MEAT MARKET by Erik Marcus

If you’re feeling like you know enough about agribusiness and you do enough as an activist, read MEAT MARKET: Animals, Ethics, & Money (Brio 2005), by Erik Marcus for a reality check.

What Marcus does that is most impressive (and difficult) is narrow his focus to animals used for food. Agribusiness kills about 10 BILLION animals per year, which is by far more than any other industry that uses animals, so, like his entire book, he focuses on the numbers and not on emotions, and plots a course to relieve the most animals possible from suffering.

MEAT MARKET is invaluable for activists because Marcus has done a lot of the work for us when it comes to statistics (and how they can be explained and how some have been misused). He systematically goes from animal to animal, writing about the economics of their use as well as the conditions under which they are forced to live and die.

Activists and vegans might already know a lot of what Marcus explains, but there are two aspects to his book that I found particularly useful and shouldn’t be overlooked.

1.    I’m all about language, hence the Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics. One might say I have a borderline-unhealthy obsession with words. For this reason, I am struck by Marcus’ term dismantlement: A movement that strives to weaken and one day topple animal agriculture . Marcus assesses the currently movements (vegetarian, animal rights, and animal welfare), diagnoses their limitations, and proposes that dismantlement can work with them and fill in the gap of an offensive strategy to complement their defensive tactics. Here’s an explanation of the strengths of the term dismantlement:

The name "dismantlement" carries with it the underlying mentality of how animal agriculture can be overcome. Dismantlement is a word lacking any implication of hysteria or violence. Rather, the word suggests that animal agriculture can be taken apart in the systematic manner of a mechanic disassembling an engine–thoughtfully, calmly, and one piece at a time (p. 79).                     

2.    He presents three campaigns for the movement: Reforming School Lunch Programs, Ending Grazing Subsidies, and Putting the NIH (rather than the USDA) in Charge of Nutrition Advice. (I’d like to end all subsidies to agribusiness tomorrow, but since that’s not going to happen, we’ve got to start somewhere. The grazing program always loses money because it rents land to ranchers at below market rates, so it’s a good place to begin.)

MEAT MARKET is full of practical ideas and essays by long-time activists who take various tacks. The Gray Matters are the arguments many people use for the benefits of a vegan diet. As I’ve written before, a vegan who eats processed foods flown in from all over the world can probably be just as unhealthy, and do as much damage to the environment, as an omnivore. A vegan diet isn’t always best.

I recommend reading MEAT MARKET in conjunction with the University of Chicago Study (Download u_of_chicago_study.pdf
) about diet and global warming, which explains why adopting a vegan lifestyle is the single most positive thing anyone can do for the environment.

Click here Marcus’ blog.