Customer Reviews

CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Length:: 7:06 Mins

I initially thought the idea of a coffee table book on factory farming bordered on silly, but now I get it. This book is one of the most important animal advocacy resources I've encountered.

This book is one of the most important on the topic of food production today. It strips away the false image of Old McDonald growing our food. Old McDonald no longer exists, except in very few places. If you want to know the truth about how our food is produced, what food is fed to our children in school lunch programs, and where that expensive steak or seafood or premium ice cream or crunchy bacon really came from - then you want to read this book. Then, please share it with everyone you know. Buy it for them for Christmas, no, better yet - before Thanksgiving. Then go shop at your local food co-op, and ask questions.

The images will profoundly affect you, because they're not made up. They're real. Be careful about showing this book to children - the images may bring nightmares. At the least, they'll bring questions that are really hard to answer. How did we let our food system get this way? Where were we?

The series of articles and essays in CAFO bust apart all the myths about our food - literally. There are several chapters devoted to that purpose. All the authors know their respective topics inside and out, they're attorneys who've fought for clean water and clean air and safe food, conservatives who know the true meaning of conserve, people on the front lines of this war that's being fought over our countrysides, our public health, and our economy.

Informative and life changing. This book will educate you like no one ever has. The next time you walk into a grocery store, you'll have a better understanding of what your choices mean for animals, the environment, along with your personal health.

CAFO - The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories is an incredible work that opened my eyes to the absolute horrors of factory farms. I am a blogger and was sent a review copy of this wonderful book and it set me on a path to help end factory farming.

It's an enormous and powerful book that includes essays and large photos. The photos drive the point home that medieval practices towards intelligent animals occur everyday on factory farms.

Dismantlement
One of the essays I learned a lot from was "Dismantlement" by Erik Marcus of Vegan.com. While I'm not a vegetarian and I enjoy a good burger, I want animals treated humanely no matter their destination. I suspect many non vegetarians feel as I do.

Erik writes about "Trends in U.S. Meat Consumption", "The Three Existing Movements for Animal Protection" (Limitations of the Vegetarian Movement, Limitations of the Animal Rights Movement, and Limitations of the Animal Welfare Movement), and "Building a Fourth Movement".

The "Fourth Movement" that Erik writes about is "Creating a Dismantlement Movement". I think he's onto something big! His ideas for agri-business reform make perfect sense, financially and from a moral standpoint. I won't give his ideas away as I know you will want to read this terrific book.

Nowhere To Go, Nothing To Do
One other sickening thing I learned from this book, in the page titled "Nowhere To Go, Nothing To Do: Compulsive Behavior, Physical Abuse", is that pigs are held in cage crates where they can't turn around.

Until I started reading this book I naively thought thought that animal abuses like this only happened in third world countries! The way we treat these pigs is as horrific as barbaric bear farming.

Bar chewing is very common with pigs due to extreme boredom from the lack of stimulation. These animals have the right to play, exercise and enjoy the outdoor world and they are denied any decency. Death seems a blessing.

The Food Industry
It seems that many in the food industry either are not aware of these horrors or have chosen to look the other way.

Exempt From Animal Cruelty Laws
Did you know that farm animals are except from animal cruelty laws due to the lobbying efforts of the food industry, making animals more at risk to the cruel treatment on factory farms? Who are these people who work in this industry and come up with these unconscionable strategies!!!???

If you have a pet, dog or cat or other animal, and care about animals, buy this book, keep it on your coffee table and spread the message to others that we need to reinvent how we produce food.

This book sums up all one needs to know about factory farming in one giant book. The pictures are all real, and give added depth when explaining to others about cafos. My eleven year old niece went through it cover to cover twice, and is now more than ever interested in the food she eats and where it comes from. I have shared this book with many already and will continue to share it, as long as those are willing to learn.

"CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories," edited by Dan Imhoff is one of the most critical collections of compelling photographs and essays of our time. Anyone who eats deserves to know the origin of their food. Those casually seeking nourishment from the industrial trough might be surprised to learn the origin, suffering and environmental devastation hiding behind the food on their plates. Imhoff's book removes the blinders. CAFO belongs on coffee tables, kitchen tables, office desks, hospital waiting rooms, high school classrooms and cafeterias, the halls of Congress and the Oval Office.

I vote for CAFO as our national "one-read" selection. May it be our guide as we debate food safety legislation and a new farm bill.

Melinda Hemmelgarn, M.S., R.D.
Food Sleuth, LLC
Columbia, MO

I finally got my hands on this beauty. It's a dark beauty, to be sure, but a more powerful coffee table book you'll be hard pressed to find. By 'power' I mean the power to educate, at a glance, people from all backgrounds about the ethical violations that plague these massive animal farms. This book isn't anti-meat...it's anti cruelty and waste.

If you really mean to change minds about how animals are treated--this book and its images will be a powerful tool...perhaps the most powerful one you'll ever own.