The Meat You Eat: How Corporate Farming Has Endangered America's Food Supply | 
| Author: Ken Midkiff
Creator: Wendell Berry
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy New: $3.09
You Save: $20.86 (87%)
New (15) Used (19) from $1.78
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 606707
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 0312325355
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.1973
EAN: 9780312325350
ASIN: 0312325355
Publication Date: August 1, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: NO DUST JACKET Thank you for looking at Bookscorner1.No sale isever final.100%satisfaction guaranteed.may have a remainder mark and.203a
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
"We have given up to the agribusiness corporations a crucial part of our responsibility as human beings and we must now think of ways to take it back."- Wendell Berry, from the ForewordIn this eye-opening book, Sierra Club Director Ken Midkiff exposes the dangers posed by corporate control of agriculture (agribusiness)--to our health, and to the health of the nation's economy, security, and the environment. The Meat You Eat explores the current practices of the corporations taking over the raising and slaughtering of farm animals (and farmed fish, such as salmon). These companies use a model that has transformed livestock farming from quality-driven family-owned operations into big businesses concerned with volume, efficiency, uniformity, and profits above all. Midkiff reveals the true cost of agribusiness on all levels-environmental, financial, moral, legal, and medical-balancing startling truths with practical solutions. Rather than advocate a vegan or vegetarian diet, Midkiff argues that using and supporting local farmers will improve the quality of life for us all, as well as for the animals whose meat we eat. Complete with resource sections about where to find local farmers and lists of agribusiness culprits, the book encourages us to take an active interest in what we put on our plates and in our mouths, and use the power of our pocketbooks to make it clear that our health, our environment, and our communities are of vital importance.With a foreword by Wendell Berry, hailed by The New York Times Books Review as the "great moral essayist of our day," The Meat You Eat is an informative and ringing call to arms.
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Exceptional Topic, Decent Content, Just OK Writing December 29, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The Meat You Eat is a book that had to be written. It is a quick reading book on the dangers of "corporate farming" and how corporate farming affects the surrounding areas, the community, the environment, the workplace, the animals, and America's food supply.
The book addresses the commonplace corporate farm and how they provide food from birth to the grocery store. The book discusses "Big Pig", "Big Chicken and Big Egg", "Big Milk", "Big Beef", and "Big Fish". I feel the author does an excellent job at the beginning of each chapter, explaining the background of each industry in an unbiased manner. The author then goes into some valid reasons as to each industries faults.
Most industries are guilty of torturing animals in one form or another, whether it be pigs fighting from being confined too closely or chickens whose feet become entangled in wire and can not move their entire lives. Some animals are not euthanized properly and proceed through the slaughterhouse before actually dying.
The author also talks about how companies monopolize an industry from fertilization of animals to processing and delivery to retailers. The result is a company that exploits the desperate and the unfortunate, whether they be farmers, townfolk, or immigrant workers. The monopolies, their power, and loopholes in the law allow these farms to pollute at will, literally driving people from their homes with little if any recourse.
I think the book does a good job of addressing the downfalls of current "big" farming methings; however, I felt this book has its shortcomings. A gifted author can describe a battlefield so vividly, the reader feels like the person next to them died in their arms. These authors can paint stunning pictures in a reader's mind without an actual photograph. This author does not posses such talent. As much as the author tries, I feel the author falls short of really making the reader feel the tortured animals pain. I think some photographs would have helped this book immensely. Also, the author seems to assume that the reader is familiar with the workings of a farms and butchering. For example, the author talks about the use of bolt guns to stun cows. I have never seen a bolt gun and have no idea what he is taking about. Again, pictures or diagrams would have helped.
I spent half my childhood in rural Wisconsin, around small farms. I've witnessed how small farms operate and work in harmony with nature, as much as a farm can. I have killed countless animals and fish for food in my life. Despite my limited knowledge of agriculture from my childhood, I really had no idea where food comes from in modern day society. I would recommend this book to someone who is interested in how a cow in the pasture turns into the package of ground beef at the store. The book will probably shock some people. Personally, I found the book very informative and I am glad I read it, but it was not powerful enough for me to make changes in my life.
Same, same, but different.. August 9, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you read "Fast Food Nation", you will like this book. There are similarities, but also many differences. The book refers to fish farm and gets into the economics of agricultural business. A great read.
Read Fast Food Nation and Portrait of a Burger first May 26, 2005
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
If you've ever wondered how McDonald's can offer a 39 cent cheeseburger, this book will help you understand the bizarre economics that makes a cheeseburger cheaper than a bottle of water.
The author makes the case for buying meat and dairy products from small farms committed to sustainable farming practices. He succeeds with me, though I've subscribed to this view ever since reading Fast Food Nation and Portrait of a Burger as a Young Calf -- so I didn't need much convincing.
I'm not sure how effective he'll be with a less friendly audience. While he brings a few effective stories and statistics to bear, he also brings the rhetoric of the stereotypical wild-eyed environmentalist (Mr. Midkiff is the Sierra Club Water Campaign director).
An example from his introduction: "Corporations care about people only to the extent that people are consumers are the corporate product...Feeding a hungry world? That is only a justification for fouling the air and water. Running family farmers out of business; ruining the economies of small towns; destroying the rural quality of life; mangling, dismembering, and maming employees; producing foods that are unsafe and unhealthy? When confronted with some of the unintended consequences of the industrial mode of production of meat, milk, and eggs, the corporate spokesman hauls out things like the following...'It is unfortuante, but it must be kept in mind that this is the way things must be done if we're going to feed the world.'"
I would have preferred less shrill rhetoric and more hard data. In my opinion, the author doesn't further his cause with his inflammatory writing style: the facts surrounding the modern meat and dairy industries are appalling enough to speak for themselves.
Having said that, this book does a fair job of describing how surprisingly cruel, environmentally destructive, and socially damaging modern techniques for raising and killing farm animals are. Even if you don't care about air and water pollution because you don't live near a slaughterhouse (I don't, either), you might be surprised at how brutal the modern system is to the workers, many of them undocumented immigrants. And even if you don't care about the cruelty associated with raising so many animals (pigs, chickens, salmon, and cows) in such close proximity, you should understand the risks associated with eating the result -- the surprising thing about people getting food poisioning from industrially raised meat is not that it happens, but that it happens so rarely.
Bottom line: we owe it to ourselves, to our families, to the workers, to the planet to spend a few more dollars and buy meat, milk, and eggs that are responsibly and sustainably raised.
 The Meat You Eat by Ken Midkiff December 7, 2004
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
In The Meat You Eat, Ken Midriff provides an in-depth analysis of the process of creating many animal products. Midkiff uses proven facts and precise statistics to back up his overall argument against corporate farming. Midkiff also uses many of his own detailed experiences and interviews from ordinary people. Their testimonies add validity to The Meat You Eat.
Midkiff shows how corporate farming is a danger to the environment, the economy, and the environment in a step by step structure that is easy to follow. He shows the reader that corporate farming has turned farming into a dirty big business concerned only with profit. Midkiff says that the owners of factory farms don't care about how the negative affects to the environment, workers, animals, workers, and the American consumer.
Rather than promoting vegetarianism, he advocates buying organic animal products or buying them from a small local farm. Midkiff says buying from local farmers will hurt factory farms and benefit the environment, animals, and the local farmers themselves.
Problems and solutions to agribusiness as a whole September 15, 2004
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
As large meat factories and corporate processing operations take over America, so grows the need for a logical assessment of such methods, here provided by Ken Midkiff's The Meat You Eat. Midkiff is a Sierra Club Clean Water Campaign director and an expert on agribusiness and sustainable farming applications: The Meat You Eat takes a predictably hard look at the methods used by corporations to run profitable gigantic farms, applying their problems and solutions to agribusiness as a whole in an analysis of food safety.
|
|
|
