The Meat You Eat: How Corporate Farming Has Endangered America's Food Supply [Hardcover]

Ken Midkiff (Author), Wendell Berry (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2004

"We have given up to the agribusiness corporations a crucial part of our responsibility as human beings and we must now think of ways to take it back."
- Wendell Berry, from the Foreword

In this eye-opening book, Sierra Club Director Ken Midkiff exposes the dangers posed by corporate control of agriculture (agribusiness)--to our health, and to the health of the nation's economy, security, and the environment.

The Meat You Eat explores the current practices of the corporations taking over the raising and slaughtering of farm animals (and farmed fish, such as salmon). These companies use a model that has transformed livestock farming from quality-driven family-owned operations into big businesses concerned with volume, efficiency, uniformity, and profits above all. Midkiff reveals the true cost of agribusiness on all levels-environmental, financial, moral, legal, and medical-balancing startling truths with practical solutions.

Rather than advocate a vegan or vegetarian diet, Midkiff argues that using and supporting local farmers will improve the quality of life for us all, as well as for the animals whose meat we eat. Complete with resource sections about where to find local farmers and lists of agribusiness culprits, the book encourages us to take an active interest in what we put on our plates and in our mouths, and use the power of our pocketbooks to make it clear that our health, our environment, and our communities are of vital importance.

With a foreword by Wendell Berry, hailed by The New York Times Books Review as the "great moral essayist of our day," The Meat You Eat is an informative and ringing call to arms.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

There are probably few surprises in this exposé of American agribusiness; if you haven't read horror stories about megafarms and slaughterhouses in Fast Food Nation, you've undoubtedly heard animal rights activists talking about the deplorable conditions in which cattle, poultry and hogs are processed "from semen to cellophane." To these tales Midkiff adds an overwhelming flood of animal feces (usually referred to in much more pointed terms), from frightened cattle that soil themselves in the slaughterhouse and don't get fully cleaned to liquefied manure that seeps into the land of neighboring small farms. Using formulaic left-wing parlance, Midkiff points out how giant food corporations wield political influence to save themselves from reform—ensuring, for example, that despite their size they will continue to be classified as farmers exempt from EPA regulation. He also advocates buying from local farms that practice "sustainable agriculture" as a means of resisting corporate meat without going vegetarian. (A useful appendix offers contact information for farmer's market associations across the country.) The book doesn't quite follow through on the claim to depict "the decline of the American diet"; although it certainly reveals the contamination risks in our meat and eggs, not much is said about the direct health consequences for consumers. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Ken Midkiff has written a serious and trenchant critique of modern livestock farming and the merciless spirit that drives it on. He has also pointed the way out, by advancing clear and decent standards in the care of animals."
- Matthew Scully, author of Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

"Don't just gag -- act!"
- Jim Hightower, author of Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush

"The factory meat industry has polluted thousands of miles of America’s rivers, killed billions of fish, pushed tens of thousands of family farmers off their land, sickened and killed thousands of U.S. citizens, and treated millions of farm animals with unspeakable and unnecessary cruelty. But, as Ken Midkiff shows in this wonderful book, the meat barons’ most frightening threat is to American democracy. "
- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President, Waterkeeper Alliance

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (August 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312325355
• ISBN-13: 978-0312325350
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,249,101 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Read Fast Food Nation and Portrait of a Burger first, May 25, 2005

By 

Frank Chen (Bay Area, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Meat You Eat: How Corporate Farming Has Endangered America's Food Supply (Hardcover)

If you've ever wondered how McDonald's can offer a 39 cent cheeseburger, this book will help you understand the bizarre economics that makes a cheeseburger cheaper than a bottle of water.

The author makes the case for buying meat and dairy products from small farms committed to sustainable farming practices. He succeeds with me, though I've subscribed to this view ever since reading Fast Food Nation and Portrait of a Burger as a Young Calf -- so I didn't need much convincing.

I'm not sure how effective he'll be with a less friendly audience. While he brings a few effective stories and statistics to bear, he also brings the rhetoric of the stereotypical wild-eyed environmentalist (Mr. Midkiff is the Sierra Club Water Campaign director).

An example from his introduction: "Corporations care about people only to the extent that people are consumers are the corporate product...Feeding a hungry world? That is only a justification for fouling the air and water. Running family farmers out of business; ruining the economies of small towns; destroying the rural quality of life; mangling, dismembering, and maming employees; producing foods that are unsafe and unhealthy? When confronted with some of the unintended consequences of the industrial mode of production of meat, milk, and eggs, the corporate spokesman hauls out things like the following...'It is unfortuante, but it must be kept in mind that this is the way things must be done if we're going to feed the world.'"

I would have preferred less shrill rhetoric and more hard data. In my opinion, the author doesn't further his cause with his inflammatory writing style: the facts surrounding the modern meat and dairy industries are appalling enough to speak for themselves.

Having said that, this book does a fair job of describing how surprisingly cruel, environmentally destructive, and socially damaging modern techniques for raising and killing farm animals are. Even if you don't care about air and water pollution because you don't live near a slaughterhouse (I don't, either), you might be surprised at how brutal the modern system is to the workers, many of them undocumented immigrants. And even if you don't care about the cruelty associated with raising so many animals (pigs, chickens, salmon, and cows) in such close proximity, you should understand the risks associated with eating the result -- the surprising thing about people getting food poisioning from industrially raised meat is not that it happens, but that it happens so rarely.

Bottom line: we owe it to ourselves, to our families, to the workers, to the planet to spend a few more dollars and buy meat, milk, and eggs that are responsibly and sustainably raised.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional Topic, Decent Content, Just OK Writing, December 28, 2006

By 

J. E. Nelson (Plainfield, Illinois) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Meat You Eat: How Corporate Farming Has Endangered America's Food Supply (Hardcover)

The Meat You Eat is a book that had to be written. It is a quick reading book on the dangers of "corporate farming" and how corporate farming affects the surrounding areas, the community, the environment, the workplace, the animals, and America's food supply.

The book addresses the commonplace corporate farm and how they provide food from birth to the grocery store. The book discusses "Big Pig", "Big Chicken and Big Egg", "Big Milk", "Big Beef", and "Big Fish". I feel the author does an excellent job at the beginning of each chapter, explaining the background of each industry in an unbiased manner. The author then goes into some valid reasons as to each industries faults.

Most industries are guilty of torturing animals in one form or another, whether it be pigs fighting from being confined too closely or chickens whose feet become entangled in wire and can not move their entire lives. Some animals are not euthanized properly and proceed through the slaughterhouse before actually dying.

The author also talks about how companies monopolize an industry from fertilization of animals to processing and delivery to retailers. The result is a company that exploits the desperate and the unfortunate, whether they be farmers, townfolk, or immigrant workers. The monopolies, their power, and loopholes in the law allow these farms to pollute at will, literally driving people from their homes with little if any recourse.

I think the book does a good job of addressing the downfalls of current "big" farming methings; however, I felt this book has its shortcomings. A gifted author can describe a battlefield so vividly, the reader feels like the person next to them died in their arms. These authors can paint stunning pictures in a reader's mind without an actual photograph. This author does not posses such talent. As much as the author tries, I feel the author falls short of really making the reader feel the tortured animals pain. I think some photographs would have helped this book immensely. Also, the author seems to assume that the reader is familiar with the workings of a farms and butchering. For example, the author talks about the use of bolt guns to stun cows. I have never seen a bolt gun and have no idea what he is taking about. Again, pictures or diagrams would have helped.

I spent half my childhood in rural Wisconsin, around small farms. I've witnessed how small farms operate and work in harmony with nature, as much as a farm can. I have killed countless animals and fish for food in my life. Despite my limited knowledge of agriculture from my childhood, I really had no idea where food comes from in modern day society. I would recommend this book to someone who is interested in how a cow in the pasture turns into the package of ground beef at the store. The book will probably shock some people. Personally, I found the book very informative and I am glad I read it, but it was not powerful enough for me to make changes in my life.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Same, same, but different.., August 8, 2006

By 

L. Lau (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Meat You Eat: How Corporate Farming Has Endangered America's Food Supply (Paperback)

If you read "Fast Food Nation", you will like this book. There are similarities, but also many differences. The book refers to fish farm and gets into the economics of agricultural business. A great read.