欧宝娱乐

If you interested in reading this book, you should read my brother Eric's review of it. He's said pretty much what I thought of the book, but more more eloquently than I could write it! Just a couple of my own thoughts - I was particularly struck by his comments about how the average person views their own animals (family pets, etc.) and would never dream of mistreating them vs. what they are willing to eat (i.e. meat from industrial farms) and use (i.e. products tested on animals). For example, why is it OK for dogs to be experimented on in the lab when we would never have consented to have our beloved black lab Kalua subjected to the same treatment? In the end, they are all animals and we tend to draw a false line between the two.

I really struggled to get through the latter half of the book (particularly the "Nature and Nature's God" chapter), which was much more theory-driven. Like Eric says in his review, the other chapters in which he catalogs the horrors of trophy hunting, whaling, and industrial pig farming are much more compassionate and compelling. I was particularly sickened by the trophy hunting chapter. The theory is important as well but in the end, I'm convinced and didn't end up reading all of that chapter.

I, like Eric, wished that he would have considered the humane treatment of animals on traditional family farms in more depth. However, he does mention this option on p. 316 and calls such farms a "decent compromise". He says that most consumers these days are left with "a choice between two radial alternatives...be radically kind or ...radically cruel." In other words, be vegetarians (radically kind) or buy inhumanely raised meat from the supermarket (radically cruel). This is the decision/way of life that Barbara Kingsolver writes about in "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" and the way of eating that Nik and I have committed to as well. We'd rather not eat meat than eat any meat that comes from animals raised in the industrial machine. And the more we read about "free range" chickens and other supposedly more responsible choices from the supermarket, the more we are determined to only buy our meat directly from a farmer, where we can see how our animals are raised and can verify for ourselves that there is not cruelty involved. And yes, it's much more expensive this way and so we eat a lot less meat than we otherwise would. We eat meat maybe twice a week (sometimes three), we eat small portions of it and we eat a lot more vegetables. In the end, we don't believe that we are entitled to meat at every meal nor do we even miss it at every meal. And I'm glad for that. And yes, if we lived in a place where we were not blessed to have so many small farm options, we would chose the radically kind option, and become vegetarians.

In the end, I think that the lesson I take with me from this book is that we, as humans, have a responsibility to take care of those who are less powerful than ourselves. This applies to people as well as to the animals.