Marketing Livestock and Meat

Book Description

The Meat You Eat Corporate Farming and the Decline of the American Diet Ken Midkiff Foreword by Wendell Berry Sierra Club Director Ken Midkiff delves into the murky world of American meat production ith the threat of animal-borne diseases looming on the horizon, now more than ever we need to look hard at what we eat. In this eye-opening book, Sierra Club Director Ken Midkiff exposes the dangers posed by corporate control of agribusiness-to our health, and to the health of the nation's economy, security, and the environment. The Meat You Eat ex-plores the current practices of the corporations taking over the raising and slaughtering of farm animals (and farmed fish, such as salmon). Midkiff reveals the true cost of agribus-iness, balan-cing startling truths with reflections on how America could eat better. 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. With a foreword by Wendell Berry, hailed by The New York Times Books Review as the 'great moral essayist of our day,' this book is entertaining, informative, and a ringing call to arms. KEN MIDKIFF is the Sierra Club Clean Water Campaign director and has been on NPR's Living on Earth and All Things Considered. He lives in Columbia, Missouri. Current Affairs 0-312-32535-5 $23.95 $34.95 Canadian 51/2" x 81/4" / 288 pages Includes 5-10 line-graphs throughout May

Customer Reviews:

Exceptional Topic, Decent Content, Just OK Writing.......2006-12-29

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.

Same, same, but different.........2006-08-09

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.

Read Fast Food Nation and Portrait of a Burger first.......2005-05-26

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.

The Meat You Eat by Ken Midkiff.......2004-12-07

In The Meat You Eat, Ken Midriff provides an in-depth analysis of the process of creating many animal products. Midkiff uses proven facts and precise statistics to back up his overall argument against corporate farming. Midkiff also uses many of his own detailed experiences and interviews from ordinary people. Their testimonies add validity to The Meat You Eat.
Midkiff shows how corporate farming is a danger to the environment, the economy, and the environment in a step by step structure that is easy to follow. He shows the reader that corporate farming has turned farming into a dirty big business concerned only with profit. Midkiff says that the owners of factory farms don't care about how the negative affects to the environment, workers, animals, workers, and the American consumer.
Rather than promoting vegetarianism, he advocates buying organic animal products or buying them from a small local farm. Midkiff says buying from local farmers will hurt factory farms and benefit the environment, animals, and the local farmers themselves.

Problems and solutions to agribusiness as a whole .......2004-09-16

As large meat factories and corporate processing operations take over America, so grows the need for a logical assessment of such methods, here provided by Ken Midkiff's The Meat You Eat. Midkiff is a Sierra Club Clean Water Campaign director and an expert on agribusiness and sustainable farming applications: The Meat You Eat takes a predictably hard look at the methods used by corporations to run profitable gigantic farms, applying their problems and solutions to agribusiness as a whole in an analysis of food safety.

The Meat Business: Devouring a Hungry Planet

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Not worth a second look
terrifying account of the dangers of anthropocentrism
Well written multidisciplinary overview

The Meat Business: Devouring a Hungry Planet

Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0312226861

Book Description

This ground-breaking book by international experts on all aspects of food production, farming and animal welfare shows that there is an alternative to intensive farming of animals or genetic engineering in order to feed the world. The alternative, which is healthier for humans and kinder to animals, involves not devoting enormous resources to the production of meat, subjecting animals to often appalling treatment and creating both unfair food distribution and a poor diet. The contributions challenge the entire system of agriculture and the food market, asserting that animal welfare, human welfare, and the welfare of the planet go hand in hand.

Customer Reviews:

Not worth a second look.......2002-11-21

I am usually very conservative about giving very high or very low ratings, but this book surely deserves it more than anything else I've read. I got this book thinking that it would be a lovely introduction to some reasonable explanations for becoming vegetarian. Boy, was I wrong. Supposedly, this book gives the two sides of the vegetarian debate (i.e. hippies and meat industry moguls) a chance to meet and talk about the differing reasons they believe they are right. It is a wonderful idea which loses everything in the execution. In the entire first half of the book (whose second half I declined to read) there were all of two footnotes. Not a single claim of either side's evidence had any substantial (read, non-partial) support. This book is aimed at idiots who cannot tell the difference between what other idiots say and a well-thought out argument citing researched statistics. Unfortunately, neither side was up to the task of actually founding their arguments in anything other than propaganda. Naturally, as a result we end up with the most biased and unfounded set of arguments as possible. No wonder so many people steer clear of this argument--with twats such as these authors on either side, I would too (that is, if I didn't already know which side is right).

terrifying account of the dangers of anthropocentrism.......2000-08-10

This is a horribly depressing book for anyone who cares about the future of this planet. In one of the most optimistic essays, it's argued that the world faces 3 choices: grow GM crops en masse, destroy the world's remaining wildlife, or convert the entire population of the US to veganism. It's then pointed out that only 0.2% of American's are currently vegan. Another essay points out, even more terrifyingly, that third world countries are seeking to emaulate western patterns of meat consumption, with all the horrifying consequences this has for their environments and spiritual lives. Other essays provoke a Becketian laughter at the absurdity of the human condition; in one it's pointed out that the US spends more on weight loss products than any other nation does on food. The reasons for this anomaly are pointed out elsewhere; massive subsidies for the agribusiness industry which produce the illusion of "cheap" meat and global trade agreements that prevent countries from introducing animal welfare laws. The only possible cause for optimism is the hope that this book's ideas may be widely dissiminated and cause people to realise the danger that eating meat poses to their own health and to the future of the planet.

Well written multidisciplinary overview.......2000-05-19

This book gives an interesting multidisciplinary overview of the food / environmental / wealth problems we're facing which will probably only exacerbate, and possible solutions -- including a proponent of GenMod crops. No, this book isn't some extremist book stating "let's all become vegetarian!" (as the title may suggest), nor does it seriously draw on "sentimental" arguments. I feel this book makes us reflect on the whole issue, leaving us to decide ourselves. Recommended for anyone interested in "why it is necessary to reduce meat consumption" and a good overview anyway for the current state of affairs in this field.

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Marketing of Livestock and Meat
Stewart H. Fowler
Manufacturer: Interstate Printers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NSGZEE

Aspects of the World Feed-Livestock Economy: Structural Changes, Prospects and Issues (Fao Economic and Social Development Paper)

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Aspects of the World Feed-Livestock Economy: Structural Changes, Prospects and Issues (Fao Economic and Social Development Paper)
Food and Agriculture Org.
Manufacturer: Food & Agriculture Org
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 9251027978

The co-operative marketing of livestock, (The Institute of economics of the Brookings Institution. Publication)

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The co-operative marketing of livestock, (The Institute of economics of the Brookings Institution. Publication)
Edwin Griswold Nourse
Manufacturer: Brookings Institution
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: B000852Z8C

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Livestock and meat marketing
John Henry McCoy
Manufacturer: Avi Pub. Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: 0870551205

Livestock and Meat Statistics 1957. Statistical Bulletin No. 230. July 1958

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Livestock and Meat Statistics 1957. Statistical Bulletin No. 230. July 1958
Agricultural Marketing Service
Manufacturer: U.S. Dept of Ag
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000UPPRYO

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Marketing Livestock and Meat
M. G. Fenn
Manufacturer: Unipub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 9251001685

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Marketing Livestock and Meat -
W. Lesser -
Manufacturer: Food Products Press -
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000P0WTXG

Book Description

This book addresses the question of how life may have arisen on earth, in the spirit of an intriguing detective story. It relies on the methods of Sherlock Holmes, in particular his principle that one should use the most paradoxical features of a case to crack it. This approach to the essential biological problems is not merely light-hearted, but a fascinating scrutiny of some very fundamental questions. ‘I know of no other book that succeeds as well as this one in maintaining the central question in focus throughout. It is a summary of the best evolutionary thinking as applied to the origins of life in which the important issues are addressed pertinently, economically and with a happy recourse to creative analogies.’ Nature ‘… a splendid story - and a much more convincing one than the molecular biologists can offer as an alternative. Cairns-Smith has argued his case before in the technical scientific literature, here he sets it out in a way from which anyone - even those whose chemistry and biology stopped at sixteen - can learn.’ New Statesman

Customer Reviews:

Amusing and readable book about what the first replicators weren't, and might have been, like.......2006-03-02

I found this book while doing some research in the aftermath of an online discussion of just how unlikely the formation of the first replicators (the first things that could undergo evolution) was.

In that discussion someone had remarked (after reading some creationist stuff) that it was just fantastically impossible for the first cell, or even the first nucleotide, to come together more or less by accident. I replied that of course no one serious thinks that the first replicator was a whole cell, or even a modern sort of nucleotide; it was presumably some very low-tech and inefficient thing, just barely able to reproduce itself imperfectly once in a blue moon. After I said that I realized that while it seemed perfectly obvious to me, and that all right-thinking people must agree, I didn't specifically recall any of the right-thinking people in question. So I went and did some research, and (among other things) I found this book.

In "Seven Clues to the Origin of Life", A. G. Cairns-Smith, a molecular biologist and so on at the University of Glasgow, lays out in an amusing and chatty way (including numerous Sherlock Holmes quotations) his argument that yes the first replicator really couldn't have been any of the replicators that we have today, or even anything very much like them. And he presents his own theory as to what they in fact were: inorganic clay crystals of a certain type that seem to have (or seem capable of having) both the requisite ability to do a kind of very low-tech replication, and the potential to have eventually provided the platform on which our current much higher-tech replicators (DNA and all that) got their start.

The writing is extremely clear and readable, aimed at a general non-technical audience, and the book is both fun and short (131 pages including glossary, index, etc). I'm not convinced by his argument that these particular clay crystals were the first replicators, but I'm very convinced that something at least vaguely like them could have been, and that therefore there's no really puzzling problem about how replication got started in the first place. Which is nice, because it's pretty clear that it did. *8)

Highly recommended to one and all. And if you really like the subject, there's apparently a longer and weightier and more technical book, "Genetic Takeover", in which he treats the same subject in more detail (and perhaps without the Sherlock Homes).

True? False? Who knows? But definitely a great read!.......2003-08-03

First, I have to preface my review by saying that I haven't yet read other books about the origin of life, so I have nothing to compare this book to...anyway

This short book is absolutely fascinating. The thrust of the author's argument is this:

Life as we know it is too complex to have originated in its present form. Nucleic acids and proteins and most organic molecules necessary for life are too complex to have originated in the primitive atmosphere even if the conditions were favorable. We need to find something that is capable of growing, replicating (not perfectly), and providing a substrate for the formation of molecules necessary for life as we know it today. What could possibly do that? Ah yes, crystals of clay! Clay is abundant. It grows and replicates but not perfectly thus allowing for irregularities to accumulate. These crystals with irregularities could then provide a surface that brought molecules together in close proximity so that they could interact and produce the organic molecules needed for life. Eventually, the secondary organisms that resulted from this process achieved a certain complexity that gave rise to life as we know it.

Interesting argument. Is it true? Is it even plausible? I actually don't know the answer to either question, and I have a feeling that there are no definite answers.

I found this book thought-provoking, and it presented an interesting solution to the mystery of the origin of life.

Witty, but self serving.......2003-07-14

The author's specific view on the origin of life on Earth from clay minerals explained in a "see how smart I am" fashion.

For a broader overview in a similarly slim book, read Origins of Life from Freeman Dyson instead. For a much broader overview on three times as many pages read The Emergence of Life on Earth by Iris Fry.

Do read the book if you want to get a short and entertaining first hand explanation of the Carins-Smith theory of the origin of life - which by the way seems to be half way between eccentric and mainstream: widely discussed without being generally accepted.

Concise, logical, lucid.......2003-02-04

A. Graham Cairns-Smith has created a small gem in his Seven Clues to the Origin of Life. The book, a discussion of the pre-biotic stage of the evolution of life, is concise, logical and lucid and explained in terms that would be comprehensible to anyone from the junior high student with a basic science education to beyond it. As Daniel C. Dennett writes in the journal Nature about another of the author's books, "Cairns-Smith is a brilliant explainer of difficult ideas, bringing to the task an imagination that is magnificently disciplined by detailed scientific understanding."

I had heard of the concept of a crystal template for the creation of organic molecules while studying mineralogy for a geology degree in the 1980s, so Cairns-Smith's topic had already intrigued me. When I found reference to this book in the annotated bibliography of another I was reading, I decided to look it over too. I wasn't disappointed.

Dr Cairns-Smith is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Chemistry Department at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. The main area of his research has been in simple non-nucleic acid genetic systems which might have been important in the earliest stages of the evolution of life, a topic on which he has collaborated with others and continued to publish in professional journals as recently as 1996. So he is eminently prepared to discuss the pre-biotic era of life.

Although the book is old for a work of science (1985), it is nonetheless still very much a leading idea in the subject of the early stages of life. Furthermore, the author cleverly puts the topic into terms that most of his readers will understand, even borrowing concepts from architecture/building, the nature of ropes, and the history of technology to do so. Avoiding confusing professional jargon, he leads the reader through the material in a logical, step by step manner until his conclusion: that we may owe our existance to the character and evolution of clay materials. While one may not necessarily believe that this is actually how the process worked-or for religious reasons may disagree altogether-it is still a cogent work, one that illustrates how science comes up with its theories of how things got to be as they are.

Genetic takeover.......2000-11-26

This reference, intended for the general reader, treats the problem of the origins of life on Earth as a Sherlock Holmes mystery to be solved. The reader is introduced to organic chemistry and the workings of an E. coli, to show how difficult it is to get chemical systems to produce products such as RNA or DNA, and yet, how very complex a simple cell is. It is suggested that perhaps instead of thinking classically as DNA as the controlling element and core of the cell, ie, DNA-> RNA-> proteins, think from a supply perspective, ie, at the core of the cell are carbon molecules such as carbon dioxide -> subcomponents -> amino acids -> nucleotides & DNA, ie, DNA is not at the core, but is most outward layer, and probably evolved the last too. It is proposed that the ultimate ancestor of life on Earth did not use RNA or DNA as a genetic system, but with evolution, a 'genetic takeover' occurred whereby the now-familiar RNA and DNA systems emerged. The phenomenon of self-assembly of molecules, from soap bubbles to the folding of proteins to the formation of crystals is discussed. This leads to the proposal that the very early genes on Earth were in fact 'crystal genes'. The crystallization of supersaturated solutions is discussed, and it is noted how small crystals cause 'reproduction' and 'growth' of more crystal from the supersaturated solution. Geological processes on Earth produce huge amounts of clay minerals. Crystals all have defect structures, with the result no two crystals are identical. The first 'lifeforms' on Earth were inorganic crystal-based entities that reproduced and grew as such. Since the supply perspective of the cell suggests that the biochemical structure is built up from carbon dioxide molecules, it is proposed that via photosynthesis the mineral lifeforms started producing organic molecules. It is noted that iron atoms are common in most clays, and could have 'caught' light and in conjunction with various patterns of clay layers, have synthesized organic molecules. Eventually the clay apparatus of the primitive lifeforms was replaced with RNA-like molecules, amino acids, membrane layers, and so on, and the DNA/RNA/protein form of life we are familiar with emerged. The seven clues referred to in the title of this reference are as follows: 1. Evolution can only occur when there is replication of some sort of genetic information. 2. DNA and RNA are difficult molecules to fabricate, far removed from the core of biochemical pathways. 3. To make an arch of stones needs scaffolding, and similarly, to originate the form of life we are now familiar with required some sort of scaffolding. 4. No particular fiber in a rope has to stretch from one end of the rope to the other end as long as they are adequately intertwined, and similarly, the lifeforms based on inorganic crystalline genes could have gradually evolved into lifeforms based on organic molecular genes. 5. A primitive machine must be easy to make from available materials and work with little fuss, while in the case of an advanced machine, the emphasis is on working well, and often it may be complex to assemble. 6. Crystals put themselves together and could have easily formed a 'low-tech' genetic material, unlike the complicated control required of organic molecules. 7. The Earth produces huge amounts of clay minerals.

SEVEN CLUES TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE : A SCIENTIFIC DETECTIVE STORY (CANTO)

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SEVEN CLUES TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE : A SCIENTIFIC DETECTIVE STORY (CANTO)
A. G. Cairns-Smith
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000LZAS6K

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