80 of 87 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
When Values and Behavior Clash, Feb 3 2010
By Bradley Larsen - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Why We Love Dogs,Eat Pigs,Wear Cow (Hardcover)
Melanie Joy's Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows illuminates the moral incongruence at the heart of the American diet: how we can love our pets and value kindness to animals generally, yet consume meat from corporations that severely abuse and slaughter 10 billion sentient creatures a year. Dr. Joy explores the many ways we numb ourselves and disconnect from our natural empathy for farmed animals. She points out that in the affluent industrialized world, we don't eat meat because we have to, but because we choose to. We like the taste and everybody else is doing it. Joy coins the term "carnism" to describe the belief system which holds that it is ethical and appropriate to make the choice to eat animals.
Dr. Joy notes that following a carnist rather than a vegetarian or vegan dietstyle is made less distressing by the fact that most of the billions of animals Americans eat each year are literally hidden from sight. Animal agribusiness spends a fortune creating the fiction that these animals live outside on idyllic farms. Dr. Joy encourages readers to become informed about the violence and suffering bound up with mainstream food choices, and to begin reducing consumption of animals products. She sees regaining empathy for suffering farmed animals as part of a vital process of personal and societal integration, wherein values, beliefs, and behavior come into harmony.
These ideas resonate with me because my wife and I dearly love our two cats, Justa and Justine, and our Bernese Mountain Dog, Pearl. Each one has a unique personality and shows great will power in realizing goals and desires. Like the humans in the household, they fully experience pain and suffering as well as contentment and joy. One revelation in Joy's book is that farmed animals are essentially no different from our pets--each one is an individual with a desire to live without pain and to express his own nature. Subjugating farmed animals to a lifetime of unrelenting suffering ended only by a brutal death is not supported by the values of most (pet-loving) Americans. It really is time to transform our meat-centered culture: for the animals, for the environment, for our own physical and spiritual health. Read this book to find out how.
139 of 159 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Hunter Finds Thie Book Compelling, Nov 23 2009
By Joseph Laur "Sustainability Guru" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Why We Love Dogs,Eat Pigs,Wear Cow (Hardcover)
I've been a meat eater- a carnist- my whole life,as well as a dog lover, and have been a hunter since I was 12 back in Wisconsin. I found Dr. Joy's book compelling, thrilling to read, and pointing the finger at the culture we've all grown up in, not at individuals.
I was able to take in her message because it was presented in a non blaming, non shaming way.
I may still hunt and bring home an animal to the table every now and then. I know the paradox and pain of what I'm doing for my food.I accept it even as I wrestle with it. But I will never purchase or knowingly eat another morsel of factory meat. I've been to Auschwitz and Birkenau, and seen how mechanized slaughter works, and how inhumane it is, whether it's people, pigs or pugs. Joy points out what "we" are doing- there's no blame in her tone. The systemic structure of carnism, just like the systems of racism, sexism, totalitarianism, is evil at it's core, precisely because there is no "we" there, seeing what "we" are causing to done in "our" name. Thanks to Dr Joy for sending a message to open our eyes. After reading this book, we know, and must take responsibility for our choices.Negligence starts tomorrow.
I may still hunt and kill an animal on occasion, and many will berate me for that. But I will no longer be party to wholesale slaughter.
66 of 80 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Need to Put Glass Walls on Slaughterhouses, Sep 21 2009
By M. JEFFREY MCMAHON "herculodge" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Why We Love Dogs,Eat Pigs,Wear Cow (Hardcover)
Pre-release customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program
Why do so many people find great delectation in their beef, pork, and chicken products but cringe at the thought of eating meat from a dog? Why can people sympathize so deeply with dogs, but remain coldly detached from the "necessary" slaughter of cows, pigs, and chickens for their eating pleasure?
Melanie Joy, a psychologist, professor, and author, explains these inconsistencies in Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows. She points out that many people engage in selective empathy, feeling for some animals but not others, based on what they've learned.
She asserts that much of our beliefs about animals and what is appropriate for eating is based on illogical thinking, physic numbing, misinformation, and denial. Being told that it's okay to eat meat over and over from childhood to adulthood, being denied access to the slaughter of animals, and pushing animals' suffering from our imagination results in being a carnist, someone who eats meat, not from necessity, but from choice.
I find the author's arguments, logical, convincing, and morally compelling. If we have to force ourselves to be ignorant and block our empathy in order to eat meat, then we're fooling ourselves at the detriment of animals and our own moral integrity.
Thinking about animal suffering clearly, seeing the horrors that animals suffer without sugar-coating their slaughter with mythologies, considering the options we have as omnivores, and freeing ourselves from the lies (repeated they become false truths), and vegetarianism becomes the logical conclusion.
The author wants us to stop denying the trauma and torture that animals suffer because of many people's choice to be carnists. She makes it clear that any normal human being who no longer denies the suffering of animals cannot enjoy partaking in them as meals.
To unravel our conditioned denial, the author has to give graphic accounts of what really goes on in slaughterhouses. Quoting Paul McCartney, she writes "that if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian." Her exposé chapters on the killing of animals are meant to be just that, a glass wall, to allow us to see exactly what meat eating really entails.
Another book that I recently read that helped me examine the ethics of eating, which I strongly recommend, is The Face on Your Plate by Jeffrey Masson.