Description
What’s the Matter with Meat? explores the whole lot from labor issues to genetic manipulation to animal welfare to environmental degradation, illustrating just how the industrial model for meat production conjures up huge quantities of cheap meat while it shifts the various real costs onto the taxpayer. She describes practices few of us know about, such as land grabs in which predator companies acquire property in foreign countries for meat production, ceaselessly driving out local farmers. She shows how industry consolidation entrenches cost-effective but harmful practices, creating monopolies that force competitors into chapter 11, drive down labor costs, erode workers’ rights, and exert bizarre power over nearby communities.
Keiffer demonstrates with irrefutable force that the current model for meat production—adopted around the world—is simply not sustainable and will soon exhaust the planet’s resources. A hard-hitting critique of the meat industry and its harmful effects, this book shows us just how important it is to care about where our food comes from, to enhance alternative production systems, and to stop those practices that are ruining our planet in the service of the burger and the nugget.