Eating - Peter Singer & Jim Mason

Subtitled "what we eat and why it matters", this book focuses on three US families - one whose food choices are based largely on cost & convenience, one family of "conscientious omnivores", and one of vegans - and investigates the impact of their food choices on animal welfare, the people involved in its production, and the environment. Having read Singer's earlier "Animal Liberation", I did not expect to be shocked by any of this, but was almost reduced to tears by one passage describing the casual cruelty of slaughterhouse workers observed jumping up and down on live chickens or ripping them apart for entertainment. The authors attribute this sort of behaviour to the desensitizing effects of fast-paced, monotonous, bloody work, in environments where supervisors routinely refuse to stop the processing line when mechanical failures lead to conscious animals being killed in slow and painful ways. Many large companies - bizarrely, led by McDonalds - have introduced audits to improve this situation, but critics claim that there is evidence from some slaughterhouses that the lines are simply run slower when an auditor is on site. Although the information about regulations and production practices in the US was interesting - for example the disturbing fact that most states' anti-cruelty laws contain exemptions for "common farming practices" - and the general principles were obviously universal, I would be interested in a UK-specific version of this book that went into more depth about UK suppliers.

As well as focusing on animal welfare, the book also includes a lot of material about environmental impacts, such as the vast quantities of feces and urine produced by large pig farms. In one incident in 1995, 25 million gallons of liquid waste were released into a river in North Carolina when a "lagoon" burst due to heavy rain, and even under normal conditions these farms can have such an impact on human health that the American Public Health Association passed a resolution in 2003 calling for a moratorium on the construction of new factory farms ("CAFOs"). The book also describes the inefficiency of meat production in terms of land use and water consumption - concluding, for example, that it takes 13 pounds of grain to produce a single pound of boneless beef.

The chapter on "the ethics of eating meat" includes my own reason for becoming vegetarian rather than attempting to apply welfare standards when purchasing meat - that "since we are all often tempted to take the easy way out, drawing a clear line against eating animal products may be the best way to ensure that one eats ethically - and sticks to it". (Although whenever I read anything like this I realise that my own position is inconsistent, and veganism would be a more rational place to draw that line, given the number of male chicks & calves that are killed by the egg & dairy industries...) It applies a similar argument to producers, pointing out that "as long as animals are commodities, raised for sale on a large scale in a competitive market situation, there will be conflicts between their interests and the economic interests of the producer" - and corners will be cut. I was particularly struck by the inclusion of a quote from Roger Scruton - the philosopher whose opposition to the concept of "animal rights" led him to name a pig "Singer" and then personally turn it into sausages: his assessment of modern large-scale factory farming is that "a true morality of animal welfare ought to begin from the premise that this way of treating animals is wrong".