On Eating Meat: The truth about its production and the ethics of eating it

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A scorching manifesto on the ethics of eating meat by the best placed person to write about it – farmer and chef Matthew Evans, aka The Gourmet Farmer.
‘Compelling, illuminating and often confronting, On Eating Meat is a brilliant blend of a gastronome’s passion with forensic research into the sources of the meat we eat. Matthew Evans brings his unflinching honesty – and a farmer’s hands-on experience – to the question of how to be an ethical carnivore.’ Hugh Mackay
‘Intellectually thrilling – a book that challenges both vegans and carnivores in the battle for a new ethics of eating. This book will leave you surprised, engrossed and sometimes shocked – whatever your food choices.’ Richard Glover
How can 160,000 deaths in one day constitute a ‘medium-sized operation’?
Think beef is killing the world? What about asparagus farms? Or golf?
Eat dairy? You’d better eat veal, too.
Going vegan might be all the rage, but the fact is the world has an ever-growing, insatiable appetite for meat – especially cheap meat. Former food critic and chef, now farmer and restaurateur Matthew Evans grapples with the thorny issues around the ways we produce and consume animals. From feedlots and abattoirs, to organic farms and animal welfare agencies, he has an intimate, expert understanding of the farming practices that take place in our name. Evans calls for less radicalisation, greater understanding, and for ethical omnivores to stand up for the welfare of animals and farmers alike. Sure to spark intense debate, On Eating Meat is an urgent read for all vegans, vegetarians and carnivores.

From the Publisher

Smells Like Money

Meat is a commodity. Those in the business of intensive production see animals as a system that needs to be efficient, controllable, and the end product consistent. They see behaviours as something to be managed. They see an animal that grows, that isn’t sick, as a happy animal. I, however, see animals as individuals, whose wants and needs aren’t the same as my wants and needs, and not always the same as their brothers’ or sisters’ wants and needs.

Farming, especially confinement farming and the industrial system, is looking for the holy grail of manageability – namely, consistency. But consistency denies nature. Evolution is defined by variation and difference. To make life, any life, consistent, is to actively work against one of the strongest forces in nature.

My aim is to look at the ethical reality of farming, both in relation to the animals we farm, and the animals that are impacted by all farming. But little prepared me for some of the tales I’d unearth.

Those in the industrial food system often believe they are doing the best by the animals in their care. They aren’t, generally, trying to be inhumane or cruel. But how they view those animals, whose souls they are responsible for, is different to the views of some scientists and often in conflict with community expectations. My view is that intensive farmers see problems and solutions as reductive – i.e. if there’s a problem (e.g. disease), fix it. If there’s a behavioural issue (sows fighting, tail biting, cannibalism), then isolate the animal. Or cut off the part that bites, or the part that is bitten. The most intensive systems in the country work at getting the animal to give the intensive farmers what they want, without always looking at what the animal needs and wants.

I don’t see meat as a commodity. I see it as a privilege. As an indulgence. This, then, is my ode to farming animals and eating animals. It’s one small farmer’s view on meat, its place in our culture, our diet, our farming system. This is my look at death, in all its forms, be it on our farm or off it, within farming systems and outside it.

I think meat eaters need to confront the reality that something dies in their name, and that they should be comfortable with the way it’s done. But I also think non meat eaters need to reconcile the fact that more suffering happens outside the farm gate than inside. As we’ll see later, more death can be wrought on animals by the growing of grains and vegetables than the production of livestock for meat.

And we all need to be aware that morality, ethics and personal responsibility are not as clear cut as those on both ends of the vegan– intensive farm spectrum would have us believe.

This book will delve into this idea, and others: what it means to farm, and what repercussions this has on the land, the soil, the animals around us. I’ve been thinking a lot about meat of late, and having lived in cities, and now in the bush on my own farm, I reckon most of us don’t have the full picture when it comes to the consequences, costs and true origins of the food we consume. There’s a sliding scale, a continuum, where we all must find our place, the spot we feel comfortable living, when we consider our impact on the world.

This book, hopefully, will help people of all persuasions find a place on the scale that sits well with their beliefs. It’s not meant as an end, but as a place to start discussions on what it really means to eat meat, or to not eat meat, and the responsibilities some of us take on when we farm on behalf of others.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07NQ4TQS3
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Murdoch Books
Accessibility ‏ : ‎ Learn more
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 1, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 919 KB
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 311 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1760871611
Page Flip ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Best Sellers Rank: #2,179,230 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store) #299 in Animal Rights (Kindle Store) #732 in Animal Rights (Books) #2,143 in Food Science (Books)
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