Not for the fainthearted, but a good wake-up call for those concerned with decent treatment of animals and healthy food on...
A searing exposé of the brutal treatment animals receive on their ways to our dinner plates.
Following a whim, debut author Faruqi decided to take a break from the hectic pace of Wall Street and volunteer for two weeks on an organic dairy farm a few hours outside Toronto. That decision proved to be both eye-opening and life-changing. Her lifelong plan to establish a career as an investment banker was put on hold due to the 2008 recession, and her goal shifted from earning lots of money to exposing injustice. Despite the fact that the farm was certified as organic, her introduction to the on-the-ground reality was far from the charming pastoral scene she had imagined. Faruqi was horrified by the cramped quarters in the shed where 65 cows lived, “shackled to stalls by neck chains” and forced to stand in their own excrement. With her interest whetted, she visited commercial farming operations in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Asia. Investigating “organic” poultry farms, egg warehouses, and cattle, pig, and sheep farms, she found widespread force-feeding, unsanitary conditions, and confined living space. She began to realize that the bottom line was maximizing profit without regard to animal welfare, product purity, or even rudimentary sanitation. Since organic products command a higher price—in 2013, sales reached $35 billion in the United States—and the regulatory system is lax, organic has become a desirable alternative to traditional farming. Even small, family-run operations often use the methods of factory farming, which set the standards and control the supply chain—e.g., by calibrating weight gain to profitability. Faruqi contrasts this with a visit to a successful pastoral farm to demonstrate a humane alternative at only slightly higher consumer prices. The author's expertise in finance provides an extra dimension to this well-documented report.
Not for the fainthearted, but a good wake-up call for those concerned with decent treatment of animals and healthy food on the table.Pub Date: July 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-60598-798-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
PROFILES
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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