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The Ethical Carnivore: My Year Killing to Eat Hardcover – November 22, 2016

by Louise Gray (Author)

4.5 87 ratings

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If you had to kill it yourself, if you had to look it in the eye . . . would you eat it?

Louise's first kill is a disaster. She injures a rabbit, and thinks it has died in agony. But the experience teaches her a lesson, and when she subsequently finds the rabbit, she vows to do its death justice by finding out what it really means to kill and eat animals.

Many people claim to care about the meat that they eat, but do they really know how the animal died? The Ethical Carnivore addresses this universal question, through an emotional personal quest. Taking the current fashion for "ethical meat" to its logical conclusion, Louise vows to eat only animals she has killed herself for a year.

Starting small, Louise shoots and traps game such as hare and squirrels, and learns how to skin and cook them. She builds a new appreciation of the British countryside, and its wild fish and animals.

The narrative moves to domestic animals. Louise sees cows in the slaughterhouse; by talking to the men and women who work there, she finds out how the animals are killed and the effect it has on the people who do it on our behalf.

At the end of her journey, Louise goes wildfowling in the Orkneys to shoot a goose for Christmas dinner. She reflects that the rabbit with the white blaze has taught her to appreciate meat by facing up to the death of animals and to look deeply at her own morals and values.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A courageous and important narrative offering an enlightened perspective on making informed choices about eating meat." - Kirkus Reviews

"An entertaining and enlightening work of environmental reporting." - Booklist

"A charming and eye-opening book" - the Guardian

"A thorough, engaging, sometimes shocking account of where our meat comes from. It is also, importantly, a book about caring." - Malachy Tallack, Caught by the River

"Well paced, well researched and politically even-handed." - Country Life

"Louise Gray is a micromaster." - The Scotsman

"This humane, adventurous and wonderfully illuminating exploration will entertain and challenge everyone, from carnivore to vegan." - Patrick Barkham

"She writes well and this is a book that all should read – but it isn’t simply a duty, it’s a gritty pleasure." - Mark Avery

"The Ethical Carnivore is an engaging book." - Spectrum Culture

About the Author

Louise Gray is former Environment Correspondent at The Daily Telegraph, where she covered annual UN talks on climate change, travelled to Paraguay to investigate GM crops, and got more than one scoop on recycling. Since leaving the newspaper at the end of 2013 she has written freelance for The Sunday Times, Guardian,Country Life, and Spectator, and has appeared on BBC Radio 4 and LBC.

www.louisebgray.com / @loubgray

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Natural History (November 22, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1472938399
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1472938398
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.01 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.51 x 1.17 x 8.76 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #4,192,325 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,340 in Restaurant & Food Industry (Books)
- #2,465 in Meat Cooking
- #4,553 in Hospitality, Travel & Tourism (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.5 87 ratings

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Louise Gray

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Louise Gray is a freelance writer based in Scotland. She trained with the Press Association and was a staff writer for The Scotsman. From 2008 to 2013 she was Environment Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph. Louise specialises in writing about food, farming and climate change. In recent years she has written for The Sunday Times, Scottish Field, The Guardian and The Spectator, among others. She has also appeared on BBC television and radio. Louise blogs at www.louisebgray.com Posts photos on instagram as loubgray and tweets @loubgray

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Barry J.

As Advertised

Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2021

Verified Purchase

Arrived when promised and in the condition described.

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Olivia A.

I believe that animals are there for us to enjoy, but also that the act of killing to ...

Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2017

I've always eaten meat, and probably always will--a farmer's daughter, through and through. However, I do feel that many of my fellow omnivores take the presence of meat on the dinner table for granted. We oftentimes don't think past the neat cellophane-wrapped packages we purchase at the supermarket, the ugly, sacrificial price of eating meat. Louise Gray tried to go vegetarian/vegan several times and usually stalled out, but this was still an issue she cared about gravely, so she decided to devise an experiment of sorts: for one year, she would only eat meat from animals she herself had killed. I found this book fascinating. The author and I have very different worldviews, so there were many times when I disagreed with her, but my respect for her never wavered. I admire her for sticking to her principles in ways that were inconvenient and upsetting.

As a Christian, I believe that animals are there for us to enjoy, but also that the act of killing to eat is a direct result of the Fall and that doing so does not relieve of us of our original job to take care of the animals placed in our care. Ethical treatment of animals being raised for meat, as well as the humane slaughter thereof, is imperative, and I hope that this book and others like it push the various industries at play into taking better care of the creatures in their charge. I definitely recommend this book.

I received a complimentary copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

3 people found this helpful

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A. Stevenson

Great gift and subsequent New Year's Resolution!

Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2017

I received this book as a Christmas gift from my wife, having murmured about ethically sourced meat for several years. It was such a compelling book that I read it in a few days and ended up setting a New Year's resolution: become an Ethical Carnivore, albeit in the USA.

Our relationship with meat has changed immensely as industrialization and globalization have affected how we source it (clean plastic-wrapped packets from supermarkets), how much of it we eat (more than we need) and how connected we are with the animals that provide it (not at all).

In her quest to become an Ethical Carnivore, Louise explores the idea of only eating what she has killed, butchered and cooked. She writes about many types of meat (fowl, fish and livestock) through a mixture of first-hand storytelling (witness and approval of the living conditions, death conditions and butchering of the animals) supported with thoroughly researched facts leaning on her profession as an environmental journalist. This lends credibility to her tale and poses the reader many questions about the impact our consumption has not just on the animals but on our wider planet.

For anyone curious about where their food (specifically meat & fish) comes from, and would like to learn from a well researched, first-hand account, this is a terrific read.

4 people found this helpful

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M. Butler

Are you an ethical carnivore?

Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2016

This book was really something special! It made me think more than anything I've read in quite a while. I strongly urge you to read it as well. Although I got the chance to read it via an advanced reader copy in exchange for an unbiased review, I have to say that I've since urged friends to buy it themselves. It's a very thought-provoking book, that should be required reading for all humans.

If you'd like, check out the longer version of my review on my blog at mattreads.com.
Buy this book!!

2 people found this helpful

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C K

Excellent book! Buy it!

Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2017

This is an excellent, well-written, well-researched, thought provoking, interesting, informative book. For anyone who is concerned about animal welfare, who cares about the environment and who loves good food, this book is a must. It addresses the ethical, moral, political and practical issues of farming and killing animals for food, in the context of avoiding environmental destruction and animal cruelty while 'feeding the 9 billion' (global population). Provenance matters and this book will help reassure 'ordinary' people that there are simple steps they can take to continue enjoying meat ethically.

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AJM

Besides the point that factory farming is bad for the environment due to greenhouse gasses being given ...

Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2018

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This book is extremely contradictory. Besides the point that factory farming is bad for the environment due to greenhouse gasses being given off , the idea of shooting and slitting the throat of an animal to eat it does not make it any more ethical then how animals are killed in factory farms. The author tries to have it both ways, but that isn't possible.

One person found this helpful

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smilline

sollte jede/r Fleischkonsument/in und auch deren GegnerInnen lesen!

Reviewed in Germany on October 1, 2018

Verified Purchase

Sehr gut aufgebaut, gut zu lesen, interessanter Ansatz.
Die Autorin beleuchtet den Konsum (nicht nur von Fleisch) so umfang- und facettenreich, ich habe trotz reichlich Vorwissen noch viel dazu gelernt.
Unreflektierter Konsum von Fleisch in Mengen ist auf jeden Fall nicht vertretbar - völliger Verzicht ist aber hinsichtlich der Landschaftspflege, der Artenvielfalt uvm. auch keine Lösung.

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Matthew Care

An Excellent Contribution to the Vegan/Omnivore Debate

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 10, 2018

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By a long way, the best non-fiction I have read in a long while. This book is brilliantly written following some really good, diverse and thorough research, and is presented in a fair, balance and non-preachy way as an excellent contribution to the diet/vegan/omnivore debate. She resolves to only eat meat for 2 years that she has killed herself. It is "well written" especially when it comes to her own experiences and learning as she struggled through her early 'baby steps' on this 2 year project; going out to shoot the first rabbit, where she can't find the dead bunny in the brambles and has to leave it there not knowing whether it is dead; so just HAS to go back and keep searching. Or where she first sees the inside of a commercial slaughterhouse and describes her shock and revulsion, later saying that she "was frankly traumatised" and took "many months to recover". We feel for her and admire her honesty. Huge respect too for the research into how the killing task is done across a massive range of species. I have been a smallholder for 6 years now and felt I knew quite a bit, having reared our own lamb, pork, chicken, ducks, geese and turkeys and tried to give them the most respectful and clean ends, but I learned so much in this book. She delves deep into controversial areas like Halal slaughter and the stun/no-stun debate and brings it to the reader in a very fair and factual way. The same is true of fisheries and fish farming.
I take my hat off to Louise for this book. I try in my own small way to write about this kind of thing creatively in a blog as well as an old fashion hard-copy diary, plus on social media; but I can only hope that one day I produce something as well written as this. Thank you so much, Louise.

4 people found this helpful

TobyRenouf

If you eat food: read this.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 4, 2017

Verified Purchase

Having been a vegetarian for the last five years or so, I have asked questions about the ethics and environmental impact of keeping and slaughtering animals for meat; and indeed whether there is any justification for killing and eating animals at all. I had come to the conclusion that there was no place for meat in my diet. At the same time, having worked with an organic meat producer in Scotland, I had seen that it was possible to address at least the ethical concerns of the modern carnivore.

So I was delighted to read Louise’s journey from uncertain rabbit-shooter to experienced collector of roadkill. She has embarked on a fully rounded examination of the processes behind meat production and has committed significant time to investigating where and how an ethical approach can accompany the eating of meat in the modern world. She addresses environmental sustainability, socio-economic concerns, moral philosophy and provides an often intimate ethnography of farming, fishing and traditional land and livestock management.

There is a balance to her research: anyone who has read George Monbiot’s “Feral” might be surprised to find his contribution to Louise’s work alongside sensitive accounts of game shooting and hill sheep farming. However, this range of voices lends weight to her conclusions and gives a clearer picture of how an individual’s ethical approach to meat eating can fit in with broader questions about bio-diversity, rewilding and tradition within agriculture and fishing.

If you need to be convinced any further, the book is frequently hilarious and often very touching, particularly in the passages in which she writes about her father. It will be in actions like people's more considered food consumption that we may have a hope of addressing some of the environmental devastation we have wrought on this planet. I hope it will be books like The Ethical Carnivore that convince people to be more careful.

11 people found this helpful

A Moore

My review, from a 42 year old Male reader without any bias.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2017

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Enjoyed the book a great deal. Firstly, I have seen a couple of reviews that may have been written soley on reading the title of the book and maybe the back cover at best. The people that wrote these reviews have clearly not read the book fully as most of what they have complained about doesn't match with the content in the book in the slightest. So I'd ignore any of the reviews that focus on Ethical Carnivore as the main subject matter.
Luckily, I did the read the book from front to back and I would say the following. It was written in a very informative journalistic way without bias. It's not been written in a manner that is based on "this is my belief and you should follow it as well". It basically gives a great deal of researched information regarding food and the industry accompanied with Louise's own feelings about all of it. Like most people, she doesn't have one answer or a single solution to what you may be struggling with yourself when it comes to eating meat or becoming a vegetarian. But it does furnish you with a great deal more information about this subject which makes you feel more comfortable to make informed decisions.
I'm a Male reader of this book and like most of my male counterparts we avoid talking about emotions and would rather sit around a fire looking at it in silence. This is opposite to more emotionally intelligent Women, who are more at ease with emotions and comfortable to share them. For this reason, I found it harder when reading the book to relate to the emotional aspects of it and some of the emotional conflicts that Louise had in some of the situations. Having been in these same situations myself in my own life, I didn't have that level of emotional conflict, in fact at the extreme, I had none at all on some occasions. Were I not to have known the gender of the writer, I would have put a sizeable bet on it being a female as opposed to a male and would have been very surprised if it had been a male. Apparently out of the mere 1 million Americans that are vegan, 79 percent of them are women. Based on the friends I have, I would be more likely to recommend the book to female friends than my male counterparts. In fact, I have no male friends that are vegan or vegetarian, but I do have female friends that are and I have had conversations with other female friends that are openly conflicted on eating or not eating meat and wanting to understand which direction they feel they should go. I think this book would be extremly helpful to them in their decision making process and I don't feel I would be able to predict the outcome of their choice once they had read this either. Because it's not forcing a set belief, which is what makes it such a good book.

4 people found this helpful

Jacky Tustain

A well written and thought provoking book. I don't ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 3, 2017

Verified Purchase

A well written and thought provoking book. I don't read a lot of non-fiction, finding it a little dry but Louise Gray writes in an engaging and descriptive way that hooked me all the way through. The issue of how meat ends up on our table, our tendency to emotional detachment and dismissal of the behind the scenes aspects of farming and hunting could have left me feeling guilty, uncomfortable and exposed when put in front of me but the sympathetic approach in this book left me feeling informed, aware and has made me truly rethink my attitude and future approach to my consumption of carnivorous products.

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