Rating

★★★★☆

Category

non-fiction

Read

2014-05-20

Pages

276

References a lot of research and numbers. Mostly reads as unbiased, though a couple of throwaway lines betraying the author’s non-veg food preferences did make me grimace (unfortunately did not highlight).

If you are coming from the position that the future has to look similar to today (which is perfectly reasonable), this book gives the best path forward I have read. Somebody needed to write this book, and I can’t imagine anyone doing a much better job than Smil.

However, I still believe that mammalian CAFOs are fundamentally unsound from an ethical perspective (this book only briefly addresses this) and that history shows that this kind of abuse will not stand up long term. It is very unlikely that a vegan world is possible, but there are interesting possibilities: GMO+fish from Just Food sticks in my memory.

(Note that we are still struggling with gay marriage, so animal rights are still a way off - maybe not even in my lifetime.) (Not to mention the human cost of CAFOs as well.)