Farmageddon (book)
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Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat is a 2014 non-fiction book by
Synopsis
The thesis examined in the book is that globalised production chains of industrialised agricultural systems negatively affect farmed animals, human health, the countryside, rivers and oceans, biodiversity in rainforests and many of the world's poorest people. The authors seek to shed light on the conditions in
The reader follows Lymbery's journey from his start in California's
One chapter of Farmageddon is dedicated to the question "What happened to the vet?" Lymbery says that veterinarians work in an industry with an "inbuilt flaw". He states that veterinarians often comply with the industrialization of animals, for example in the prophylactic use of antibiotics which are applied in the mass production of animals, eggs and milk instead of demanding a different (pasture-based) agricultural system. According to Lymbery, veterinarians should not support systems that are "inherently bad for animal welfare", which allegedly is the case in "mass production of broiler chickens, caged production of eggs, the large-scale permanent housing of dairy cows (so-called mega dairies) and highly intensive pig production where mothering pigs are kept in confinement where they can't turn around for weeks at a time".[7]
In order to prevent Farmageddon the authors come up with suggestions for consumers, policy makers and farmers: Consumers should eat less meat. Fish should be fed to people rather than converted into fishmeal. Animals should be fed with grass and animal farming should be a pasture-based system. These changes would save resources by reducing the competition of humans and animals for food and land.[2]
Table of contents
The book is divided into the following sections:
- I Rude Awakenings (chapters 1-2)
- II Nature (chapters 3-6)
- III Health (chapters 7-8)
- IV Muck (chapters 9-10)
- V Shrinking Planet (chapters 11-13)
- VI Tomorrow's Menu (chapters 14-19)
The following is a list of chapter titles:
- California Girls: a vision of the future?
- Henpecked: the truth behind the label
- Silent Spring: the birth of farming's chemical age
- Wildlife: the great disappearing act
- Fish: farming takes to the water
- Animal Care: what happened to the vet?
- Bugs 'n' drugs: the threat to public health
- Expanding Waistlines: food quality takes a nose-dive
- Happy as a Pig: tales of pollution
- Southern Discomfort: the rise of the industrial chicken
- Land: how factory farms use more, not less
- Thicker than Water: draining rivers, lakes and oil wells
- Hundred-dollar Hamburger: the illusion of cheap food
- GM: feeding people or factory farms?
- China: Mao's mega-farm dream comes true
- Kings, Commoners and Supermarkets: where the power lies
- New Ingredients: rethinking our food
- The Solution: how to avert the coming food crisis
- Consumer Power: what you can do
Reception
Tristram Stuart wrote in a review for The Guardian that although he is critical towards the "orthodoxy that large-scale farms and industrial agricultural technology are inherently wrong", "this catalogue of devastation will convince anyone who doubts that industrial farming is causing ecological meltdown".[3]
See also
References
- ^ Farmageddon by Philip Lymbery with Isabel Oakeshott – review, Lucy Siegle, The Observer, 2 February 2014
- ^ a b c Farmageddon by Philip Lymbery with Isabel Oakeshott, review, Tom Fort, The Daily Telegraph, 10 February 2014
- ^ a b Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat by Philip Lymbery – review, Tristram Stuart, The Guardian, 31 January 2014
- ^ Farmageddon Archived 10 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine, website of Philip Lymbery
- ^ "Farmageddon, first chapter (online), p.19". Archived from the original on 10 February 2014. Retrieved 11 February 2014.
- ^ Farmageddon by Philip Lymbery (with Isabel Oakeshott): Book review, Mike McCarthy, The Independent, 7 February 2014
- ^ "Have vets really sold out to industrial agri-business?", Lucy Siegle, The Guardian, 19 January 2014
