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PRAISE FOR
Eating with Conscience
An excellent guidebook for the concerned consumer. Understanding
the ethical ramifications of food choices gives consumers new power
to reshape the food system and protect the environment. After you
read this book, the array of foods on the grocery store shelves
will never look the same.
--Margaret Mellon
Director of Agriculture and Biotechnology Union of Concerned
Scientists
After reading this book, you will never again see
meat as a benign commodity; it will have a face and a mother. Eating
with Conscience will change your world as it did mine.
--Howard F. Lyman, J.D.
President, International Vegetarian Union
Fox writes with passion and conviction, but also
with clarity and brevity. He has been an outstanding prophetic voice
in society, understanding where current trends, practices, and ideologies
inexorably lead.
--Bernard E. Rollin
Professor of Philosophy, and author, Farm Animal Welfare
If we are what we eat, then we are a mess! This book tells us
how we can be wholesome again.
--Jim Hightower
Political Commentator/Radio Host
Once you pick up this book, you will not put it
down. It makes you think twice about what you eat. Writing with
the insights of a veterinarian, Michael Fox observes that conventional
industrialized agriculture, with all of the “tricks of the
trade,” is rapidly obliterating natural systems, diminishing
the health of the land, and jeopardizing our social, physical and
spiritual health and the prospects of future generations. This book
is a must read for everyone who eats!
--Dr. C. Dean Freudenberger
Professor, Church and Society/Rural Ministries
Author, Global Dust Bowl
Not everyone will agree with Dr. Fox’s new book, but everyone
should read it. Together producers and eaters need to reevaluate
our food and farming system and make informed choices for the future.
Dr. Fox paints the choices before us in sharp relief.
--Fred Kirshcenmann
Farmer, Member of the
National Organics Standards Board
Michael Fox is a person of great compassion and
commitment to the welfare of all life. His book inspires others
to treat life---and the land and the water and the air---with respect.
--Robert Welborn
Chair, Center for Respect
of Life and Environment
Eating with Conscience raises the right
questions and places a wealth of experience and factual data on
the plate of a thoughtful consumer. This book is a valuable contribution
to the personal deliberation on diet that all of us need to conduct,
and a stimulus to the public debate that must now begin in earnest.
--Paul B. Thompson
Professor of Applied Ethics,
Purdue University
Eating with Conscience identifies the injustices
wrought by an economic system controlled by a dwindling number of
wealthy and powerful corporations. Michael Fox shows us how these
issues are connected and, most importantly, demonstrates that every
dollar we spend is a vote for a future. If we eat with conscience,
we will change the world in a most profound way.
--Anne Schwartz
President, Washington Tilth Producers
This book is a clarion call for consumers to join
the movement for sustainable agriculture: By buying foods grown
in healthy ways, we can support those good farmers who will shift
the fate of rural American---and the world’s environment---away
from the unhealthy industrial agribusiness treadmill.
--Loni Kemp
Senior Policy Analyst
for the Minnesota Project
Eating with Conscience is a comprehensive
and alarming portrayal of the food safety, human and animal health,
environmental, and other high and often hidden costs to consumers
of the government-subsidized and agribusiness-driven industrialization
of American agriculture. Michael Fox, a veterinarian, provides the
expert documentation consumers need to challenge this dangerous
trend.
--Roger Blobaum
Former Director, American for Safe Food
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Michael W. Fox
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Michael W. Fox joined
The Humane Society of the United States (The HSUS) in Washington,
D.C., in 1976. Over the years he has worked extensively in animal
reform. He currently serves as Vice President of Bioethics for Humane
Society International and Senior Advisor to the President for The
HSUS. In addition, he is on the Board of Directors for the Center
of Respect of Life and Environment, an affiliate of The HSUS.
Michael Fox has also developed several technical
research programs that applied scientific methods to the investigation
of the many uses of animals, notably laboratory, companion, and
farm animals. Fox has written extensively on many aspects of animals,
and has more than forty books, some of which have received special
recognition or science awards. Fox has a nationwide syndicated newspaper
column, “Ask Your Animal Doctor.” He is also a consulting
veterinarian, and gives lectures, seminars and presentations both
in the United States and abroad on a variety of topics related to
animal welfare, behavior, conservation, and bioethics.
Dr. Fox has a veterinary degree from London’s
Royal Veterinary College, and a Ph.D. in medicine and a D.Sc. in
ethology/animal behavior, both from London University, England.
He is profiled in Who’s Who in America and in Who’s Who
in the World.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter One -- Why Eat with Conscience?
- Kitchen Anarchists
- The Consumer’s Right to Know
- Whom Can You Trust?
- Making a Difference
Chapter Two -- Factory Farming: A Holocaust
in the Animal Kingdom
- Who Benefits from Factory Farms?
- Hidden Costs of Factory Farms
- Animals as Production Units
- Disease and Drugs on Factory Farms
- Manure as Hazardous Waste
- Trace Minerals and Impoverished Soils
- Animal and Human Hazards in the Slaughterhouse
- Mad Cow Disease and Animal Tankage
- Cattle Methane and Global Warming
- Environmental Costs of Factory Farms
Chapter Three -- The Rotten Roots of Agribusiness
- Family Farms Versus Corporate Agribusiness
- Monopolistic Food Industry
- The Cost of Industrialized Farming
- Agrichemicals and Pesticides
- Farmers Health Hazards
- Pesticides and the Cancer Threat
- Government Inspectors and Contaminated Food
- Government Subsidies and Ecological Bankruptcy
- The Commodity Crop Treadmill
- The Shrinking Genetic Pool
- Taxpayers Subsidize Agribusiness Advertising
- School Promotion of Agribusiness Interests
- Agribusiness Protecting the Status Quo
- Wanted: Government Support
Chapter Four -- Genetic Engineering and Biomedical
Research
- No Protection for Farm Animals
- Who Controls the Food? Who knows what we
eat?
- Concerns and Doubts About Biotechnology
- Gene Splicing
- Embryo Transfer and Cloning
- Who Needs Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone?
- Consumer’s Rights to Know Versus FDA
Agenda
- Genetic Engineering Versus Organic Agriculture
- Bioethical Criteria
Chapter Five -- A Sea of Troubled Waters: Factory
Fishing and Aquaculture
- Overfishing
- Aquaculture, Aquabusiness: A Pharmaceutical
Stew
- Fish Hatcheries
- Is Seafood Safe to Eat?
Chapter Six -- Beware: You Are What You Eat
- The Dangers of Eating Meat
- Poisoned and Contaminated Meat
- Milk Risks
- Food and Our Emotions
- Compassionate Kitchens
Chapter Seven -- Power of the Plate: Eating
for a Greener World
- Less Meat, More Plants
- The Natural Diet
- Eating Wrong with USDA Recommendations
- Foods That Heal
- Nutritional Considerations
- Plant-Based Solutions
Chapter Eight -- Stopping the Wasteland
- Organic Agriculture
- Humane Sustainable Agriculture
- Farm Animals in Sustainable Agriculture
- The Seven Principles of Humane Organic Agriculture
Chapter Nine -- Change of Conscience: Actions
and Solutions
- Initiatives for Concerned and Conscientious
Consumers
- The Ten Commandments of Humane Organic Sustainable
Agriculture
- Chef’s Join the Revolution
- Consumer Beware: Products from Animal Suffering
- Pets and Pet Food
- Gourmet Products to Avoid
- Community Supported Agriculture
Appendix: Mad Cow Disease Fact Sheet
Resources
Select Bibliography
Glossary
Endnotes
Index
About the Author
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