The end of animal farming - Jacy Reese

Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals brought widespread attention to the disturbing realities of factory farming. The End of Animal Farming pushes this conversation forward by outlining a strategic roadmap to a humane, ethical, efficient food system in which slaughterhouses are obsolete. Animal-rights advocate Jacy Reese focuses on the social forces pushing us towards the downfall of animal agriculture, the technology making this change possible for the meat-hungry public, and the activism driving consumer demand for plant-based and cultured foods. Reese contextualizes the issue of factory farming--the inhumane system of industrial farming that 95% of farmed animals endure--as part of humanity's expanding moral circle. Humanity increasingly treats nonhuman animals, from household pets to orca whales, with respect and kindness, and Reese argues that farmed animals are the next step. As our culture becomes increasingly receptive to the needs of nonhuman animals, technology is catching up to make an animal-free diet a (delicious) reality, and one that does not appeal only to affluent people. The End of Animal Farming is not a scolding treatise or a prescription for a blandly ascetic diet, however, as Reese shows how the future of food will be a system in which the tastes of even the most die-hard meat-eater are met by innovative food technologies like lab-grown meats and plant-based meat substitutes. Reese invites readers--vegan and non-vegan--to consider one of the most important and transformational social movements of our time.