Farmageddon

The True Cost of Cheap Meat

By: Philip Lymbery, Isabel Oakeshott

Narrated by: Julian Elfer

Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

Farm animals have been disappearing from our fields as the production of food has become a global industry. We no longer know for certain what is entering the food chain and what we are eating - as the UK horsemeat scandal demonstrated. We are reaching a tipping point as the farming revolution threatens our countryside, health, and the quality of our food wherever we live in the world.

• Our health is under threat: half of all antibiotics used worldwide (rising to 80 per cent in US) are routinely given to industrially farmed animals, contributing to the emergence of deadly antibiotic-resistant superbugs
• Wildlife is being systematically destroyed: bees are now trucked across the States (and even airfreighted from Australia) to pollinate the fruit trees in the vast orchards of California, where a chemical assault has decimated the wild insect population
• Fresh fish are being hoovered from the oceans: fish that could feed local populations are being turned into fishmeal for farmed fish, chickens, and pigs thousands of miles away
• Cereals that could feed billions of people are being given to animals: soya and grain that could nourish the world’s poorest, are now grown increasingly as animal fodder
• Epidemic waste underpins the mega-farming model: While food prices rocket, surplus food is thrown away

Farmageddon is a fascinating and terrifying investigative journey behind the closed doors of a runaway industry across the world - from the UK, Europe, and the USA, to China, Argentina, Peru, and Mexico. It is both a wake-up call to change our current food production and eating practices and an attempt to find a way to a better farming future.

©2014 Philip Lymbery and Isabel Oakeshott (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

Eye opener

I will be changing the way we buy all our fish poultry and beef. The evidence is depressing and overwhelming.

On The Wrong Track

Any additional comments?

You only need to have little bit of common sense to see that monocultures are a bad idea. You only need a little bit of compassion to feel that the way modern farming practices treat animals is wrong.
You only need a little bit of conviction to change your grocery shopping habits, just a little at first, then perhaps snowballing in to finding yourself buying mostly local, mostly organic, mostly plant-based, and so on.

Start the journey and see where it takes you. I feel good because the food I eat is healthier AND because the food-systems I support with my purchases makes the world a bit happier.

Listen to this book if you want a catalyst for making the change.

i was very enlightened by this book.

i live in central valley so u was a little sad when Fresno was his first criticism. I do think this was well written and well researched. i will also make better choices about the food i buy.

The narrator

For some reason, the British accent turned me off to continue listening. Informative, but I couldn't finish it.

Audio was poor, the content was good/scary

The audio kept slightly changing volume.
The content of the book was good. It's scary really, to know what is actually going on in the Industrial Farming sheds.
I hope more people listen to this and change their habits.

A must read

This book is an eye opener. Anyone concerned with what we are eating and doing to the environment should read this book. It's informative, interesting and in ways disgusting. Once you read this, you will be more conscience of what you are buying and putting on the dinner table. If only it could be a requirement in the school systems perhaps we can get younger generations to charge a bigger movement that is in motion today.

Mind-blowing eye-opener, even for a vegan!

Up until about one hundred years ago, farmers would grow their crops and farm their animals on one piece of land. Each animal and bird and insect worked harmoniously together. The cows and sheep would eat the grass, the pigs and chickens would relish the leftover cuttings of fruit and vegetables, and the ducks would munch on snails that made their way up the stems of the fruit trees and crops. Every animal and every insect had a special role to fulfil in keeping the soil in pristine condition, and it happened quite seamlessly, and as naturally as it possibly could—because nature always finds a way.

But then somebody decided to take the animals off the land and put them in sheds. They called it factory farming. It was “the new way” of doing business, and the government subsidised it heavily. Many farmers who refused to comply went out of business.

The soil was no longer fertilised by the animals as they walked around; instead chemical fertilisers were brought in to do that job. The soil never had a chance to regenerate, and the animals never saw the sun again.

In their sheds, the animals were enclosed in tiny pens or cages. They no longer bred naturally; many were artificially inseminated instead. No longer did they feed off the land; they were fed soy and grains and fish meal instead, food meant for humans, much of it being shipped halfway across the world to get to them. Leftover fruit and vegetables were thrown away. Their urine and faeces was pumped into rivers. Sometimes it ended up in large man made dams. The fish could hardly breathe. The birds flew away. The flies moved in. So much of the environment was being destroyed. Yet nobody seemed to care.

Suddenly, the farming of animals became completely mechanised. Everything was about how much could be produced, and how quickly it could be done. Farming for need quickly became farming for greed. Before long, the scientists were genetically modifying and selectively breeding these animals so that they could be meatier, produce more milk, lay more eggs, and grow quickly and be ready for slaughter faster. Animals were fed antibiotics to control disease. They were injected with growth hormone to grow faster. Unable to move around freely, their flesh became fatty and unhealthy. Not once did anybody think about the impact this was having on human health and the environment.

The truth is, the impact is catastrophic. If you’re not already sick, you will be soon. If it’s not high cholesterol, it’s diabetes or heart disease or cancer, and a host of other lifestyle and auto-immune diseases, with a healthy dose of osteoporosis thrown in for good measure. The medical profession is making a killing—quite literally.

The little calf, the tiny lamb, the fluffy yellow chick, the pink piglet and the sweet little lamb born into this cruel world are unable to understand why nobody cares about them, other than when they are held down to have a numbered tag punched through their ear, or their tails docked, or their teeth removed, or they're lifted onto a conveyor belt to have part of their beak removed—and they think that maybe the human is going to be kind to them.

The land cries out, it’s topsoil depleted, trees cut down to make space to grow more soy and grain to feed these animals. Factory farming has ruined the lives of animals, the health of humans, and the sustainability of our planet. Yet so few people seem to care.

Have a look at these photos. These pictures depict how the average factory farmed animal is kept. Most of the meat and dairy sold in our supermarkets comes from places like this. Restaurant and fast food chains keep their margins high by buying from these establishments too. This is what is hidden from the consumer. Clever labelling with pictures of happy animals makes us think that everything is okay. But it’s not. And it never will be. Not until the consumer raises their hand and says, “No, I will not accept this, I will no longer support this.”

As individuals, we have a great deal more power than we think we have. Farmers will breed their animals based on our demand. If we simply choose to eat something else—something healthier and more sustainable to the environment, something that stops all this unnecessary suffering—we can tip the scales and restore balance to the world around us, a world that is quite clearly out of kilter. All we have to do is decide to be the change we want to see in the world.

EDIT: The purpose of this post is to educate the unaware on the origins of factory farming. Whereas I do not support the farming (i.e. exploitation) of any animals for food (or anything for that matter) AT ALL, no matter how the animals are farmed, I think it is important that those who consume animals and who are not “in the know” understand exactly where most of their meat and dairy comes from. Ultimately, my hope and dream is that people make an ethical connection to what is on their plate, realise that that piece of flesh was once a living, breathing being, and, if what they’re eating suffered in any way to get there (which every animal does, no matter how they are raised—slaughterhouse practices are brutal, rushed, and most certainly inhumane) they simply choose to leave that food off their plate and make kinder choices in future.

Excellent listen

This book was very well written and read. It opened my eyes to the effects that factory farming has and why we as consumers must use our money to change the demand. Buy local organic free range grass fed :)

A shocking and riveting expose

Jaw-dropping in its revelations about how human food production and global agribusiness has developed over the last century. Vast in scope to the point of numbing however, despite the highly engaging almost travelogue style. And so shocking and disturbing that I really would have liked more of a focus on the solutions - one chapter at the end, emphasizing consumer activism and government regulation left me feeling somewhat impotent and demoralized. Nevertheless an utterly compulsive and should be compulsory read (listen).

Excellent insight of industrial farming

Any additional comments?

The authors explain in an interesting way methods used nowadays to provide endless meat resources to the supermarkets. It is an interesting story of the industry and how it affects communities worldwide providing facts and research based evidence of the influence that modern farming has on people and planet.
It gives a food for thought on how the world is changing and why we should think twice about the origin of the food we are eating.