The Compassionate Carnivore: Or, How to Keep Animals Happy, Save Old MacDonald's Farm, Reduce Your Hoofprint, and Still Eat Meat [Hardcover]

Catherine Friend (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 22, 2008

For most of her life, Catherine Friend was a carnivore who preferred not to consider where the meat on her plate came from—beef didn’t have a face, chicken didn’t have a personality, and pork certainly shouldn’t have feelings. But Friend’s attitude began to change after she and her partner bought a farm and began raising sheep for meat. Friend’s ensuing odyssey through the world of livestock and farming is a journey that offers critical insights—for omnivores and herbivores alike—into how our meat is raised, how we buy it and from whom, and why change is desirable and possible.

From a distressing lesson about her favorite Minnesota State Fair food (pork-chop-on-a-stick) to the surprising gratitude that came from eating an animal she’d raised and loved, Friend takes us on a wild and woolly ride through her small farm (with several brief detours into life on factory farms), along the way raising questions such as: What are the differences between factory, conventional, sustainable, and organic farms, and more importantly, why do we need to understand those differences? What do all those labels—from organic to local to grass fed and pasture raised—really mean? If you’re buying from a small farmer, what are the key questions to ask? How do you find that small farmer, and what’s the best way to help her help you?

In the same witty and warm style that characterized her memoir Hit by a Farm, Friend uses her perspective as a sustainable farmer and carnivore to consider meat animals’ quality of life—while still supporting the choice to eat meat. Regardless of whether you eat meat once a day, once a week, or once a year, your perspective of what goes on your plate—and in your mouth—will never be the same.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As a former city-dweller and self-described lesbian, Elvis-loving shepherd, Friend has a unique and intimate perspective on the morals, economics and practicalities of raising and eating meat humanely. With low-key, Midwestern humor, she takes readers on a tour of an abattoir, writes a love letter to her lambs heading for slaughter and relates how chivalry has been bred out of roosters. She delineates the differences between certified organic, certified humane, cage free, free range, and omega 3 eggs; the often-confusing nuances of organic, sustainable and conventional farming; and why, in her opinion, small farms are preferable to big ones. She encourages readers to get to know their local farms and provides questions to ask farmers and butchers about their produce. Readers interested in the subject will likely be familiar with Friend's overall treatment, but fostering a long-term commitment to the cause, she believes, is an act of respect that will affect the lives of the millions of animals raised in this country every year, and her suggestions are so reasonable that even the most rampant, mainstream meat-eater might consider trying them. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Most people relish eating meat. And Americans, with their hamburgers and their fried chicken, seem especially to appreciate the flavor of animal products. Yet, as Friend points out, few Americans want to be reminded that their pork chop came from a living, breathing animal whose wide eyes too easily engender sentimental anthropomorphization. Friend approaches her subject from the perspective of a farmer. She participates actively in raising lambs and ducks that eventually wind up on people’s tables, her own included. Given the environmental impact of animal husbandry, many people question if eating meat can be sustainable in this era of global warming. Friend cautiously replies in the affirmative but only if consumers become much more frugal, wasting as little as possible. She also finds problematic the intersection of agriculture and industrial mass production that reduces live animals to the status of widgets. She also tries to bring order to the deeply confusing world of “organic” farming. --Mark Knoblauch

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 291 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; 1st Da Capo Press Ed edition (April 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1600940072
• ISBN-13: 978-1600940071
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,211,391 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A former 'city girl,' Friend lives on a small farm in southeastern Minnesota, where she and her partner Melissa raise sheep and cattle. She writes adult nonfiction, fiction, and children's books.

"The Compassionate Carnivore" won the Minnesota Book Award in General Nonfiction. Her memoir, "Hit by a Farm," was selected by the Minneapolis Star Tribune as one of the best books of 2006. Her children's picture book, "The Perfect Nest," was chosen by the Wall Street Journal as one of five best 'read alouds,' and was nominated for numerous state reading awards. She was awarded a Loft/McKnight Artist Fellowship for Writers, and her adult adventure novels have won awards from the Golden Crown Literary Society and the Independent Book Publishers Association.

Friend has a M.S. in Economics and a B.A. in Economics and Spanish. She does chores, teaches writing workshops, and speaks at libraries, yarn shops and fiber festivals, professional organizations, and schools. She's discovered that farm chores and snowshoes make Minnesota winters bearable, and is especially proud she's learned how to take the wool from her sheeps' backs and knit it into very cool socks.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Perfect Addition to Any Savvy Consumer's Library, April 15, 2008

By 

Story Circle Book Reviews - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Compassionate Carnivore: Or, How to Keep Animals Happy, Save Old MacDonald's Farm, Reduce Your Hoofprint, and Still Eat Meat (Hardcover)

While Catherine Friend is an aspiring "Super-Compassionate Carnivore, able to leap over inhumanely raised meat in a single bound," she is better known as the award-winning author of the memoir, Hit by a Farm, epic adventure stories, and numerous children's books.

A perfect addition to any savvy consumer's library, The Compassionate Carnivore offers insight on methods of feeding, raising, and finishing animals. Since the mid-1990s, Friend and her partner, Melissa, have owned and operated a small sustainable farm in Minnesota and have learned first-hand "the impact modern agriculture has on animals, the environment, and [all of us]." In a comprehensive reader-friendly format, the author discusses timely topics, including nutrition, production, how animals live, reproduce and die, buying factory vs. non-factory meat, as well as how each person can make a difference. The book is filled with thought-provoking information, and all references are cited at the end. Friend explores what the meat industry, specifically super-sized "farms," cost consumers with respect to their health and their wallets.

The author fulfills her promise that "This will not be one of those cheerful self-help books that makes change sound so ridiculously easy...[and] at the other extreme, it's not intended to be one of those books about factory farming that's so depressing that you can't get out of bed for a week," in a practical way. She recommends taking one step at a time and not getting discouraged by minor setbacks, like eating pork from an inhumanely raised sow. Being a farmer greatly impacts the way she thinks about the meat she eats. She freely admits, "My path to becoming a compassionate carnivore has been paved with good intentions, but littered with the bones of pork-chop-on-a-stick." However, she and Melissa do all they can to raise happy sheep, and they take pride in providing nourishment. It's possible to show appreciation, kindness, and respect for animals and still eat them. She supports those who choose to be vegetarian and even recommends more vegetable sources of protein over factory-farmed meat, but she makes a great case for people who enjoy meat and want to eat it without an extra helping of guilt.

The Compassionate Carnivore is filled with insightful and often humorous anecdotes. When not horrifying me with various practices of making meat ready for market (E. coli from slaughtered animals who have soiled themselves, butchering animals while they're still alive, or not halting factory production even if a worker loses an arm), Friend had me roaring with laughter as she recounted about their flock not receiving the memo that sheep are supposed to follow, not lead, or how long it took two healthy women to catch a gimpy baby lamb. Backed by research, practical experience, and the desire to improve standards, Friend offers many sound suggestions. If more carnivores demand humanely raised meat, the supply will hopefully follow. Each of us can have a positive influence on the market, she believes. We can start by reducing waste--taking only portions of food we can finish--and working our way up from there.

by Cheri Rosenberg
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bridging The Gap, May 27, 2008

By 

Chris J. Kallin (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Compassionate Carnivore: Or, How to Keep Animals Happy, Save Old MacDonald's Farm, Reduce Your Hoofprint, and Still Eat Meat (Hardcover)

I am a 37yo barely-above-ignorant carnivore, engaged to a 27yo understanding vegetarian... a never-eaten-meat lifer whose vegetarian roots go back two generations. I read this book because I was looking for a non-scientific text to help me develop an approach that would make us both happy (not that we weren't already, but clearly I could be more sympathetic to her preferences as she has been with mine). Catherine Friend's book has helped bridge the gap in my understanding and equipped me to be compassionate not only to animals, but to my fiance as well. I recommend this book to anyone interested in developing a sense of responsibility where the consumption of meat is concerned. My life, my fiance's life, and the lives of the animals I choose to eat are better for it.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for all carnivores, October 7, 2008

By 

Michael D. Dudek (Rural Illinois) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Compassionate Carnivore: Or, How to Keep Animals Happy, Save Old MacDonald's Farm, Reduce Your Hoofprint, and Still Eat Meat (Hardcover)

What a great book! Refreshing, enlightening, entertaining! If only we could get the megafarmers to convert to this line of thinking, what a different world this would be. My hope is that as more people read this book, a movement will be created (and in fact it has already started!) and this change will take deep root in our agricultural practices.

My wife and I, along w/ our 5 kids, moved out of the city a couple years ago and bought a small hobby farm and decided to live a life like that described in this book - and it has made ALL THE DIFFERENCE! We know where our food comes from since we've raised it, we know the animals have been well cared for and treated with great dignity, we know they've been allowed to roam through our pastures and eat grass the way God intended. We've loved them and cared for them from birth through death.

And when their earthly life is over, they provide nurturing sustanance for our large family for many, many months.

In my community, surrounded by large megafarms, I'm only one of a couple such farmers who are living a life that is described by this great book. Perhaps I'll buy a few more copies and do some "evangelizing" to some of the feedlot farmers around here and see if we can't win some converts to this far better way of living! It'll be a Compassionate Carnivore Crusade!!

Thanks, Catherine, for having the courage to write such a book in the face of the current "meat-on-the-cheap" megafarm, feedlot mentality on the one hand AND in the face of the "humans should be herbivores" mentality on the other. I'm recommending your book to all my farming friends and I've bought your other book too, Hit By A Farm!

-Michael Dudek