Book: Why We Love Dogs...
By Melanie Joy
In her groundbreaking new book, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, social psychologist and professor Melanie Joy explores the invisible system that shapes our perception of the meat we eat, so that we love some animals and eat others without knowing why. She calls this system carnism. Carnism is the belief system, or ideology, that allows us to selectively choose which animals become our meat, and it is sustained by complex psychological and social mechanisms.Our willingness to eat animals -- and only some animals at that -- says Joy, is enabled only through blocking out what we know -- about their capacity for consciousness and their ability to feel pain; about the inhumane husbandry practiced all over the world simply to satisfy our taste for foods we don't need in our diet; about the health risks involved in eating flesh of any kind; and on and on. In other words, we continue to eat meat and fish only out of a seemingly intransigent denial. Like other "isms" (racism, sexism, etc.), carnism is most harmful when it is unrecognized and unacknowledged. Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows names and explains this phenomenon and offers it up for examination. Unlike the many books that explain why we shouldn't eat meat, Joy's book explains why we do eat meat -- and thus how we can make more informed choices as citizens and consumers. Sure to spark conversation, controversy, and debate, this book challenges readers not only to own up to the choices they make each and every time they consume animal-based foods but moreover to change the way they think about food forever. Hardcover; 204 pages.
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