Farmageddon
The True Cost of Cheap Meat
Lymbery, Philip; Oakeshott, Isabel
Publisher: Bloomsbury, London, UK
Year Published: 2014
Pages: 448pp ISBN: 9781408846445
Library of Congress Number: HD9410.5 Dewey: 338.476649
Resource Type: Book
Cx Number: CX16002
An investigation and implication of the global industrial farming industry.
Abstract:
Farm animals have been disappearing from our fields as the production of food has become a global industry. We no longer know for certain what is entering the food chain and what we are eating – as the UK horsemeat scandal demonstrated. We are reaching a tipping point as the farming revolution threatens our countryside, health and the quality of our food wherever we live in the world.
* Our health is under threat: half of all antibiotics used worldwide (rising to 80 per cent in US) are routinely given to industrially farmed animals, contributing to the emergence of deadly antibiotic-resistant superbugs
* Wildlife is being systematically destroyed: bees are now trucked across the States (and even airfreighted from Australia) to pollinate the fruit trees in the vast orchards of California, where a chemical assault has decimated the wild insect population
* Fresh fish are being hoovered from the oceans: fish that could feed local populations are being turned into fishmeal for farmed fish, chickens and pigs thousands of miles away
* Cereals that could feed billions of people are being given to animals: soya and grain that could nourish the world’s poorest, are now grown increasingly as animal fodder
* Epidemic waste underpins the mega-farming model: while food prices rocket, surplus food is thrown away
Farmageddon is a fascinating and terrifying investigative journey behind the closed doors of a runaway industry across the world – from the UK, Europe and the USA, to China, Argentina, Peru and Mexico. It is both a wake-up call to change our current food production and eating practices and an attempt to find a way to a better farming future.
[From publisher]
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