The Meaty Truth

October 15, 2014

Castle and Goodman (coauthors, Rethink Food: 100+ Doctors Can't Be Wrong) add another title to the growing collection of anti-factory farming books. There's no new information here, instead, the authors make the same arguments against factory farming that have appeared in Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, and David Kirby's Animal Factory. Concerns include the obesity epidemic, our increased resistance to antibiotics, food-borne illnesses, and looming environmental catastrophes owing to the waste management practices at concentrated animal-feed operations. Complicit in these issues are government agencies intimately linked to agribusiness and therefore cannot be impartial in setting healthy food standards or mitigating the effects of factory farming on the environment. The authors feel that the contamination and practices of the dairy industry are more egregious than those at meat production facilities and thus advocate a vegan diet. Each chapter ends with suggestions on how to proceed in this factory farming-dominated food environment. Plant-based recipes help guide readers to a meat- and dairy-free diet. A list of cookbooks and further reading recommendations round out this slim volume. VERDICT For those who are new to the issues surrounding food production in America. While this treatment is definitely anti-factory farming, the issues broached are worth considering.--Diana Hartle, Univ. of Georgia Science Lib., Athens

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