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Agric Hum Values (2012) 29:427428 DOI 10.1007/s10460-012-9385-7
Daniel Imhoff (Ed): The CAFO reader: the tragedy of industrial animal factories
University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 2010, 462 pp, IBSN 0970950055
Loka Ashwood
Accepted: 1 June 2012 / Published online: 21 June 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012
Daniel Imhoffs edited volume The CAFO Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories, is a powerful documentation of the horrors beheld in animal and aqua-culture factories, the factors that lead to their proliferation, and their devastating effects on the social and ecological environments that house them. The book is compiled of 32 short articles authored by 37 authors, and separate introductions with factual sections making up some of the best material of the book. The authors range from well-known journalists such as Michael Pollan, to famous environmental advocates like Robert Kennedy Jr., and to scholars, including anthropologist Wendell Thu. The book is primarily a battle cry to combat what the editor calls one of the greatest humanitarian crises of modern times. The book aims to help activists become articulate on this issue so they can forge arguments, alliances, and strategies to campaign for a change in social norms that ultimately eliminates these food animal factories (p. xi).
The book largely lives up to its goal. It is a path-breaking compilation of the primary problems with and the resolutions for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. These include chronologically: The Pathological Mindset of the CAFO; Myths of the CAFO; Inside the CAFO; The Loss of Diversity; Hidden Costs of CAFOs; The Technological Takeover; and Putting the CAFO out to Pasture. These sections and their chapters smoothly evolve into a clearly organized guide to understanding CAFOs, and provide...