The Carnivore's Manifesto

Eating Well, Eating Responsibly, and Eating Meat

De: Patrick Martins, Mike Edison, Alice Waters - forward

Narrado por: Mike Edison

Fifty ways to be an enlightened carnivore, while taking better care of our planet and ourselves, from the founder of Slow Food USA.

We have evolved as meat eaters, proclaims Patrick Martins, and it's futile to deny it. But, given the destructive forces of the fast-food industry and factory farming, we need to make smart, informed choices about the food we eat and where it comes from. In fifty short chapters, Martins cuts through organize zealotry and the misleading jargon of food labeling to outline realistic steps everyone can take to be part of the sustainable-food movement. With wit, and insight, and no small amount of provocation, The Carnivore's Manifesto is both a revolutionary call to arms and a rollicking good read that will inspire, engage, and challenge anyone interested in the way we eat today.

©2014 Patrick Martins (P)2014 Hachette Audio

Extremely biased book, unworthy of its title

This is one of the worst books I have ever read. I bought it hoping that it would provide me with some good reasons for eating meat (which do exist, see for instance the intelligence squared debate called “Don’t eat anything with a face). However, this hope was brutally slayed, something that I realized quite early in the book. The basic argument that the authors try to convey, without any ambition whatsoever to be objective or factual, is that large global, industries in general, and the meat industry in particular, only care about making money and have no interest whatsoever in animal welfare or producing good meat. Small meat industries on the other hand respect their customers, and make sure that their animals live harmonious fulfilling lives meaning among other things that the animals are allowed to have sex before they are slaughtered. Coincidentally the authors are running a “small” old fashioned meat business, and therefore, according to their own logic, are God's gift to us meat consumers. No bias there... (irony). Seriously, it seems that the authors in this book have not progressed from the developmental stage where people are either good or evil.

My hopes were temporarily raised when the authors raised the question why everyone cannot just be vegetarians. Finally, I thought, now they will provide me with the cannon fodder I need to thrash the next vegan that comes along proclaiming meat abstinence (although in the back of my head I knew that this was a very naive hope indeed). I cannot say that I was surprised that their only argument for eating meat is that we have evolved to do so... In other words, it is in our genes to eat meat and therefore it is silly to try and stop people from eating it. This is a silly argument because there are many things we have evolved inclinations towards such as violence, domination over others etc, but who would say that there is no point in trying to stop people from killing each other because we have evolved to do so. The percentage of people who are killed by other people has gone down drastically since humans first evolved and I have no doubt that we could make a society where meat consumption is reduced as well. That is, we do not have to, and often should not, follow our evolutionary instincts. The book says nothing about the nutritional value in meat (which is hard to replace) or maintaining ecological systems or any other rational argument for eating at least some meat. In other words, there are good arguments for eating meat, but you will not find them in this book.

To be completely fair, some of the underlying points the authors are trying to make I think are basically sound. I agree that the meat industry at large have too little respect for animal welfare, and I also think that it is probably good to aim for more quality instead of quantity (though I realize that everyone might not so privileged that they can make this argument). However, the negatives associated with this book by far outweighs the positives. I would not recommend this book to anyone... not even at gunpoint