The CAFO Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories [Paperback]

Daniel Imhoff (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2010

The CAFO Reader is possibly the most powerful indictment of factory farming ever compiled, with essays from 30 of the world's leading experts. It also offers a vision for a food system that leaves behind the horrific 20th century model of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.

The CAFO Reader brings the tragic world of industrial food production into sharp focus with essays on every facet of factory farming: health, environment, animal welfare, labor, politics, economics, and so on. This affordable reader is a companion book to the larger photo-essay volume, CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories. It is sure to become a relied-upon resource for activists, food policy makers, academics, the media and the general public for many years. This project is a follow-up to the highly successful project Fatal Harvest, published in 2002. It is being supported by an extensive outreach campaign with events around the country.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"But for the past several decades, factory farms have made meat ever cheaper, and -- as the excellent book The CAFO Reader makes clear -- the pain and trauma are thrown in for free."

--The Atlantic, March 2011

"Essential reading."--Evening Standard

"Not only are most of the top critics of factory farming gathered together, the excerpts chosen represent some of their most important work. In short, no other book provides such a thorough introduction to factory farming."--National Catholic Reporter

"Gives a full picture of the environmental, social, and ethical implications of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations."--Grist Magazine: Environmental News & Commentary

"For those who care about one of the greatest moral failings of our times, the Cafo Reader is indispensable."--Choice

"The [book] is not meant solely to create shock and awe, but instead provides lines of reasoning that have the capacity to stick."--Edible San Francisco

From the Back Cover

The CAFO Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories provides an unprecedented overview of concentrated animal feeding operations -- aka CAFOs -- where increasing amounts of the world's meat, milk, eggs, and seafood are produced. The rise of the CAFO industry around the world has become one of the most pressing issues of our time. The intensive concentration of animals in such crammed and filthy conditions dependent on antibiotic medicines and steady streams of subsidized industrial feeds poses moral and ethical concerns for all of us. Featuring more than thirty essays by today's leading thinkers on food and agriculture, The CAFO Reader is a behind-the-scenes journey into the dismal world of animal factory farming. It also offers a compelling vision for a healthier animal food system: one that is humane, sound for farmers and communities, and safer for consumers and the environment.

"Factory farming isn't just killing: It is negation, a complete denial of the animal as a living being with his or her own needs and nature. It is not the worst evil we can do, but it is the worst evil we can do to them. It confronts us with the animal equivalent of Abraham Lincoln's condemnation of human slavery: 'If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.'" -- Matthew Scully, Dominion

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Watershed Media; 1 edition (June 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0970950055
• ISBN-13: 978-0970950055
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #153,314 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #61 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Animal Rights
  • #96 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Public Affairs & Policy > Environmental Policy

More About the Author

Dan Imhoff is a researcher, author, and independent publisher who has concentrated for nearly 20 years on issues related to farming, the environment, and design. He is the author of numerous articles, essays, and books including CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories; Food Fight: The Citizen's Guide to a Food and Farm Bill; Paper or Plastic: Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged World; Farming with the Wild: Enhancing Biodiversity on Farms and Ranches; and Building with Vision: Optimizing and Finding Alternatives to Wood.

Dan is a highly sought-after public speaker who lectures and conducts workshops on a variety of topics, from food and farming to environmental design and conservation. He has appeared on hundreds of national and regional radio and television programs, including CBS Sunday Morning, Science Friday, and West Coast Live. His books have gained national attention with coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle, Newsweek, the San Jose Mercury News, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. He has testified before Congress and spoken at numerous conferences, corporate and government offices, and college campuses, including Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Vermont Law School.

Dan is the president and co-founder of Watershed Media, a non-profit publishing house based in Healdsburg, California. He is the president and a co-founder of the Wild Farm Alliance, a ten-year-old national organization that works to promote agriculture systems that support and accommodate wild nature.

Between 1990 and 1995, Dan worked at Esprit International, where he was communications director for a team at the forefront of environmental product design. He received a B.A. in International Relations from Allegheny College and an M.A. in International Affairs from the Maxwell School of Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

He lives on a small homestead farm in Northern California.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars If You Eat Food, This is Essential Reading July 14, 2010

By Tod Brilliant

Format:Paperback

I've read a fair number of books, essays and blog posts about industrial farming. About meat eating. About the virtues of one diet over another. I've seen the topic politicized and 'soapboxed' every which way. Finally, in the CAFO Reader I've found a book that takes a reasoned, articulate and compelling view.

I'll send this book to my liberal and conservative family members, to my carnivorous and vegan friends. Where it excels is in avoiding the hyperbole and old saws, replacing them with the staggering power of factual analysis of an incredibly problematic (I'm being nice) industry.

If you eat food, and give a damn about yourself and your future, this is essential reading.

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Uneven June 15, 2011

By Daniel Hicks

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I'm an academic, and I picked this up based on some now-forgotten recommendation to consider for a class on food issues that I'll be teaching during Spring 2012. I was especially attracted by a number of prominent names listed in the table of contents: Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Anna Lappé. These are great writers on our contemporary food system, and it would be great to able to assign one anthology to my class with selections from all of them. Also, I've been vegetarian for nearly 13 years, so I was quite sympathetic to the overall aims of the book. However, there are enough problems with this book that I will not be using it for my class, though I may assign some particular chapters; and in any case I would hesitate before recommending it to anyone.

First, let me note that this book does a few things well: It includes both vegetarians and locavores in its discussion, instead of focusing on just one and alienating (or demonizing) the other. It includes several chapters on fish and the status of workers in our industrialized food system; too often we focus on the suffering of non-human mammals. Other chapters consider CAFOs from more scientific or technical points of view: the economics of food; biodiversity and natural selection. Again, these are issues that are often overlooked. And the pieces by the prominent names are well-done, though they're mostly reprinted.

On the other hand, roughly half of the chapters in this book are simply horrible, with overwrought emotional writing, little to no evidence, and tissue-thin arguments. If I gave this to a class of bright college students, they'd tear it to shreds -- and no doubt lose respect for me for assigning it.... Several times, I nearly put the book down for good after grudgingly finishing an especially bad chapter. In the case of the piece by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., I almost threw the book across the room in disgust. Eventually I learned to just skip over those chapters that promised, in their first few pages, to be more polemic than analysis. This large part of the book is the sort of thing that encourage the stereotype of vegetarians and environmentalists as irrational, science-hating fanatics. If we want to convince people of the justice of our cause, we need to do so by offering them intellectually powerful reasons and incontrovertible evidence for our beliefs, not by tossing around `corporate' as though it were a four-letter word.

To be sure, some of the chapters are quite good; let me stress that only about half of this book has the problem I identified in the last paragraph. But how do you rate a book that's one-half horrible, one-third decent, and one-sixth great? I rate it three stars. Read more ›

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars a great and compassionate book May 22, 2011

By Arcana

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I became an advocate for animals when I clicked on the humane society's undercover work on an industrial pig farm. Although I "knew" factory farming was bad I was both afraid of seeing the images and unaware of how terrible it really is. My eyes have now been opened and I will never turn back from adding my voice and donations to stop this terrible evil of our times. I have read many books on factory farming and other animal issues. This is the best book I have read to date on this subject. It is a compilation of essays by a whole range of concerned people in many fields. It is incredibly interesting and hard to put down, does not over-do the emotionalism which is inherent in such a subject, while laying out all the facts in a very well researched and complete way. Just read this book - it will give you the whole picture.

In addition to the cruelty aspect this book lays out the incredible environmental cost of industrial agriculture, and gives extremely viable alternatives. We have all been fed a huge lie just to keep increasing the profits of big agra business at the expense of the planet. This is a completely unsustainable model kept going by corporate greed and government turning a blind eye to the excesses and downright criminality of their corporate buddies. The bio-diversity and climate of our planet is being affected. I feel much more educated on the subject now that I know the facts and figures of where factory farming is taking us.

I thank everyone who contributed to this wonderful book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read if you care about animals, food and our environment January 25, 2011

By Kirt Manecke

Format:Paperback

Let's face it, if we are going to preserve working family farms, so important to our sense of community, we have to level the playing field. The CAFO Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories is a new book I'm reviewing after receiving a complimentary review copy.

First let me say that this book is amazing! I suggest you go out and read it right now if you are concerned about land use, water pollution, safe food production, preserving working family farms, buying local, communities and the humane treatment of animals.

I've just started reading the book and have lots of good things to say about it. For now I'll post the press release for the book below.

For more information visit [...].

Press Release
The CAFO Reader is a collection of essays by over 30 of today's leading thinkers on one of the most important environmental and ethical issues of our time: the rise of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs, where increasing amounts of the world's meat, dairy, eggs, fish, and seafood are produced.

Contributors include Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Fred Kirschenmann, Anna Lappé, Matthew Scully, Eric Schlosser, Andrew Kimbrell, and Wenonah Hauter. These essays analyze and vividly depict the devastating impacts and current conditions in and around factory farms.

The collection also provides a compelling vision of "putting the CAFO out to pasture," in which food systems become more healthy, humane, and sustainable. The CAFO Reader will quickly become an invaluable educational resource in the battle to reform the tragic state of industrial livestock production....

It will also inform and influence the growing public movement of activists, farmers, policy makers, and consumers who are aiming to make our food healthier for ourselves and the planet.

The essays in this volume have been selected from the larger photographic volume CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations): The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories.

Daniel Imhoff is the editor of The CAFO Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories and the photo-format companion volume, CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation): The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories. He is a writer and independent publisher whose many books include Food Fight, Farming with the Wild, Paper or Plastic, Building with Vision, and Farming and the Fate of Wild Nature. He lives in Northern California.

Published by Watershed Media
480 pages, paperback, $21.95 Read more ›