modest $161 million is offered to buy fruits and vegetables that even the USDA admits we should eat more of. (147)
- According to a study published in Consumer Reports, 83 percent of all chicken meat (including organic and antibiotic-free brands) is infected with either campylobacter or salmonella at the time of purchase. (139)
- Farmed animals are fed antibiotics nontherapeutically (that is, before they get sick). In the United States, about 3 million pounds of antibiotics are given to humans each year, but a whopping 17.8 million pounds are fed to livestock (140)
- In parts of the world where milk is not a staple of the diet, people often have less osteoporosis and fewer bone fractures than Americans do. The highest rates of osteoporosis are seen in countries where people consume the most dairy foods. (147)
There were many more highlights of the book such as how animals are treated, how they are slaughtered, and how they can be harmful to our health but of course I couldn’t include everything here.
I recommend this book for new vegetarians and those entertaining the idea. I have been toying with the idea for a few months as there are many health-related concerns surrounding meat-eating. This was a great introductory book that has shown me much more than I had anticipated on learning (obviously I learned about more than just the negative health effects for which I was seeking – I also learned a lot about animal welfare). We all know that it is bad, but most of us have no clue as to how bad it has become.
This is a great resource guide, and yes, JSF DID include references for all citations and arguments presented.
A must-read, no matter what your view on meat-eating may be.
“Whether we’re talking about fish species, pigs, or some other eaten animal, is such suffering the most important thing in the world? Obviously not. But that’s not the question. Is it more important than sushi, bacon, or chicken nuggets? That’s the question.” (p. 193)
I finished reading this book weeks ago and have been pondering how to write the review ever since. [a:Jonathan Safran Foer|2617|Jonathan Safran Foer|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1274633302p2/2617.jpg], known in the literature world for writing [b:Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close|4588|Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close|Jonathan Safran Foer|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165446871s/4588.jpg|1940137] and [b:Everything Is Illuminated|256566|Everything Is Illuminated|Jonathan Safran Foer|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519wWf5ZgkL._SL75_.jpg|886727], has been a fleeting vegetarian for many years and a full-on practicing veg-head for the past few. When he had his first child, he decided to research animals, including why we eat them, how they are farmed, and what the possible health concerns may be.
He has crafted a book of facts that is not too wordy and is definitely not preachy. Although not completely unbiased, he did a remarkable job of explaining the story of eating animals from several points of view: the carnivore and the vegetarian; the family farmer and the “factory farmer.”
This is the first book of its kind that I read and I am certainly glad that it was this one. I can see how a lot of anti-cannibalism books could be overwhelming with too many facts, present a bias viewpoint, and not add any personal introspection. JSF toured the US talking to farmers, workers from factory farms, animal activists. He even broke onto a farm in the middle of the night to see exactly what was happening (many factory farms do not allow people onto their properties very easily, not to mention anyone in the media).
Here are a few facts and quotes that I took from the book that I thought were important to remember for one reason or another (don’t worry, I didn’t include the gruesome, gory info):
- Ninety-nine percent of all land animals eaten or used to produce milk and eggs in the United States are factory farmed. (34)
- Less than 1% of the animals killed for meat in America come from family farms. (201)
- Animal agriculture makes a 40% greater contribution to global warming than all transportation in the world combined; it is the number one cause of climate change. (43)
- Nearly one-third of the land surface of the planet is dedicated to livestock. (149)
- By 2050, the world’s livestock will consume as much food as four billion people. (262)
- On average, Americans eat the equivalent of 21,000 entire animals in a lifetime (121)
- Americans eat 150 times as many chickens as we did only eighty years ago. (137)
- KFC buys nearly a billion chickens a year – if you packed those chickens body to body, they would blanket Manhattan from river to river and spill from the windows of the higher floors of office buildings (67)
- If India and China started to eat poultry in the same quantities as Americans (twenty-seven to twenty-eight birds annually), they alone would consume as many chickens as the entire world does today. (148)
- The typical cage for egg-laying hens allows each sixty-seven square inches of floor space – somewhere between the size of this page [in the book] and a sheet of printer paper. (47)
- The average shrimp-trawling operation throws 80 to 90 percent of the sea animals it captures overboard, dead or dying, as bycatch… What if there were labelling on our food letting us know how many animals were killed to bring our desired animal to our plate? So, with trawled shrimp from Indonesia, for example, the label might read: 26 POUNDS OF OTHER SEA ANIMALS WERE KILLED AND TOSSED BACK INTO THE OCEAN FOR EVERY 1 POUND OF THIS SHRIMP. (49)
- Imagine being served a plate of sushi. But this plate also holds all of the animals that were killed for your serving of sushi. The plate might have to be five feet across. (50)
- To be considered free-range, chickens raised for meat must have “access to the outdoors,” which, if you take those words literally, means nothing. (Imagine a shed containing thirty thousand chickens, with a small door at one end that opens to a five-by-five dirt patch – and the door is closed all but occasionally). The USDA doesn’t even have a definition of free-range for laying hens (61)
- According to the USDA, “fresh” poultry has never had an internal temperature below 26 degrees or above 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Fresh chicken can be frozen (thus the oxymoron “fresh frozen”), and there is no time component to food freshness. (61)
- Organic foods in general are almost certainly safer and often have a smaller ecological footprint and better health value. They are not, though, necessarily more humane… You can call your turkey organic and torture it daily. (70)
- Turkey hens now lay 120 eggs a year and chickens lay over 300. That’s two or even three times as many as in nature. After that first year, they are killed because they won’t lay as many eggs in the second year – the industry figured out that it’s cheaper to slaughter them and start over than it is feed and house birds that lay fewer eggs. These practices are a big part of why poultry meat is so cheap today, but the birds suffer for it. (60)
- From 1935 to 1995, the average weight of “broilers” [chickens raised for meat] increased by 65 percent, while their time-to-market dropped 60 percent and their feed requirements dropped 57 percent. To gain a sense of the radicalness of this change, imagine human children growing to be three hundred pounds in ten years, while eating only granola bars and Flintstones vitamins. (106-107)
- We are breeding creatures incapable of surviving in any place other than the most artificial settings. We have focused the awesome power of modern genetic knowledge to bring into being animals that suffer more. (159).
- In the past fifty years, as factory farming spread from poultry to beef, dairy, and pork producers, the average cost of a new house increased nearly 1,500 percent; new cars climbed more than 1,400 percent; but the price of milk is up only 350 percent, and eggs and chicken meat haven’t even doubled. Taking inflation into account, animal protein costs less today than at any time in history. (That is, unless one also takes into account the externalized costs – farm subsidies, environmental impact, human disease, and so on – which make the price historically high.) (109)
- In the National School Lunch Program…more than half a billion of our tax dollars are given to the dairy, beef, egg, and poultry industries to provide animal products to children despite the fact that nutritional data would suggest we should reduce these foods in our diets. Meanwhile, a modest $161 million is offered to buy fruits and vegetables that even the USDA admits we should eat more of. (147)
- According to a study published in Consumer Reports, 83 percent of all chicken meat (including organic and antibiotic-free brands) is infected with either campylobacter or salmonella at the time of purchase. (139)
- Farmed animals are fed antibiotics nontherapeutically (that is, before they get sick). In the United States, about 3 million pounds of antibiotics are given to humans each year, but a whopping 17.8 million pounds are fed to livestock (140)
- In parts of the world where milk is not a staple of the diet, people often have less osteoporosis and fewer bone fractures than Americans do. The highest rates of osteoporosis are seen in countries where people consume the most dairy foods. (147)
There were many more highlights of the book such as how animals are treated, how they are slaughtered, and how they can be harmful to our health but of course I couldn’t include everything here.
I recommend this book for new vegetarians and those entertaining the idea. I have been toying with the idea for a few months as there are many health-related concerns surrounding meat-eating. This was a great introductory book that has shown me much more than I had anticipated on learning (obviously I learned about more than just the negative health effects for which I was seeking – I also learned a lot about animal welfare). We all know that it is bad, but most of us have no clue as to how bad it has become.
This is a great resource guide, and yes, JSF DID include references for all citations and arguments presented.
A must-read, no matter what your view on meat-eating may be.
“Whether we’re talking about fish species, pigs, or some other eaten animal, is such suffering the most important thing in the world? Obviously not. But that’s not the question. Is it more important than sushi, bacon, or chicken nuggets? That’s the question.” (p. 193)
ainsleykinder's review against another edition
5.0
Horrified
After the Bible, this is the most important book I have ever read (and probably ever will.)
It’s so revealing, upsetting, sickening, and demands action from the reader.
I became a vegan before I was even 1/4 of the way through the book. Not a chance I go back. I cannot un-know the things I’ve read. I just cannot believe I was ignorant to the atrocities of factory farming up until now, and I can’t believe people aren’t screaming about this from the rooftops.
After the Bible, this is the most important book I have ever read (and probably ever will.)
It’s so revealing, upsetting, sickening, and demands action from the reader.
I became a vegan before I was even 1/4 of the way through the book. Not a chance I go back. I cannot un-know the things I’ve read. I just cannot believe I was ignorant to the atrocities of factory farming up until now, and I can’t believe people aren’t screaming about this from the rooftops.
angelaonmars's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
4.0
pictusfish's review against another edition
5.0
Incredible book. It really made me question my complicit acceptance and support of the absolute cruelties of factory farming to animals, to the environment, and to other humans.
kew1996's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
edencho's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death and Animal cruelty
annie_evergreen's review against another edition
4.0
Really eye-opening. I've been vegetarian for over a year now, but I adopted that lifestyle mostly for the personal health and ecological benefits. I hadn't done much research into animal welfare or animal rights prior to making my decision to go herbivore, and after reading this book, my decision has been fortified. The author doesn't set out to convince readers to transform their diet, but the information he presents (in a really beautiful mix of investigation and memoir) makes it impossible for me to think of a single reason it's worth it to eat meat. Very compelling book.