A thoroughly researched, deftly written piece of investigative journalism. Estabrook and his partner still eat bacon, but...
Former Gourmet contributing editor Estabrook (Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, 2011) presents a journalistic exposé of the pork industry with the same skill demonstrated in his exploration of the tomato industry.
The saga is difficult to resist after the opening sentence: "A pork chop nearly got me thrown in jail." The threat originated from an irritated judge in a small-town Illinois courtroom, where the locals had filed a lawsuit against a gigantic pork producer running an industrial hog facility causing such a stench and other unpleasantness that their rural way of life had been diminished beyond redemption. Estabrook escaped jail time, but the judge expelled him from the courtroom due to a momentary exchange between the journalist and a plaintiff's attorney. Numerous important books have appeared in the past decade about the evils of industrial slaughterhouses. In that sense, Estabrook's book might seem like a retread, but it stands out because of its narrow rather than broad scope. He examines pork production only; no beef, chicken or sheep enter the narrative. The author is clearly appalled by the conditions he documents in a variety of large-scale facilities, but he presents the evidence with a subtle touch and rightfully allows the villains an opportunity to explain their practices. Heroes emerge in almost every chapter—e.g., hog producers who care about humane treatment, lawyers who represent rural residents on quality-of-life issues, government inspectors of slaughterhouses who try to enforce the law only to be castigated by their bosses, who are often in cahoots with corporate titans. A journey to Denmark showed Estabrook how sanitary, humane practices can produce excellent pork. Unfortunately, though, as in other realms, he discovered that many Americans don't see the value of learning from other nations.
A thoroughly researched, deftly written piece of investigative journalism. Estabrook and his partner still eat bacon, but they are careful about the source of the pork.Pub Date: May 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-393-24024-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
PROFILES
An uncommonly clear, commonsensical argument for rehabilitating damaged landscapes and moving toward what the author calls the ``future primitive.'' Mills (Whatever Happened to Ecology?, 1989) is one of the leading proponents of the ``bioregional movement,'' a place-based environmental consciousness that has grown from a nice idea of the '60s into a powerful ethic. Mills's place is the deciduous forests of upstate Michigan, where she has taken once badly overworked land and made it her own. Fierce in her attachments and passionate in her writing, Mills tackles hard questions head-on: How to we reconcile economic growth with conserving, or better, preserving wild places? Under this huge American sky, why worry about a few backwoods places that have suffered ill use at human hands? Can't the Earth take care of itself? Melding old-hippie and New Left sensibilities with a keen respect for scientific precision, Mills proposes a program for restoring the land's poor cousins— overlogged forests and played-out fields, wildcat dumps and silted- up rivers—to something of their former health. This is not, she recognizes, easy or even pleasant work, and it reminds us of our failings: ``To begin a true and lasting restoration,'' she writes, ``it is necessary to travel imaginatively back through time to earlier, less disturbed landscapes to develop an authentic vision of what to restore to. How else can we view the losses, the irreparable gaps rent in the fabric by extinctions, but as remonstrance?'' Taking side trips to the Himalayas, to colleges in Southern California and salmon runs in the Northwest, to federally managed forests in Southern Illinois, and, most affectingly, to Auroville, India, where a once-barren tropical plateau has been reforested, Mills shows how this hard and necessary work can be done. Good writing and good thinking make this book fuel for long reflection.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8070-8534-0
Page Count: 241
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
A well-reasoned, timely call for American agriculture to recognize that putting eggs in a single basket can lead to disaster. Raeburn, science editor for the Associated Press, adds to the growing literature on agricultural biodiversity with this book, rich in case studies on the depletion of the natural gene pool as industrial farming opts to cultivate ever fewer seed varieties. Warning that this leaves agriculture vulnerable to devastating crop diseases, Raeburn investigates the possibilities for renewal. He finds them in discoveries like that of Rafael Guzm†n of Mexico's University of Guadalajara, who turned up one of the last remaining strands of Zea diploperennis, a corn powerfully resistant to blight. Hybridized with commercially grown corn, Zea diploperennis can yield new kinds of corn—and, potentially, billions of dollars. Raeburn rightly asks, ``Have any other similarly valuable plants become extinct without ever having been seen by botanists?'' Raeburn offers stories of other successful ``gene hunters,'' like the heroic Nikolai I. Vavilov, whose scientific beliefs led to exile and death in the Gulag after he had collected thousands of rare seeds that helped revitalize Soviet agriculture in the famine of the 1930s. Closer to home, Raeburn extols Virginia farmer Elwood Fisher, who has preserved on half an acre an astonishing 840 varieties of apple, 160 pear, 52 cherry, 27 plum, 15 peach, 47 apricot, 20 grape, and 21 blueberry. Some readers may find Raeburn's alarmist outlook disconcerting; the corner Safeway seems, after all, to offer a bushel of choices. Yet he provides plenty of reasons to be concerned about the loss of ancient crops, rejoining, ``You can keep a winning streak going for a long time. But in the end, the house always wins.'' And if the house wins in this instance, Raeburn provocatively concludes, the result will be starvation.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-684-80365-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
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