Dead Meat [Paperback]

Sue Coe (Author), Alexander Cockburn (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 23, 1996

A nationally prominent, politically oriented artist offers an unsparingly critical view of the meat industry in scores of illustrations, documenting the skewing, flaying, dismembering, castrating, debeaking, electrocuting, and decapitating of animals. Simultaneous. IP.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

British artist Sue Coe is well known for her social and political paintings and illustrations, which appear regularly in such publications as the New York Times and the New Yorker. Her latest effort is the disturbing book Dead Meat, a visual record of Coe's visits to 40 slaughterhouses, cattle ranches, and hatcheries to document the grisly practices of the meat-packing industry. Although she was not allowed to photograph on the premises, she was permitted to draw and sketch, and much of this work is jarringly graphic. Incorporated with the artwork are her thoughts and observations laid out in diary form. Even if you don't agree with Coe's politics, this is social and political art at its most powerful, in the tradition of Goya, Daumier, and Rockwell Kent. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Political artist Coe spent years visiting slaughterhouses and meat farms in the U.S., Canada and England, all the while drawing and writing about what she saw. The result is a fascinating and revealing portrait of the institutions behind the meat we eat. Coe's illustrations, which appear regularly in such publications as the New York Times and the New Yorker, have the sharply lined, affecting realism of a Diego Rivera mural. Her first-person account is matter-of-fact, thoughtful and engaging. Coe's book is political, and she clearly hopes it will make readers think twice about what they put into their mouths, but she does not preach and is unafraid to confront her own complicity: "Every dollar I get drips with blood too," she writes. Her empathetic rendering of the workers she encounters is reminiscent of Studs Terkel at his best, and the parallels she draws between society's treatment of meat animals and its working classes are disturbing and convincing. Cockburn's introductory essay traces the history of the meat industry with his customary shrewd sociopolitical insight, but without falling into polemics. Dead Meat will appeal not just to those interested in animal rights, but to anyone who cares about how society functions.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 136 pages
• Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows; 1st edition (February 23, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156858041X
• ISBN-13: 978-1568580418
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,004,686 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 68 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Truth is more shocking than fiction November 29, 1999

By M. Archer

Format:Paperback

I received this book as a gift yesterday and stayed up all night reading it and finished it. Luckily, I did not have any nightmares about animals being treated in the way in which Sue Coe describes and paints in this revealing book. I recommend this book to the world; everyone should be aware of the way we treat animals, from pumping them with chemicals and slaughtering them with a knife as they hang from a back foot, to eating them on our dinner tables. The people of the world need to have this information so that they can consciously make a decision about how they can change their contibution regarding these crimes which occur on a daily, hourly, minute by minute basis in every part of the world.

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars incredible book December 29, 1998

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

This book was the reason I became a vegetarian.

While it's easy to skim lightly over even a well-presented and passionate text such as Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation" without understanding the true horror of the meat that you eat, you can't so easily dismiss this book's drawings. They are blunt truths: rather than appealing to your reason, they speak directly to your decency. That makes their argument impossible to ignore.

If you are a meat-eater, you should be afraid to read "Dead Meat," because it will force you to understand the horrible process that turns a life into the food on your plate. But don't let that fear stop you from reading it- you shouldn't fear the book, you should fear the facts that it presents but that tragically exist quite independently of it.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Horrifying personal account of the meat industry. July 12, 1998

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Another horrifying book, this time about the animal food industry. An excellent introduction by Tom Regan points out the effects of the meat industry and the killing of nonhuman animals on the environment, on the human psyche, on social settings. Meat metaphors shape us at the most subcellular level of our awareness of the world. Christians methaphorically eat the flesh of Christ. Nazis use animal methaphors in order to justify their oppression of the Jews and other groups. Men use animal imagery to objectify women. Sue's artwork is fairly stylized but disarming. If you can see it in person, you should. It's a nightmare. There's no way to justify the oppression of so many nonhuman animals, especially because alternatives exist to almost everything for which humans use animals. Imagine if her artwork were photographs instead. She shows us disemboweled pigs, de-beaked chickens, whipped horses. These are linked to our everyday reality, for instance in her painting McWorld. Another interesting theme, rendered less explicitly, is the connection between the interlocked oppression of nonhuman animals by humans and women by men. For instance, an advertisement on the side of a truck packed with hogs for slaughter parked at the Thorn Apple Valley Slaughterhouse in Detroit, Michigan shows dancing pigs in skirts and reads GO GO GIRL EXPRESS. This sexualization of animals for slaughter and the meatification of women for sex is everpresent.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Haunting Pictures December 3, 2001

By "the_decockster"

Format:Hardcover

Some of the pictures in this book will stay with you for a long time, some may even make meat-eaters turn vegetarian. But, even more so than the pictures, the description of the horror of factory farms - to the animals and the workers - will disgust anyone with a heart.
I reccommend this book to longtime vegetarians, new vegetarians, and also to people who are just interested in maybe trying vegetarianism.
(...)

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Animal lovers unite. July 8, 2001

By A Customer

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

If you are passionate about animals, you must read this book. The drawings alone tell the story. The introduction is very educational and will enlighten you. This book is very informative in the body and the drawings and a must read for anyone. It explains the horror that goes on in the slaughterhouses and even gives you a tour through them. I learned more from this book than any other in my personal library on this subject.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Animal Abuse and Art May 30, 2005

By Megan

Format:Paperback

This book comes from someone with an animal rights background and a background in the arts as well. The images are so well done,perfectly disturbing and the stories,truthful and profound. A great read for anyone that wants to know the truth behind the industry.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars meet your meat November 16, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Sue Coe's daring and disturbing voyages through the average day in the lives of the people and animals involved in the factory farming industry. This is the book that converted me to Veganism.

Though I am wary about drawing comparisons to the Holocaust, Sue Coe exposes the primitive, barbaribaric and ignorant side of 'civilized' human society that made the Holocaust to happen, the very same side of human nature that minute by minute allows the systematic torture, neglect and abuse of rights of sentient beings to go on, in secrect, out of sight of our dinner tables. The hellish world of factory farming is graphically exposed by first hand accounts and dark drawings.

To her credit Coe's accounts in the main remain focused and unsentimental, though one wonders how, with the things she witnessed, when her drawings alone are enough to get inside your head. This book should be categorised under 'Educational' and should be used as a text book in schools. Meat eaters, I challenge you not to defend your guilt in ignorance, educate yourselves, read this book.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful and educational! Excellent book! June 14, 1998

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

 This book converted me to veganism.

 Sue Coe has a way of descibing everything that she sees and you almost feel like you are right there.    This book is a definte must for anyone that is wondering about the hidden side to meat.

 Coe tells us about the things you would never think would happen but these things happen. They do...everyday and it is so sad.

 The meat industry is exactly like a Holocaust. Sue Coe just helps us to realize that.