Jonathan Safran Foer , Eating Animals, Penguin 2010
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-food World, Bloomsbury 2006
Jonathan Safran Foer is the successful author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005) and Everything is Illuminated (2002). In his most recent book, Eating Animals, he turns to non-fiction. Michael Pollan’s, The Omnivore’s Dilemma is slightly older and was first published in 2006. Both give unflinching accounts of factory farming and the alternatives to it but in somewhat different ways. They discuss the United States and the specifics cannot necessarily be applied to Europe but the issues they raise are universally relevant – as Foer makes clear in his brief preface to the British edition: “A British reader who cares about the issues raised in this book should not find any peace in being British”.

Eating Animals isn’t simply an argument for not eating meat (though in the process of writing it Foer did become a committed vegetarian) it is instead a consideration of what it means to be human – and thus an argument against factory farming and all that that implies. And, in the American context, where 99.9% of chickens for meat, 97% of laying hens, 99% of turkeys, 95% of pigs and 78% of cattle are reared in in-your-face factory conditions, there is precious little else to eat if you want to eat meat.

Eating Animals once again finds Foer playing with form, as he interweaves horrific facts and figures with intimate dinner time memories. The first and the last chapters are both called “Storytelling”. “We are,” says Foer, “not only the teller of our stories, we are the stories themselves”.

The book is wide ranging: from an infatuation with a puppy called George to the cruelty of long-line fishing, from breaking into a poultry factory farm to the genetics of modern farm animals. There is an interview with a factory farmer and one with a vegan who designs slaughter houses. There are reflections on avian flu and a chapter on the meaning (or meaninglessness) of so many of the words central to the discussion: animal, bycatch, cruelty, free-range and fresh (both of which Foer dismisses simply as “bullshit”). Foer visits farms that try to do things differently; Frank Reeves’s poultry range, Paul Willis’s pig farm, Bill and Colette Niman’s cattle ranch nestle amongst the realities of the slaughterhouse and the dehumanisation of those who work there. All this is underpinned by Foer’s moral frame of reference, which constantly calls into question what it is to be human, asking why we allow the cruelties of factory farming, or how we can feel whole while deliberately forgetting.

The factory farm provides animal protein at a historically cheap price. But it only does so by externalising the real costs. For instance, animal agriculture makes a 40% greater contribution to global warming than all transportation in the world combined. The health costs are also severe: all kinds of pathogens (like new strains of salmonella and e coli) are spread in factory farm environments, and indeed affect much supermarket meat. It is not for nothing that the Centres for Disease Control estimates there are 76 million cases of food-borne disease in the US each year. As Foer comments: “Your friend didn’t “catch a bug” so much as eat a bug…in all likelihood… created by factory farming”.

Factory farms contribute to the growth of microbial-resistant pathogens simply because of the vast quantities of antimicrobials they consume: compare the three million pounds of antibiotics given to people in the US each year with the industry estimate of just under six times this amount fed to animals (the Union of Concerned Scientists thinks it is probably between eight and ten times as much). It happens because animals fed antibiotics put on weight faster than they otherwise would, and because animals in the overcrowded conditions of the factory farm get ill, so it’s better (for profit) to treat them prophylacticly.

There is every reason to believe that factory farms are creating the conditions for a new super pathogen. All flus have an avian origin, transmitted to humans either directly or via other animals, farm pigs being common. As recently as 2005 it was proven that the Spanish flu epidemic was avian in origin. The recent scares over SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and ‘swine fever’ are harbingers of what is to come; 6 of the 8 genetic segments of the currently most feared virus in the world, reports Foer, have been traced directly to US factory farms. Due to factory farming another epidemic like the Spanish flu is waiting to happen.

Whilst slaughterhouses in the US are notionally inspected and controlled, Foer shows how little such controls mean. In the late 80s former inspector Temple Grandin witnessed “ ‘deliberate acts of cruelty occurring on a regular basis’ at 32 percent of the plants she surveyed during announced visits in the United States”. If this is observed during announced visits the mind-boggles to think what day to day practices are like. Drawing on Gail Eisnitz’s interviews with workers in her book Slaughterhouse, Foer argues it is impossible for people to remain human when working in a slaughterhouse.

The known horrors of intensive meat production ought to be enough to radically transform the practice of the factory farm. Instead there has been only a tinkering at the edges. As Foer summarises “the factory farm industry (in alliance with the pharmaceutical industry) currently has more power than public-health professionals”. Eating Animals give some insights into the political economy of the factory farm: how the mass producing monolith has almost eliminated the family farm, sometimes by outcompeting it, and sometimes by buying up and closing down the local hatcheries, slaughterhouses, grain-storage facilities and other services farmers require to survive outside the vertically integrated chains of the giant food corporations like Tyson, Smithfield, Monsanto and the handful of others that control the food industry in the States. Foer’s account would have been strengthened by giving these elements further attention.

Despite these omissions Eating Animals is an important and unique book but it has to be acknowledged that Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, is the more comprehensive. Pollan’s structure is simple: based on his own preparation of four meals that have their origins in radically different ways of raising food.

Pollan’s first section on the industrial food chain is hard to beat as he follows the triumphal march of government encouraged cheap corn (maize) from the field to the feedlot, to the mill and eventually to the supermarket – where more than a quarter of the forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket contain processed corn products. It’s fascinating stuff and the short account of cattle being fattened on the feedlots is not for the squeamish.

In looking at alternatives, Pollan’s analysis of what he calls ‘industrial organic’ is an eye-opener for anyone who is starry-eyed about pesticide free meat. Pollan critiques the use of the term organic when it is used to symbolise alternative in every sense – a diverse polyculture based on small-scale, local, non-exploitative social relations of production – as well as eschewing artificial fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides. A substantial section of the organic sector has been transformed into a capitalistically intensive, exploitative monoculture, often transporting its produce hundreds or even thousands of miles to its (super)markets. It is better (organic fertilisers, no pesticides), but it is very often not what you think it is.

Pollan then proceeds to look at the best of the alternatives he found, Polyface Farm, where Joel Salatin manages to produce a substantial output of chickens, turkeys and beef cattle on grass in “a food chain rooted in a perennial polyculture”. Grass is once again the basis of the farm (as it used to be before the age of the factory farm which incidentally barely existed anywhere before the Second World War). Animals are brought up out of doors and rotated on pastures, living a healthy and as “natural” a life as can be for any animal whose purpose in being raised is eventually to end up as food for others higher up the food chain. If there is animal food production which we can accept, it should look something like this.

Pollan’s writing is lucid, his storytelling rooted in a clear understanding of the economic underpinnings of the various choices farmers make, or are steered to make, in today’s agribusiness-dominated system. I found it is a more analytically coherent book than Foer’s fragmented and sometimes quirky form of presentation (though Pollan’s final odyssey, cooking a meal entirely of ingredients he had gathered or hunted for himself, including wild boar, has a quirkyness all of its own).

In many ways Foer and Pollan end in similar places. They both agree that the factory farm is the enemy. It simply has to be stopped. Support for any animal-centred farming philosophy is vastly preferable to the industrial factory where animals are treated as things (as are the people who have to work in these monstrous enterprises). But while Foer is now a committed vegetarian, Pollan is not. (Curiously, Foer never explicitly explores the vegetarian-vegan divide; but the logic of his argument would seem to place him firmly with the vegans.)

Foer goes where Pollan doesn’t really want to: asking why eat meat and what the real costs are to us, as human beings, of so doing. Of course Foer does express views – sentiments – but this is not, despite some reviewers’ criticisms, a ‘sentimental’ book. He provides plenty of countervailing arguments made by interviewees who are meat eaters and even the odd factory farmer. Pollan isn’t really troubled about eating meat in the abstract; Foer has become so. In a short, sharp snap at Pollan who claims that the moral clarity of the vegetarian depends on a denial of reality Foer asks simply which of them is denying the reality they both describe so graphically.

Pollan’s book made me very angry about the feedlot and the factory farm, but Foer’s sentiments got under my skin. I can no longer make sense of my own attitudes: an abhorrence of factory farming, a preference for organic meat which I eat occasionally, but a willingness, nonetheless, to eat factory-farmed produce, generally knowing-but-not-knowing that it is such – bacon and eggs, that stunning jerk chicken off a street stall at the Notting Hill carnival, food at friends where it wouldn’t occur to me to upset anyone by asking about the provenance of the fodder.

I was struck while reading Foer by the connexions to a book I’ve long admired: Stanley Cohen’s award-winning States of Denial (2002), a study about reactions to unwelcome knowledge, particularly the suffering that some people inflict on others – how people know but don’t know or at least don’t notice, process, digest, forget. Cohen was brought up in South Africa and lived for eighteen years in Israel so had plenty of primary material to underpin his enquiry. It ranges widely, but is focused on what people do to other people.

Foer (like Peter Singer, Tom Regan, J M Coetzee and many others) extends this enquiry to animals: “The secrecy that enabled factory farming is breaking down” he writes. “We can’t plead ignorance, only indifference. We have the burden and the opportunity of living in the moment when the critique of factory farming broke into the popular consciousness. We are the ones of whom it will be fairly asked, What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals?”

Captain Paul Watson and his crew of eco-vigilantes have waged something akin to a war against the Japanese whalers who have killed whales inside the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. The sanctuary, established by the International Whaling Commission in 1996, is supposed to protect whales. A global moratorium on commercial whaling has also banned the practice since 1986. However, governments have been unwilling to uphold international treaties and agreements to protect marine wildlife and habitats. With Australia and Japan in the process of negotiating a free trade agreement, it is no surprise that the Australian Labour government does little to end the illegal slaughter of whales by the Japanese whaling fleet, despite making big promises to do so during past elections.

Fishing for problems

This reluctance to uphold international conservation measures is found the world over, with little protection offered to threatened flora and fauna species. The world’s oceans are in crisis with almost all the major fish stocks on the brink of collapse. The UN recently reported that if things carry on as at present, all of the world’s main fisheries will have collapsed by 2048.

Industrial fishing has experienced a huge growth due to technological developments since the 1960s. New types of fishing gear have been introduced, ships have become faster and are able to stay out at sea for longer. Long-range sonar, which was previously only available to the military, has become available for civilian use and gives fishermen the ability to trace fish virtually anywhere. The scale of fishing has reached unprecedented proportions, something the fish populations simply cannot take.

Trawling, driftnetting, longlining and purse seining are common fishing methods used by the thousands of vessels that set out onto the Mediterranean Sea every day. Driftnets and longlines are a huge threat to the larger marine animals, which can easily get entangled in them, with mostly fatal consequences.

Nearly half the species of sharks, rays and skates in the Mediterranean are listed as endangered, making it the most dangerous place on earth for these animals. Several species of large predatory sharks, such as the hammerhead and thresher shark, have been massacred, with more than 97 per cent of their Mediterranean populations killed off in the past 200 years. All turtle species in the Mediterranean are endangered, as well as most types of whales and dolphins. More than four fifths of the bluefin tuna population has been killed off within the past 50 years.

The European Union has been handing out subsidies to the fishing industry for over 40 years. Spain, France, Italy and Greece are the biggest beneficiaries and account for the most landings of fish. Of the 88,500 vessels that made up the EU fishing fleet in 2007, the great majority operated from these countries. A large part of the funding was for the construction of new vessels, even though the EU fleet must shrink dramatically if it is to get to any sustainable size. This overcapacity of fishing fleets is a worldwide problem, with the global fishing fleet currently operating at two and a half times the capacity that it can fish sustainably.

The various EU fisheries policies have done little to curb the problems of overfishing, fleet overcapacity, heavy subsidies and the general low economic resilience of the industry. Calls for conservation measures have been largely ignored and recently even the European Commission acknowledged that the current regulations fail to protect marine wildlife and habitats adequately. With 80 per cent of all species in EU waters overfished and subsidised EU trawlers also emptying the waters in other parts of the world, the continued handouts are directly driving the emptying of the oceans.

Farmed to extinction

Bluefin tuna migrates to the Mediterranean each spring. Traditional fishing for the bluefin has taken place throughout recorded history, but industrial fishing for this species has been expanding rapidly in recent years. Bluefin, considered a delicacy in Japan and other Asian countries, fetches high prices, with one 232-kilogram fish being sold for 16.28 million yen (US$175,000) in Japan in January.

Most of the bluefin tuna ends up in tuna farms. These ‘ranges’ do not breed and rear fish in captivity, instead relying on wild tuna, caught from already declining stocks. Purse seining fleets catch the fish and transfer them to pens where they are fattened until they meet market requirements. More than 70 such farms have opened in the Mediterranean in less than 15 years, with a total holding capacity of over 60,000 tons, twice the total allowed catch quota. Their feed, which consists of smaller fish, is also fished from local stocks. Serious concerns have already been expressed about the Mediterranean populations of anchovy, which are overexploited in many areas and often used to feed the farmed tuna.

There is little monitoring of what goes on in the farms. The pens often hold more fish than allowed and the many farms operate at levels of overproduction, which has effects on the local environment as well as the wellbeing of the animals. Many illegal fishing vessels, such as those from Turkey, land their catches in farms. Once penned, there is no way of tracing where fish have originated from.

Governments and some mainstream conservation groups argue that aquaculture (where fish are bred and reared in captivity) is the way forward, with the industry just needing to ‘clean up’. But can such a badly regulated part of an already heavily corrupted and largely illegal industry clean up? Governments have failed by letting this lucrative industry spiral out of control.

Sea Shepherd, which has worked at the frontline of ocean conservation for 33 years, is now launching ‘Operation Blue Rage’ to put a halt to the illegal fishing plague that has infested the Mediterranean. The operation will last up to three months, starting in late May. The conservation group operates as a citizen-run enforcement organisation, using direct action tactics to intervene against illegal practices at sea. With so little progress to protect bluefin in recent years, Sea Shepherd’s approach may well turn out to be the only one able to stop the pirates from plundering the Mediterranean Sea and all unique life in it.

Wietse van der Werf works as ship’s carpenter and engineer on the Sea Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin. For more about the campaign see
www.seashepherd.org

Most recently, repeated reports by the Chinese media about the slaughter of thousands of dogs in China to prevent rabies has sparked a backlash from Chinese citizens calling for China’s first animal welfare law that could see the criminalisation of this brutal animal slaughter and other mistreatment of domestic animals.

Currently only endangered species are protected in China and this lack of welfare legislation is a major hurdle for NGOs such as Animals Asia and grassroots groups in China.

Chang Jiwen, the law professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, leading the drafting of animal welfare legislation, said, ‘China has begun to be aware of the importance of animal welfare because it touches on the economy, trade, religion, and ethics …’ he added that enacting such legislation will be no easy task, ‘The future is bright, but the path ahead will be tortuous.’

This ‘tortuous’ path is something Animals Asia knows only too well. While discussions with the Chinese authorities elicit tacit support, the authorities cannot act because they have no legal framework for any action. For Animals Asia, it means a long-term commitment and approach through developing key relationships with government officials, lawyers, academics and the public, to generate support and encourage development of such legislation. It’s an approach we believe will bring about positive changes.

Grassroot call for animal welfare laws

Hope often develops from tragedy and in February 2002, the horrendous act of a Beijing college student, arrested at Beijing Zoo, for pouring sulphuric acid on five black bears saw people across the world united in their criticism. It was also widely condemned within China with discussions developing in internet chat rooms calling for action to be taken against the student. For the first time, bloggers also called for laws to stop other acts of cruelty against animals – the call for China’s animal welfare legislation had begun.
Similar acts of cruelty over the past six years have led to the same responses: in 2005 while the rest of the world were turning their backs on bullfighting, China was on the verge of accepting it. But the promoters had not bargained for the strength of feeling within China. China’s animal welfare movement, growing ever stronger, protested and ultimately barred bullfighting from China. Zhang Luping, head of the Beijing Human and Animal Environmental Education Centre, said in the Los Angeles Times, ‘This is a very significant victory; it shows that ordinary people’s voices can be heard in China and that policies can be changed.’

In the last five years, the movement to end cat and dog eating has also grown. In 2006, 40 protesters swarmed the Fangji cat meatball restaurant in Shenzhen forcing it to close. Just eight months later Chinese campaigners confiscated 400 cats from a market in Tianjin – all had been destined for slaughter. Since 2007 further confiscations have taken place with over 2000 cats recently rescued in Shanghai destined for transport to the animal markets in Guangzhou. And in June 2009, following the slaughter of over 40,000 dogs by the Hanzhong City authorities; Chinese welfare groups held candlelight vigils in Hanzhong to honour the dogs killed. Campaigners also organised the development of a ‘Rabies Forum’ to work alongside government departments to introduce humane stray dog population management and end the mass slaughters so common across the country.

These acts of individual and group compassion show the strength of commitment to end animal suffering – coming from within China. These actions are not led by international animal welfare groups but planned and executed by Chinese citizens.

Emerging signs of hope

The first real hope for legal protection for China’s animals came back in 2004 when a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Beijing committee proposed that China urgently draft a law protecting animal welfare nationwide. Expressing particular concern for livestock, especially at the time of slaughter, saying ‘if animals die in a great panic, their blood can secrete toxins which are harmful to people’s health …’. Proposals stipulated that ‘no one should harass, maltreat or hurt others [animals]‘ and that ‘while carrying animals from one place to another, the vehicles used must be kept clean and animals must be protected from suffering shock, torture or hurt. If animals are killed for disease control they must be killed in a humane way and must be isolated while being killed.’
Disappointingly no law was accepted, but that this draft was presented to the national government showed that China was ready – and eager – to develop animal protection legislation.

Animals Asia’s work to end bear farming brought further political action in 2007, when Zhou Ping, a member of China’s National People’s Congress Party, proposed new legislation to protect Black Asiatic bears (moon bears), specifically calling for a halt in the collection of bear bile, an ingredient used in Chinese medicine. Ms Zhou Ping, a representative from Chengdu, Sichuan Province, challenged the practice, which was encouraged in the 1990s as a way to stop the hunting of endangered wild bears for their bile. This bill wasn’t passed, but helped to raise the issue of bear farming and the need to outlaw this practice to over 3,000 NPC delegates from across the country.
In the last 12 months further political hope has emerged. In December 2008, the University of Politics and Law in the ancient city of Xi’an organised a conference discussing international animal welfare legislation and the development of similar legislation in China. The forum was co-hosted with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), RSPCA International, and the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics (OCAE). Some 300 delegates attended, including representatives from government departments, law societies and Chinese universities.

Encouragingly, the conference also marked the establishment of the Animal Protection Law Research Center at the Northwest University of Politics and Law in Shaanxi – a first for China. And lawyers from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, led by Professor Chang Jiwen, are discussing with the RSPCA and IFAW, proposals for a national animal welfare law. This could criminalise the brutal culling of dogs and other forms of companion animal maltreatment. We hope the National Congress of the Communist Party of China will accept the final version within the next three years.

After more than 20 years working in China, we know how fast things are changing – and we know from working with various government departments in Beijing and Sichuan Province that there is a growing recognition and sympathy towards the issue of animal welfare – which did not exist 10 years ago. And, like with our Moon Bear Rescue, which is progressing as a result of good relations with the government and local community, we feel that the issue of cruelty to other animals can be similarly addressed.

We’re also working with Chinese welfare groups to aid their grassroots educational work. This is a vital step towards mass improvement in China’s animal welfare. In 2006, we hosted China’s first Companion Animal Symposium. This groundbreaking event saw 32 Chinese animal welfare groups – from across the country- join together to share the many problems they face and call with one voice for new solutions to help dogs and cats in China. It is estimated that these 32 groups represent 250,000 people!

The success of the China Companion Animal Symposium continues to grow and in 2009 we held the third symposium, which saw 130 delegates, representing 63 animal welfare groups and veterinary clinics attending. At the end of the symposium, all representatives agreed to call on the Chinese government to ban the consumption of cats and dogs countrywide. Once again this is message coming from within China.

China is now on the verge of developing animal welfare legislation and this is the time to provide the support needed to the Chinese animal welfare groups. There is a long way to go, but the wheels are in motion, and we believe it will eventually lead to a brighter future for all animals in China.

For more information about Animals Asia and how you can help see [www.animalsasia.org
->www.animalsasia.org]

‘”Boxer!” cried Clover in a terrible voice. “Boxer! Get out! Get out quickly! They’re taking you to your death!”

All the animals took up the cry of “Get out, Boxer, get out!” But the van was already gathering speed and drawing away from them. It was uncertain whether Boxer had understood what Clover had said. But a moment later his face disappeared from the window and there was the sound of a tremendous drumming of hoofs inside the van. He was trying to kick his way out. The time had been when a few kicks from Boxer’s hoofs would have smashed the van to matchwood. But alas! his strength had left him; and in a few moments the sound of drumming hoofs grew fainter and died away. In desperation the animals began appealing to the two horses which drew the van to stop. “Comrades, comrades!” they shouted. “Don’t take your own brother to his death! ” But the stupid brutes, too ignorant to realise what was happening, merely set back their ears and quickened their pace. Boxer’s face did not reappear at the window. Too late, someone thought of racing ahead and shutting the five-barred gate; but in another moment the van was through it and rapidly disappearing down the road. Boxer was never seen again.’

George Orwell, Chapter IX, Animal Farm

Wild Swans tells the story of life in China for
author Jung Chang, her mother and grand-mother, and describes the horrors and poverty suffered by millions of Chinese in the 20th century. Chang lives through the Cultural Revolution and joins the Red Guards, during which time her parents are accused of being traitors and tortured. From a relatively privileged childhood, Chang’s life was to change when she, like thousands of young people, was taken to the countryside to be ‘re-educated’ into peasant life. Her entire family was sent to different regions of China and her father, once a high-ranking official, died after becoming ill and insane. She finally obtained a scholarship to the UK, one of the first Chinese students to study abroad, where she wrote this disturbing and moving story of her life.

Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World\’s Worst Dog

John Grogan (Hodder & Stoughton 2007)

This is a book that people both with and without dogs will love. A simply, but beautifully, written story of newlyweds John and Jenny moving into a house in Palm Beach and deciding that bringing a dog into their family would be a rather nice thing to do. Enter Marley, a 97-pound goof of a yellow Labrador, who crashes into their life and house with all the delicacy of a 10-tonne truck. A complete disgrace to his species, Marley knows no difference between right and wrong, but shows the true meaning of unconditional love and why we are happier and healthier in the company of our four-legged best friends.

The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan (G P Putnam’s Sons 1989)

This book is a harrowing and heart-warming story of four Chinese immigrant women and their American-born daughters. The name of the club originates during the Japanese invasion of China after one of the mothers, Suyuan Wu, decides to start it to divert attention from the war. The club continues when she moves to the USA and sees lives and cultures of mothers and daughters clashing as they play mah-jong and eat dinner together. The daughters try to adapt to American life while attempting to respect their Chinese roots and culture, while the mothers struggle to leave their pasts behind.

The Emotional Lives of Animals

Marc Bekoff (New World Library 2007)

This book explores the complex emotions of animals – and why they matter. After a lifetime of studying animal behaviour, Bekoff shows that it is time to challenge science and give animals the benefit of the doubt. Animals may not share the same joy or sadness as the human species, but Bekoff offers a convincing argument as to why they have their own versions of these emotions – and why we should embrace common sense and look at all species with hearts and minds that seek to understand them.

The Ten Trusts

Jane Goodall and Marc Bekoff (HarperCollins 2002)

The Ten Trusts compels us to reflect upon our footprints on this earth and consider how they affect the species that share our lives. It teaches us to respect and love nature, to be tenacious and to think intelligently of the things we do in our everyday lives that can be changed to help heal our suffocating earth. From the simplest advice of turning off the tap while we clean our teeth, to the complexity of helping to save whole species from extinction, The Ten Trusts shows that life is in our hands and there is much we can do to preserve it.

Born Free: A Lioness of Two Worlds

Joy Adamson (Collins and Harvell Press 1960)

Born Free holds special resonance for me as it began my journey into animal welfare. It tells the true story of Elsa, an orphaned lion cub raised and released into the wilds of Kenya by Joy and her husband George. The book and film shows the tenacity of people who refuse to give in to bureaucracy and red tape, and also inspired Virginia and Bill to found the successful and effective Born Free Foundation, which exists and flourishes to this day.

The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World

John Robbins (Conari Press 2001)

This life-changing book was written by the heir to the Baskin-Robbins ice-cream empire who gave it all away. He questions every aspect of the food we eat – where it is produced, how it is produced, how its production affects the environment, who is paid what for the food, how it is transported to our tables and how it affects our health.

Freedom Moon

Jill Robinson and Angela Leary (eds) (Animals Asia Foundation 2008)

I cannot end this list without self-promoting Animals Asia. Freedom Moon celebrates the freedom of bears caged for decades and cruelly milked for their bile, which is used in traditional Chinese medicine. With over 50 herbal and synthetic alternatives, there is no need for such a practice today. Freedom Moon is a book of hope, which shows bears bouncing joyously around their forested enclosures and putting their tortuous pasts behind them.

Jill Robinson MBE is the founder and CEO of animal welfare charity [Animals Asia Foundation
->www.animalsasia.org]

Her selections can be purchased here.

A portion of the sales from purchases made through Red Pepper/Eclector’s book store contribute money to Red Pepper. Not all titles are available.

Small is Beautiful

E F Schumacher (Hartley and Marks Publishers, 1973)

Offering a people-focused, decentralised, environmentally sustainable economics, this book challenges the inhuman productivist, growth-maximising orthodoxies of traditional capitalism and socialism. It articulates a radical critique of corporate gigantism, materialism, consumerism and traditional methods of calculating standard of living. Schumacher was one of the first to dispute the imposition of western models of industrialisation on developing countries. A green pioneer, he trailblazed the self- reliant concept of low-cost, small-scale, eco-friendly, locally-made intermediate technology as the fastest, surest way to uplift impoverished peoples.

The Communist Manifesto

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (First published in London, 1848)

Few books have had a greater impact on the course of modern world history. Much of its analysis still rings true today. The vision of a classless, egalitarian, cooperative society remains a noble ideal, despite its frequent perversion to justify mass tyranny. Strong on equality but weak on liberty, the manifesto fails to demonstrate how communism can go hand-in-hand with democracy and human rights. Other weaknesses are underestimating the ability of capitalism to evolve and survive and the ecological devastation of industrialisation.

The Second Sex

Simone de Beauvoir (First published in France, 1949)

This feminist tour de force draws on insights from history, biology, psychology and anthropology to show that there is no innate female nature: ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.’ Traditional femininity and female roles are cultural impositions by men to maintain their gender supremacy. The inferior social status of women is not the result of the limited abilities of the female sex; women’s under-achievement results from their second-class status. Still relevant today, when the female half of humanity remains degraded, exploited and excluded from wealth and power.

Our Common Future

Gro Harlem Brundtland (Oxford University Press, 1987)

The long-term survival of humanity is threatened by the ravages of global
poverty, resource depletion, species extinction and biospheric pollution. This UN report sets out a radical agenda for
environmental protection, sustainable development and economic justice. Urging global action and solidarity for the common good, it says we must put universal welfare before the interests of privileged elites and internationalism before national self-interest.

Crimes Against Humanity

Geoffrey Robertson (New Press, 2000)

International humanitarian law is the new frontier in the universalisation of human rights. Since Nuremberg, the United Nations has enacted a series of groundbreaking conventions against war crimes, genocide and torture. Robertson demonstrates how realpolitik and diplomatic protocols have often allowed dictators, war criminals and torturers to escape justice. But with the creation of the International Criminal Court, we have moved a step closer to the era of human rights enforcement.

The Soul of Man Under Socialism

Oscar Wilde (1891)

This is the antidote to the statism, collectivism and authoritarianism of Leninism and other ‘ends justify the means’ variants of socialism/communism. Wilde argues that the great virtue of socialism is that far from enslaving the individual to the will of the collective, its ultimate goal and achievement will be to liberate the human spirit and allow the flourishing of the individual. Though he was a bit of a cultural snob, Wilde was right. Most people are salary and mortgage slaves, with their talents stifled by the materialism, greed and inequalities of capitalism. Under socialism, individuality and culture won’t be attributes that only the rich can cultivate; they will be extended to everyone and enrich us all.

Animal Liberation

Peter Singer (1975)

This book expands our moral horizons beyond our own species and is thus a significant evolution in the development of ethics. The right to be spared physical and psychological suffering should, says Singer, be extended to non-human animals. Their abuse in farming, sport, entertainment and Singer calls this abuse ‘speciesism’ – the doctrine of human superiority that is used to justify the exploitation of non-human animals. He argues that speciesism is a form of oppression comparable to racism, imperialism, misogyny and homophobia.

His selections can be purchased here.

A portion of the sales from purchases made through Red Pepper/Eclector’s book store contribute money to Red Pepper. Not all titles are available.