The Compassionate Carnivore: Or, How to Keep Animals Happy, Save Old MacDonald’s Farm, Reduce Your Hoofprint, and Still Eat Meat Overview
Catherine Friend tackles the carnivore’s dilemma, exploring the contradictions, nuances, questions, and bewildering choices facing today’s more conscious meat-eaters. The Compassionate Carnivore is “perfect for people who would like to eat meat but have moral, ethical, or health concerns about doing so” (Marion Nestle, What to Eat). Based on her own personal struggle, Friend’s original, witty take on the meat and livestock debates shows consumers how they can be healthy and humane carnivores, too.
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I bought this book after reading randomly selected reviews from five star to one star, and that grudgingly bestowed only because there is no option for negative stars. The controversy and the passion of these reviews indicated that the book would be well worth reading – and it is is. It is not a manifesto but a movingly written, shockingly and disturbingly honest account of Friend’s own journey toward taking responsibility for whatever she puts into her mouth.
“The Compassionate Carnivore” has no place where anybody, whether vegan or omnivore, can rest in complacence or comfort. For the meat-eater who has never thought about the lives of farmed animals, distanced by the nice clean packaging of the meat, eggs, and dairy, revelation of the truth behind the way in which these animals live and die is bound to be deeply upsetting, and many will react with anger against the messenger. For the vegan, it may be too hard to accept that some people who eat animal products are not monsters, but real humans who struggle mightily with their consciences, and who are genuinely committed to eradicating cruelty to livestock both in life and in death. Again, the message will be rejected and the messenger vilified. Death is, of course, the sticking point. For people to whom death is the ultimate evil, there is no way to accept the premise that a person can truly care for her animals, cry all the way home from the slaughter facility because they’re dead, and still not only deliver them up for slaughter but enjoy the meat afterwards. At this point it becomes a matter of religion, and Friend deserves both respect and compassion for her exposure of her own vulnerability, and her own discomfort over the facts that other animals (humans being animals too) are sentient to various degrees. Friend acknowledges that she is the one who makes the decision for death, and that she in no way sees the deaths of her lambs as a willing sacrifice on their parts. This is courageous, as it immediately sets her up as a target for extremists at both poles.
Friend openly admits that she gets lost occasionally on her quest, often because of convenience. It is quicker and easier to buy prepared burritos made with CAFO beef and agribusiness corn or wheat, and unfortunately cheaper in upfront money outlay, than to hunt down humane-certified beef and non-GMO grains and make the burritos from scratch in one’s own kitchen.
My own experience as a smallholder resonates very powerfully with Friend’s; those of us who have raised and eaten our own animal products experience not numbing, but a heightened sense of gratitude that can only be described as religious awe, and a sense of the sacred about the entire food cycle. I never lost a deep reluctance and regret when scheduling a death, and I focused very tightly on ensuring that the animal experienced no fear and no pain. I agree with Friend that it is a most effective tactic in the war against cruelty to, and commodification of, farmed animals to seek out and pay for products from animals raised humanely and sustainably. Each dollar spent in this way makes a very strong statement to the industry; as sales of humane-and-sustainable products rise, each dollar comes directly out of the profits of the agribusiness group. Provided we the people do not permit the hi-jacking and dilution to the point of ridiculousness of the “Humane” and “Sustainable” labels by the agribusiness lobby, as has already happened with “Organic,” “Free Range,” and “Grass-fed,” these losses may catalyze a move toward humane-and-sustainable. One has only to look at the very rapid change to “Trans Fat Free” and “HFCS Free” products now lining supermarket shelves to see the potential; the food industry fought fang-and-claw against regulation of their practices at Federal level, but ceded defeat painlessly when we the people stopped buying.
Few people will choose veganism as a result of reading Friend’s book. However, the great majority who choose to continue eating animal products are likely to choose more compassionately and vote with their dollars toward the common goal of vegans and omnivores alike – reduction of suffering, reduction of consumption, and reduction of damage to our one and only biosphere.
Technical Details
- ISBN13: 9780738213095
- Condition: New
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Breakfast time: Maisy pours a bowl of cereal.