Book review - This is Vegan Propaganda (and other lies the meat industry tells you) - Ed Winters
I remember the momment I decided I was to become Vegan. It was March 2020 and I was leaving work and as I walked along the footpath, a lorry pulled up beside me at a junction. The smell hit me first, then the snouts and eyes peeking out through the slats. You could tell the pigs were tightly packed together and that conditions were horrific. But it was the noise that hit me most - the squealing of animals in distress. These creatures were being sent to gas chambers before having their throats cut, just to feed me. It was one of those instantaneous moments of clarity, and I couldn’t do it anymore.
I’d worked in a meat factory on the production line when I was a student and I’d hear the same sounds when I passed the slaughterhouse. In the canteen the workers would tell stories about how hard the animals would fight when they realised what was happening, or how some of them even managed to make a break and try to escape. This experience resulted in me turning vegetarian, something I tried half heartedly for a few years.
Veganism
I had been thinking about veganism for a while, especially as I got more deeper into my meditation practice and considered how to live a more ethical life, being compassionate to all living things. Caring for animals but eating them was something that I struggled with for some time. I justified it with the usual arguments about needing meat, that farming practices were humane etc etc
But this time was different. I love animals and wanted nothing more to do with any industry that abused and killed them. No ifs, no buts - Enough. I started cooking vegan meals and that was it; I’ve never looked back.
I haven’t read any books about veganism previously but I saw this one in the local library just recently and thought it deserving of my time. Obviously I’m now a committed vegan, but this book helped to educate me about many of the practices in the farming industry that I knew were happening but preferred not to think about. But I felt it was important to educate myself. As the saying goes, if slaughterhouses had glass walls, nobody would eat meat.
Ed Winters in ‘Vegan propaganda’ is excellent at providing the necessary facts and arguments. 220 million land animals are killed for food every day. That’s 80 billion a year. If you include fish, which you should, somewhere between 28 000 and 73 000 are killed for food - every second. As the author says at one point, to animals we are the devils of the planet, and we have turned their short existence into hell on earth.
Vegan diet
Farming is also incredibly damaging to the environment, when you think that a quarter of the worlds land mass is given over to grazing animals. Our rivers have been polluted by manure and fertiliser. Is it any wonder we have destroyed biodiversity? We could reduce the worlds farmland by 75% if we switched to a vegan diet. The world’s population is estimated to increase to 10 billion in the next 20 years and by 2050 we’ll need an area of land twice the size of India to graze animals.
As we’ve just left a pandemic, it’s worth remembering that 75% of infectious diseases come from non-human diseases. Intensive farming means that another pandemic is a matter of when, not if. If you consider pandemics on a range 1-5 with 5 as the worst, covid would be considered a 2. Just image a 4 or a 5.
Something else I hadn’t considered until I read this book was how the use of antibiotics on farm animals had resulted in their overuse. Antibiotic resistant diseases could kill ten million people by 2050. When you consider that cancer killed 9.6 million in 2018, that’s a terrifying statistic. We may be looking at a choice of either dying from cancer or bacterial infection, for which there is no treatment.
But as Ed Winters so eloquently relates in this book about the meat industry, although the slaughter of the animals is obviously horrific, what’s equally as bad is the treatment of animals on farms. I used to console myself as a vegetarian that dairy was ok because at least the animals lived. Reading this book, it’s lucky that these animals lives are as short as they are.
Reading and writing this book review of ‘This is vegan propaganda’ came at a time when I was thinking a lot about my conversion to veganism. It’s helped me to clarify a lot of my thoughts and feelings on the subject, as I often get asked questions on my food choices, especially when eating with friends.
Book about veganism
‘This is vegan propaganda’ is a tough read at times, which is as it should be. I myself have ignored the realities of farming for too long, and not thought about how food ends up on my plate. Cognitive dissonance is also a topic in the book - people are disgusted that dogs are eaten in parts of Asia, yet are happy to consume pigs (which, incidentally, have an IQ equal to that of a dog). It’s amazing how angry people get when they’re around vegans, as they’re forced to confront the fact that they love animals but also eat them and contribute to their suffering.
Ed Winters has organised this book about veganism to make it extremely readable. It’s illuminating and compassionate and also not without hope, as we can make changes now that can help both the environment and the coming generations. Veganism is gaining traction and moving more and more into the mainstream. People are good, and most love animals - governments and industries have convinced us that we need meat, when we don’t. Society is educating itself and fighting back - we can absolutely live more ethically and help the planet whilst doing so.
If you’re thinking about becoming vegan and still have doubts, ‘this is vegan propaganda’ is the book for you. I’d be surprised that anyone could read this book about the meat industry and not give up meat and dairy produce. This is a powerful book for vegans that is incredibly well researched and presents powerful arguments for turning to veganism and leading a more ethical lifestyle in order to both feed the planet and end cruelty towards non-human animals.
Book review - This is vegan propaganda (and other lies the meat industry tells you) by Ed Winters
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 6, 2022 Vermillion Publishing