Most of the issues mentioned here can be solved by making sure animals are numbed before being butchered. ( )

Uncovers the psychological mechanisms we use in order to ignore the cruelty of animal production. Since humans strive not to be controlled by such factors, you will be much more vegan after reading this book. ( )

One of the most noticeable display of cognitive dissonance exhibited by the modern apes in the west is their reaction to the infamous dog /cat eating rituals of apes in the south east asia regions ; The moral outrage , media backlash etc. predictable tribalistic symptoms are displayed -YET they do not bat an eyelid when it comes to factory farming. The neurosis is so deep that the ape cannot fathom how one could eat a dog and in the same breath chow down on a turkey while thanking imaginary deities! (Thanksgiving turkeys are impregnated with a blower at 11 secs for 3 turkeys and usually an undocumented immigrant)
I will have to agree with pretty much everything Melanie Joy has to say ; While she wont convert me to veganism but got me thinking on being more ethical and mindful on what gets put on my plate .
Melanie starts by exposing the mental defense mechanism towards the “meat-eating” culture and coins the word Carnism , detailing slaughter house horror stories , weakening of regulations , impact on environment etc
( )

Melanie Joy is the leading researcher in the field of carnism, a field she invented. If that sounds a tad catty, sorry, but I'm laboring under the burden of having actually read her book.

Dr. Joy purports to give us a thoroughly researched discussion of the psychology of why we eat meat, and why we eat some animals and not other animals. This book has gotten a lot of praise, for it's fairness and respectful attitude towards people who eat meat. I'm honestly mystified by that praise. The assumption of the moral superiority of veganism is quite clear. It's true she does assume that us carnists are doing it because we're bad people. No, she assumes it's because we don't know any better, are ignorant, brainwashed, and perhaps not very bright. This book is poorly researched, poorly reasoned, and overall pretty silly.

One of the sillier and more annoying features of the book is her effort, repeated throughout the book, to suggest that eating meat is not natural--despite the fact that she concedes our ancestors have been doing it for two million years. Despite the fact that we've been eating meat since before we were fully human, we only eat meat because of an "ideology of carnism." Really? I want to read her explanation of how this "ideology of carnism" arose in Homo erectus, or among the tribes of chimpanzees who hunt, kill, and eat monkeys whenever they get the chance.

Saying that something our ancestors have been doing for two million years, since before we were fully human, is "not natural" is to strip the word "natural" of all meaning.

On the "lack of respect" point, I think it's rather hard to overlook the quotes used throughout the book, many about Nazis and how they treated the people they considered subhuman, some about slavery, some about misogyny. You're not being "respectful" when you imply that the people who disagree with you are like the Nazis. On the internet, that would be called a "Godwin violation" and the discussion would shut down. And I'll note an amusing little irony: Hitler was a vegetarian, and very concerned about humane treatment of animals. Does that make vegetarians bad? Does it make them like Nazis? Of course not! Nazis have nothing to do with this discussion, and it's a mistake for Dr. Joy to pretend that they do.

One of her basic points is that we perceive some animals as food, and some animals as family members, and still others as just icky. ("Icky" is my word, not hers.) In America, she says, we eat cows, and pigs, and chickens, because we perceive them differently than we perceive dogs. If only we were not so deluded and confused, we'd see that this difference in perception is silly, and that dogs, cows, pigs, and chickens are all really the same, sentient beings with feelings and identity. In Dr. Joy's view, it's all false perception on our part, and while she does not quite come out and use the phrase, "a rat is a dog is a boy," it's implied very strongly. There's no moral difference between eating a cow and eating a human being.

She also makes a big point of the fact that different cultures class different animals in the "animals we eat" and "animals we love" categories, implying that this proves the inherent invalidity of classing any animals as "okay to eat."

No, sorry, not true. We perceive dogs and cows and chickens differently because our relationships with them are different. Our relationships with them are very different because the animals themselves are very different. Dogs evolved out of wolves because early humans and early, proto-dog wolves had both similar social structures and complementary abilities and needs. Humans created middens of the bits of both plants and animals that were not edible to them but were edible to hungry wolves; the wolf proto-dogs who followed the human hunter-gatherer bands had better scent, hearing, and night vision, and raised the alarm when critters (human, wolf, or other) that weren't part of the established and recognized band. Everyone was better off, a little better fed and a little safer, and this evolved into a human-dog partnership--starting at least 14,000 years ago, and possibly, depending on which body of evidence and which reasoning about it you find most convincing, 250,000 years ago. If the extreme early date is at all accurate, proto-dog wolves starting partnering up with us when we were still making the transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens. If the latest, most recent date is correct, it was still while we were paleolithic hunter-gatherers with the beginnings of agriculture still thousands of years in our future.

Cows, on the other hand, evolved out of wild cattle that our ancestors hunted for food.

It's quite true that different cultures have different relationships with the same animals. Hindus don't eat cows; they revere them. Jews and Muslims don't eat pigs; they regard them as unclean. In China and Korea, and Dr. Joy somewhat gleefully tells us, people do eat dogs. She does note that in Korea, as more people keep dogs as pets, there's a growing movement to ban eating dogs.

What I think she's missing is that these differences are not random or accidental. Differences in food preferences and beliefs about food don't just happen. Judaism has some complex food rules that had the cultural benefit of differentiating them from their neighbors and keeping a small culture intact and cohesive, but the ban on pigs is different. There are real ecological reasons for pastoralist and subsistence agricultural cultures in the Middle East to avoid keeping pigs, no matter how tasty they are. That's why Muslims and Jews share that ban. (Note: I am talking about the practical origins, not the religious meaning it has to practicing believers.)

As for dogs and the eating and non-eating thereof: Even large dogs are much smaller than cows or pigs or horses, on the one hand, and not nearly as prolific and quickly-maturing as chickens. They're not an economic source of food, and they are eaten, where they are eaten, either as a delicacy or out of desperation.

Another area of silliness is her claim that we use different words for live animals (sheep, cows, pigs) and for the same animals when we eat them (mutton, beef, pork.) A minimal effort at research would have revealed to her--something she probably already knows, if she just stopped to think about it. This vocabulary difference comes from post-Norman Conquest England, where English peasants raised cows, pigs, and sheep, and talked about them in their own English language, while the meat was eaten by the Norman overlords--who spoke French. This vocabulary difference doesn't exist in, at least, most Western languages.

Meanwhile, Dr. Joy is overlooking two little details that undermine her point even without the linguistic history. First, when we eat chickens, we normally refer to the meat as "chicken." The same is true of turkeys and turkey. Rather an odd discrepancy, if the word differences have the "purpose" of making us forget that the meat on our plates used to be live animals. The other point is that, while the English eat mutton--the meat of adult sheep--Americans rarely do. When Americans eat the meat of sheep, we eat the meat of baby sheep--lambs. And we call that meat "lamb." Lamb chops. Leg of lamb. Rack of lamb.

It's hard to look at that fact and claim we're trying to hide the truth from ourselves because we couldn't bear to eat them otherwise.

Where her book is stronger is on the abuses of our meat production industry. Factory farming of cows, chickens, pigs, and sheep has produced terrible abuses, imperfectly and often ineffectively "regulated" by a USDA that is essentially a captive agency, charge with both regulating the industry and promoting its products. The conditions in factory farms are often appalling, and a typical slaughterhouse can be horrific. Our food animals generally don't live normal lives, and despite regulations intended to prevent it, often die in terror and pain. I try to make the best choices I can on the source of my food; I know people who are vegetarians, or effectively vegetarians, because they can't afford meat that meets their standards for humane production. This is a real issue. Our tax dollars are going to "farm" subsidies that in reality promote CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) that are abnormal and unhealthy for the animals, compromise the safety of our food supply, and create environment-destroying pollution from runoff of animal waste and chemicals on a scale more traditional manufacturing factories are no longer permitted to do. There is absolutely nothing positive to be said about CAFOs; whether from animal welfare, human nutrition, or environmental safety, they're bad news.

Stop the subsidies, stop tilting the playing field in favor of these travesties, and our food would cost a bit more, but be dramatically healthier and more secure, while our environment would suffer much less damage.

But this brings us back to another silly claim: that locking up food production behind walls where most of us never see how our food animals are treated makes it easier for us to eat meat without picturing the live animals it came from and thereby being repelled by it. It seems a superficially reasonable argument, but it stumbles on reality. If this argument were correct, there should be more people eating meat, and eating more of it, than in past generations, most of human history, when people lived side by side with their food animals, their cattle, their sheep, their chickens, their pigs, when every animal was an individual, usually with a name. Or else deer and pheasants and rabbits were hunted, and had to be killed by the hunter and butchered by him or his wife so that they could eat. Vegetarianism should be on the decline, if Dr. Joy were correct about this.

But vegetarianism and veganism are on the rise, not on the decline. I think it's because people know, at a gut level, that there's something wrong with not knowing how your food animals are raised. We evolved as a species that knew, in the most visceral possible way, that the meat we ate came from living animals who valued their lives as much as we value our own. Most cultures have had rituals to respect the life of the animal killed, and the sacrifice being made when that life is taken to provide food for the humans. The reason we have more vegetarians and vegans, and many people who still eat meat eat less than they would have in the past, is because it's abnormal for meat to come in neatly wrapped packages bearing no resemblance to a living animal, and we know intuitively the dangers of not knowing how your food is raised. It's why urban farming is on the rise--the natural human drive to not be so disconnected from your food, and unaware of the lives of the animals you eat.

I cannot recommend this book, except for the advantages of knowing what otherwise-sensible people are saying and thinking.

I purchased this book. ( )

This book is more of "an introduction to carnism" than a true discussion of "why we love dogs, eat pigs and wear cows." With the length of this book, one shouldn't expect an in-depth anthropological adventure; truthfully, it doesn't even really get to a satisfying answer. It is a perfect quick read for anyone who has never considered their meat-eating habits. If you already subscribe to the vegetarian/vegan lifestyle, you will find little new information. Yet, the way the information is provided (behavioral and emotional inconsistencies) is interesting.

As a long-time vegetarian, I don't think eating meat is wrong. I find the way it is raised and mass consumed to be the problem. This is addressed in the book.

The last part of the book, where Joy calls for witnessing, is harsh and not pleasant to read. Being the last words, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. ( )

I LOVE how Dr. Joy so concisely expresses how we see, feel, and believe about these issues and why we choose consistent ethical vegan living over the moral inconsistency that harms the vulnerable.

This is a MUST read for all of us; it's been a real EYE-OPENER for a great many whom I've met recently who also have read this book (or heard Dr. Joy speak). ( )

Awesome one-of-a-kind, objective look by a psychologist at how a violent (to both animals and humans) food system is so entrenched in our animal loving society of people who mostly all have good intentions. I recommend this book to everyone because everyone eats and everyone lives in this system! Also, this book is concise and easy to read, so it's well worth your time. Everything flows together very well, and I didn't find myself getting bored at all.
You can also get to know yourself better by reading this book as Dr. Joy discusses different aspects of human nature.

Edit: Just realized there is a trailer for this book! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3CsceN26_E Interesting to see the opening scene on the first page of the book acted out.

Also an interview with the author: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrOuYhXwET8
( )

recommended for: psychology & philosophy classes; public health-health professionals; all thoughtful people

As I read this book, I vacillated between saying to myself “well, duh!” and then thinking it was an exceptional book, one where this subject has never been written about before in this exact way. It’s a slim book but it contains a lot of food for thought.

I felt as though I were back in a college psychology class because my mind was being stimulated in just the way it was during some of those classes. It’s written in a very reader friendly manner and even though there’s a lot of terminology that might not be familiar to all readers, it doesn’t use a lot of jargon, it’s written so that any unfamiliar words will have a clear meaning with the reading of them.

Melanie Joy has coined the word carnism and I really like that the word is now in the vernacular.

The book is definitely written for and directed at the carnists, the vast majority of the population who accepts the dominant paradigm; those living as omnivores. However, vegetarians and vegans can also learn a lot from this book.

Unless I’m reading for a class of some sort, I rarely take notes when I read books for pleasure or edification, but I took many notes here. I’m going to leave most of them out of this review. I don’t want to just regurgitate the book’s contents here. I want readers to read the book for themselves.

This is a psychology and philosophy book and the author’s musings and hypotheses were what interested me most. I cared less for the material about the atrocities committed against farmed animals. However, I because I do believe the author was writing for those who’d maybe never questioned they way things are, that information might be necessary to put what she is saying into context, and it actually makes up a rather small part of the book. I really do love her though!: She specifically says that once we know the full extent and all the details of the suffering of animals, we no longer need to continually expose ourselves to graphic imagery in order to work on their behalf. Thank goodness! I’ve been reading what’s what for over two decades and sometimes it’s just too painful for me to put my focus on the specifics of what goes on.

I love the one or two quotes that start off each chapter; they’re so apt. I liked them so much so that I put a few of them in my Goodreads quotes.

For Americans who truly cannot care about the 20 billion animals killed for food in the U.S. every year, or even care about the devastation caused to the environment, the 300 million (human) animals might get their attention. I love how the author refers to these 300 million as the collateral damage of carnism: the factory farm workers, those who live near factory farms, and those who eat animal flesh.

Most people like to believe that they make their own choices, and that they’re in control of how they act. I’d like to challenge them to read this book because the author talks about how the pervasive and violent ideology of carnism is the norm, how most believe without questioning, how the system is set up so that much of the truth is hidden from the population, and how this system is so entrenched that it’s just the way things are, and most aren’t even aware of their philosophy or aware they even have a philosophy. Vegetarianism has been named because those people are doing something different. Carnism was never named because those people are just doing what everybody does. It’s invisible, legitimized, and unnamed until now.

The author writes about how every aspect of society, not just those making money off the killing of animals, goes along with this ideology of carnism, including the legal system and the news media. The system depends on its invisibility, on myth, on conformity, on objectification, deindividulization, dichotomization of the animals, and on confirmation bias, where people get fed what they already believe.

She contends that most people feel better if they attain integration, a state where their values and practices are in alignment, that most people are actually disgusted by what they think of as moral offenses, that in order to do what they’re doing as carnists dissociation and denial are widespread, because while society believes eating meat is normal, natural, and necessary, those aren’t really facts.

Studies have shown (she uses Stanley Milgram’s experiments as an example) that people will sometimes not obey their own consciences but will cede to those in authority. Joy encourages her readers to question that external authority and question the status quo, and pay attention to their own internal authority.

The book ends on a very hopeful note. The author believes that not only can we change and that the time is right for change, but that the vast majority of people would be more comfortable with their values and actions matching. So she believes that people can change and will want to change when they learn the truth. She gives some of those truths in this book. The reader can decide for herself/himself what to make of the information.

At the end of the book there is a list of useful resources, notes, a bibliography, and an index.

The way I figure it, even those people who are certain that they will want to eat animals their whole lives will appreciate this book. The ideas she proposes here can be generalized to all sorts of subjects, at least some that every reader will find beneficial to contemplate. ( )

Between the reviews here, Goodreads and the first 3 chapters of the book that I read, I decided to abandon this book. Joy's writing is rambling and repetitive. She thrives on scare tactics and doesn't provide any alternatives to the methods she denounces. This is not a well-written book, and it doesn't do anything to bolster the vegetarian movement, nor does it do anything to benefit the vegetarian reputation.

For disclosure: I have been dabbling with becoming a vegetarian and I had high hopes for this book. One of the main reasons I want to give up meat is because I'm uneasy about the treatment of animals in these factories and slaughterhouses. While Joy does shed light on the horrors of the animals and how little attention is being paid to their treatment, this book didn't really provide any resources for me. It just presented a thesis that our perceptions of animals gears us to love some more than others. A valid point, but the content of the book seems lacking and fluffed. I think this would have been better as an Op-ed piece for a newspaper rather than an entire book. ( )

I picked up the book because of the title.It was clear and bold The rest of the book I'm afraid however is not.I'm not sure what it is that I expected but I really was interested in looking at the psychology that goes along with eating meat in the modern world.I suppose I wanted a detached observers view.Unfortunately the book clearly has a bias and that I believe is it's downfall.The book fails to offer any new information and what it did offer was something that one could stumble upon in a wikipedia article.The stories are sad of course but they do little to nothing other then to serve as the vegens version of torture porn.The entire last half of the book is just a sloppily strung along narrative filled with quotes and second hand stories.The Author I'm afraid simply has no skill for writing and comes across very heavy handed and preachy not to mention also fails to address the issues of privilege that I feel go hand in hand when one is discussing changes in diet. ( )

I have to disclose right now that I'm vegan, and I think the most interesting part of this entire book is the title. It's such a great statement, but I didn't feel as though it was addressed at all. Instead I found the same information that I've been reading for years about why people should be vegan (although it was wrapped up in the intriguing word "carnism"); since I already know why I'm vegan, this wasn't news. I have to say that I did learn some psychology lingo that I never knew, as I somehow managed to make it through years of schooling without ever taking Psychology.

The best part of the book discusses meat industry, including hygiene, ecological and worker safety issues. Joy argues that it enables us to eat meat because we don't see the connection between the living animal and the food product. I don't want my other remarks to take away from the importance of this issue. I don't think that Joy is any happier about meat-eating that is outside the industry, however. Hunters may actually be eating in a manner that is environmentally sensitive, and Joy would have to do mental acrobatics, to use one of her favorite words, to claim that they fail to understand that they have killed and eaten an animal. But her reasoning about the "walls" on the slaughterhouse enabling us to eat meat is illogical. I would argue that the walls aren't there because we are squeamish, we are squeamish because the walls are there, and we don't grow up seeing animals slaughtered as our ancestors did. If it worked like Joy argues, then vegetarianism should be on decline rather than on the rise, now that we are sheltered from scenes of slaughter.

Joy's discussion of the sociological issues of meat-eating leave me wondering how she got a degree in sociology, and if that degree is worth much. She attempts to scare us off of meat eating by telling us that it is part of a culturally constructed schema, as if the S-word would give us the heeby-jeebies. (This is parenthetically, as close as she ever gets to fulfilling the promise made in the title.) So, I might add, is vegetarianism. And yes, she is right, things aren't always very logical, and sometimes seem contradictory. How did Joy get a Ph.D. in sociology without noticing that human culture is like that? I don't really understand why I am supposed to find it bizarre that I relate differently to different animals. I understand that PETA used to ask people what the difference was between eating a cow and eating my dog. The difference is that I have made a companion of the dog. This is a relationship I entered into and in which I accept obligations, not some diffuse, abstract concept of rights held by creatures incapable of understanding and exercising them. I feel no need to have the same relationship with all animals any more than the same relationship with all people. I don't have the same relationship with friends that I have with strangers. Would Joy be happier if I removed the "inconsistency" by eating a dog? Joy emphasizes repeatedly that other societies have other schema (most of which allow eating meat, however) and argues that a person with an independent mind would do things her way.

She says in a note that this book is aimed at Americans. More than that, obviously, it is aimed at Americans who don't fish, hunt, or slaughter their own livestock, or who aren't willing to try eating just about anything. If you keep repeating this to yourself, you might be able to repress the fact that historically and anthropologically, Joy's arguments are nonsense. Generally, the Is-Ought problem is framed in terms of unwarranted movements from Is to Ought. Joy moves from Ought to Is. Joy simply cannot connect the dots, to use one of her favorite expressions, about the realities of human omnivorism. She seems to be unable to get past the conviction that if human beings realize that they are eating a once-living animal, they would be so repulsed that they would become vegans, in spite of a wealth of evidence that this isn't true. In some cultures, people actually live with their animals in their homes, and slaughter and eat them. They have more knowledge of those animals than I, and I suspect, Joy will ever have. Although she admits that our ancestors have been eating meat for two million years, she claims that it is neither natural nor normal. If it isn't, then those words have no meaning. If eating meat is cosmically immoral, than explain why god/nature/ whatever the source for this authoritarian statement has allowed omnivorous and carnivorous animals. The usual argument that they cannot choose is stupid--if the universe abhorred meat eating the default would be veganism for all species. Joy calls for us to think of ourselves as being in the web of life, and animal rights activists often tell us that we should not think of ourselves as a special species. When one considers how other species act, this is hardly a clarion call for a vegan lifestyle, or a sense of the rights of others.

One of Joy's arguments against normal and natural is that those two concepts are used as authoritative reasons. One has to learn to think about it though, and the natural argument should be carefully used. When someone presses you not to think on the grounds that something is natural, ask yourself, is this person living in a hunter-gatherer band of twenty to thirty people? If not, they aren't being very natural either. It is only to be expected that Joy, on the other hand, has no qualms about using the "natural" argument, as in our natural empathy, when it suits her purpose.

So in sum, I think that Joy's reasoning is often faulty, and her use of sociological and anthropological information makes one want to carefully exam her credentials. Still, however natural or normal meat-eating is, it certainly isn't a moral or social imperative. Each person must make their own decisions.

This is a pretty standard book for its type, to judge by my not terribly extensive reading. I find Joy's self-righteousness and her assumption that her reader is ignorant and unthinking without her assistance a bit abrasive, but no doubt vegans will find it entirely appropriate. Vegans who want confirmation and support for their positions, will probably enjoy this book. ( )

Joy has a clear thesis: We eat certain animals and not others because we separate them in our minds, and that eating and kind of animal is no different from eating another kind, therefore eating any animal is immoral. She has the notion that eating meat, or carnism, is a myth that we are forced to accept.

And how does she do this? By talking about Nazis and dog eating. She includes quite a bit about the meat industry, but rather than use this as a way to insist that our food be treated properly until it's killed (a la Temple Grandin), she says this is evidence of our evil ways. I completely agree with part of her thesis, but we diverge on others. First of all, we don't eat dogs because we are acculturated to NOT eat dogs (or horses for that matter). Many cultures do eat dogs. But what annoys me the most is the comparison between how we get meat on our tables and the Nazis. The irony of this form of Reductio ad Hitlerum is, of course, that Hitler was also a vegetarian.

I strongly doubt this books will convince any meat eaters to stop eating meat. It will be an excellent book for some kinds of vegetarians to make them feel better about their decisions. But overall, it started with a weak thesis, presented weak arguments, and used lousy rhetorical tricks to try to prove a point. Vegetarianism and ethical eating are lofty goals. Ethical eating, in particular, is one to which we should all aspire. This book may present some information to convince people of this. But it could have been much better executed. ( )

My first impression of this book is that I need to re-think my diet. I am a carnivore, and I don't feel apologetic about this. However, descriptions of how animals are treated by the industrial food complex were stomach-turning, to say the least. In the past year I have searched for meat sources that provide more humanely raised and slaughtered products; I'm willing to pay more. However, there are limited sources for this. This book will make a reader uncomfortable and force some contemplation, which is all to the good. Other reviewers have done an excellent job reviewing the aspects of the book. I vote this as a must-read for anyone who wants to live a conscientious life. ( )

Carnism: The Psychology of “Meat”-Eating 101

Recently, I had the pleasure of reviewing Melanie Joy’s WHY WE LOVE DOGS, EAT PIGS, AND WEAR COWS: AN INTRODUCTION TO CARNISM (2010) though the website Basil & Spice. As a former psychology major and vegan of five years (and vegetarian for eight years on top of that), CARNISM is right up my alley. Dr. Joy, a social psychologist and animal advocate, deconstructs our “meat culture,” identifying a number of key defense mechanisms that shield Westerners from an uncomfortable reality: how can we claim to “love” and “care for” nonhuman animals, yet enslave, torture, slaughter, dismember, process and consume them to the tune of tens of billions per year? The answer lies in our “carnistic system.”

Carnism, Joy posits, is the invisible belief system (or ideology) that underlies our unthinking consumption of “meat.” We have so internalized this behavior – “meat”-eating – that we do not even recognized it as a choice, but rather blindly accept it as a normal and necessary way of life; “meat” consumption is “just the way it is.” Carnism is the logical counterpart to vegetarianism: just as one can decide not to eat meat, so too is meat-eating a choice. And yet, while the terms “vegetarianism” and “veganism” are part of common parlance, we have no such word for “carnism.” Because the ideology that supports “meat” consumption remains unnamed, it’s seen as something natural, inevitable, existing outside of a belief system. Or it’s not seen at all – it’s invisible. We can avoid thinking about it because we lack the tools (words) with which to talk about it. In naming, there is power. Words matter.

This is, I think, is CARNISM’s greatest strength. With the introduction of one simple, short word, Joy gives us a tool with which to single out our “meat” culture for criticism and critique. “Carnism” unveils the choices behind the curtain – choices which are so incongruous with our innate sense of compassion, Joy argues, that we must go to great lengths to defend these choices from scrutiny. At a macro level, this is called psychic numbing: “we disconnect, mentally and emotionally, from our experience; we ‘numb’ ourselves. [...] Psychic numbing is adaptive, or beneficial, when it helps us to cope with violence. But it becomes maladaptive, or destructive, when it is used to enable violence.”

On both an individual and institutional level, we engage in a number of defense mechanisms that help us to achieve psychic numbing:

1. Denial: Also called “practical invisibility,” denial (as proposed by Joy) is the process by which the horrific realities of “meat” (and egg and dairy) production are literally kept invisible to us. For example, we “grow” billions of chickens, turkeys, pigs, cows, lambs, etc. for food every year; but where are they!? Few of us rarely, if ever, witness these animals grazing the land, rearing their offspring, sunning themselves in the grass or preening in the dirt. But they’re out there: crammed by the tens of thousands into massive, windowless buildings, located in large complexes on the outskirts of town. These animals are trucked to and from slaughter in unmarked vans; their only exposure to the outdoors comes when they await sale or death, on the auction block or at the slaughterhouse. Practically speaking, they remain invisible to us, as does their suffering. Because many of us enjoy eating “meat,” eggs and milk, this is how we like it.

2. Avoidance: The counterpart to denial, avoidance involves “symbolic invisibility”; it is “knowing without knowing.” The animal agriculture industry – with no small amount of help from the other major social institutions, such as the government and news media – feed us ridiculous, transparent lies about “meat” production, and we eagerly gobble them up. “Humane meat” is a joke; labels such as “organic,” “free range,” “grass fed,” etc. are rendered meaningless through industry lobbying and self-policing, and besides, no unnecessary death can ever be called “humane.” While the government has ostensibly established myriad rules regarding food safety, animal welfare, and environmental responsibility, again, these rules remain full of loopholes and usually go unenforced. For example, chickens aren’t considered “animals” under either the Animal Welfare Act or the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act. Polluting animal ag. monopolies may be ordered to clean up their manure-filled lagoons – but it’s usually the public footing the bill through tax monies.

3. Justification: We use a series of myths in order to convince ourselves of the “justness” of carnism. These myths typically involve the 3 Ns, as Joy refers to them:

Normal – Carnism has become normalized, such that its tenets are social norms. Social norms are both descriptive (telling us how things are now) and prescriptive (dictating to us how things ought to be).

Natural – If something is “natural,” it’s assumed to be “justifiable”: “The way ‘natural’ translates to ‘justifiable’ is through the process of naturalization. [...] When an ideology is naturalized, its tenets are believed to be in accordance with the laws of nature.” “Natural” = “the way things are meant to be.”

Necessary – Closely tied to the supposed “naturalness” of carnism, “meat’s” perceived “necessity” makes it seem inevitable; not a choice. But clearly “meat” consumption is a choice – in industrialized nations, anyhow – as any vegan or vegetarian can attest.

4. Objectification: Via objectification, we reduce living, sentient beings to nothing more than objects; we objectify them. Clearly, a cow is nothing like a television set – but both are considered pieces of property in our “modern,” “civilized” society.

5. Deindividualization: Through deindividualization, we strip animals of their individual identities, viewing them as pieces of a group and nothing more. One individual in the group is thought of as indistinguishable from all the rest; thus, the singular sentient beings become unfamiliar abstractions. (This is why Americans recoil at the thought of eating dog meat; most of us have either lived with or known at least one dog on a personal level. Dogs are individuals, familiars, whereas cows, pigs, fishes and chickens are not.)

8. Dichotomization: Dichotomization involves grouping animals into two distinct, often diametrically opposed, categories: food/not food, cute/ugly, dirty/clean. These categories are usually arbitrary and based on our own prejudices and stereotypes rather than any semblance of reality. Along with objectification and deindividualization, dichotomization allows us to “distance” ourselves from “food” animals at will.

9. Rationalization: To rationalize a behavior is to attempt to provide a rational explanation for a behavior that is, at its core, irrational. Animal agriculture is wasteful, unsustainable, harmful to human health and the environment, and – above all else – inherently cruel to the billions of nonhuman animals who are enslaved and killed for nothing more than human “taste” and “convenience” and corporate profits. Yet, our culture is replete with rationalizations for this most irrational of business and ethical models (for a few dozen examples, see the Defensive Omnivore Bingo cards).

10. Dissociation: Described by Joy as “the heart of psychic numbing,” dissociation is “is psychologically and emotionally disconnecting from the truth of our experience; it is the feeling of not being fully ‘present’ or conscious.” Often times, dissociation is triggered by a traumatic experience, for example, experiencing or witnessing a physical assault. Given that “meat” production involves the assault and murder of tens of billions of sentient beings per year – and “meat”- eating is, literally, the consumption of a once-living, once-feeling individual – it makes sense that the same psychological defense mechanism that protects us from reliving our own distressful experience also shields us from the uncomfortable truth that, with every animal-based meal, we are directly participating in another being’s living (and dying) hell.

In order to counter carnism, Joy says that we must “bear witness” – that is, make the invisible, visible. At its core, bearing witness involves naming, identifying, and challenging our “meat”-eating culture. This can be as simple as living vegan in a non-vegan world – indeed, for many, veganism is the moral baseline – thus acting as an example of an alternative way of being. Volunteering at or donating to an animal sanctuary, attending protests, writing, photography, art-as-activism, adopting a homeless animal in need, organizing a vegan bake sale, procuring vegan and animal rights books for your local library, raising a compassionate vegan child, engaging in open rescues, shooting undercover footage of a local animal exploitation business – all of these (and more!) are examples of bearing witness. Bearing witness begins – but does not end – on one’s plate.

Joy ties carnism to similar, human-directed “violent ideologies.” Throughout the text, she gives examples of how denial, avoidance, routinization, justification, objectification, deindividualization, dichotimization, rationalization and dissociation have been – are being – used to support sexist, racist, and colonialist systems of oppression. Hopefully, Joy’s inclusion of intersectionality in CARNISM will spur her audience to make these connections for themselves, in their everyday lives. Once you open your eyes and your mind to the idea that all oppressions are linked at a root or cellular level, these intersections become evident everywhere.

Here, it’s worth noting that CARNISM was obviously written with two audiences in mind: vegans and vegetarians who want to learn more about the psychological underpinnings of our “meat”-obsessed culture, and omnivores who are curious about or perhaps beginning to question their diet. While I understand the economic need for “multitasking” – casting as wide a net when writing and marketing a book – I sometimes find myself disappointed by the results.

For example, Joy spends much time explaining the basics of animal agriculture, of which many vegetarians and vegans are already aware. While Joy provides quotations from her own doctoral research, she also draws heavily from several animal welfare staples, which the vegetarians and vegans in her audience are likely to have already read. While I’ve no doubt that these discussions are both necessary and useful for convincing omnivores to eschew “meat,” for me personally, those pages would have been better spent delving further into the psychology of carnism. It’s a trade-off for which I blame neither Joy nor her publisher; if CARNISM had been written with a smaller, already-vegan audience in mind, the book might never have been published.

Also, Joy doesn’t really delve into the relationship between carnism and speciesism. Initially, I approached CARNISM with a touch of skepticism – what is carnism, how does it differ from speciesism (if at all), and why do we need two separate terms for what seem like the same/similar concepts? However, my doubt quickly turned to excitement; while carnism is obviously related to and informed by speciesism – carnism may best be described as a subset of speciesism – the two are distinct processes. While this became plainly evident to me as I progressed through CARNISM, those who are less familiar with veganism and animal advocacy issues may have more trouble making the connection. To this end, Joy doesn’t clearly situate carnism within the more global concept of speciesism.

Similarly, while Joy does mention eggs and dairy, most of the focus is on “meat” consumption. Presumably, the same processes at play in carnism also work to prop up the consumption of other animal-based foodstuffs. However, because of her use of “meat” as a sort of catch-all term throughout the book, I found myself zeroing in on animal flesh to the exclusion of eggs and dairy.

I hope it’s evident from my lengthy review that I quite enjoyed CARNISM, even if the amateur psychologist in me might have preferred book more scientific in nature (and the vegan, more radical in scope). Psychological theories and research of speciesism, animal exploitation and “meat” (and eggs and dairy!) consumption can only help us in our vegan activism and outreach, no matter the form it takes. To this end, CARNISM is a valuable addition to the anti-oppressive literature.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2010/03/01/on-carnism-why-do-we-love-dogs-eat-pigs-and...

http://challengeoppression.com/2010/01/17/carnism-meat-deconstructed/ ( )

Being a vegetarian for 20 years, I was looking forward to Melanie Joy, PhD's book, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows and her concept of carnism.
In the book she writes: "We don't see meat eating as we do vegetarianism-as a choice, based on a set of assumptions about animals, our world and ourselves. Rather, we see it as a given, the "natural" thing to do. We eat animals without thinking about what we are doing and why because the belief system that underlies this behavior is invisible. This invisible belief system is what I call carnism."
Unfortunately, I felt that the carnism concept wasn't examined in enough depth. Granted, it is a short book, under 150 pages when you remove the resources and bibliography but much of the book is composed of descriptions of slaughterhouse practices and the suffering of animals. While I feel this is important to be aware of, it is not something that hasn't been covered by other books (Animal Liberation by Peter Singer) and movies (Food, Inc.).
I liked what she had to say about how society justifies the eating of meat through myths. She calls these myths the "3 N's of Justification"; that eating meat is Normal, Natural and Necessary. She discusses how "carnists" are able to continue eating meat through the objectification and abstraction of animals, hence blocking feelings of disgust triggered by empathizing with animal suffering.
Overall, I think this is a valuable book, but not one that covers any new ground. ( )

The beginning of Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows introduces a concept that Dr. Melanie Joy uses throughout the book. It is a thought experiment of sitting down to a meal and enjoying a nice stew with friends when you ask what kind of meat the chef used. The response is that it is golden retriever. Joy asks you how you know feel about eating the meal. Your feelings and emotions change from enjoyment to nausea. The crux of the book is built around this scenario, why does our emotions and feelings allow for us to enjoy beef, but we do not eat dog.
The book is informative and persuasive. But I think that it needs to be mentioned that the book also devolves into a pro-vegan argument for the last half of the book. The first half focuses on the sociological and anthropological mores that allow for our mind to eat one type of animal but to shun another. The second half argues for the moral and physiological impetuses for shunning all types of meat.
As a personal aside to this review, after I read the book I decided to experiment with vegetarianism. I did not set a time limit for my abstaining from meat, but I wanted to see if I felt better and healthier with that change. I have not eaten meat in three weeks and I am finding that it is easier than anticipated.
Joy writes well and is passionate about her subject. Her doctoral thesis research went into the source material for some of this book. Personally, any book that causes me to think, to change, and to view the world in a different light is one that is successful, and this book fits that criteria. ( )

In Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism, vegetarian animal rights advocate Melanie Joy writes:

“We have a schema for every subject, including animals. An animal can be classified, for instance, as prey, predator, pest, pet, or food. How we classify an animal, in turn, determines how we relate to it—whether we hunt it, flee from it, exterminate it, love it, or eat it. Some overlap can occur between categories (an animal can be prey and food), but when it comes to meat, most animals are either food, or not food. In other words, we have a schema that classifies animals as edible or inedible.”

While I wish Joy would have said “prey, predator, pest, pet, or ‘protein’” to complete the alliteration and perhaps even added “person” to include the fellow humans within the scope of analysis, the biggest issue I have with this book is that it never really explores the paradoxes of this paragraph, never really describes the biological, anthropological, and sociological roots of this near universal human cognitive adaptation to categorize animals into such groupings.

• How have present and past human cultures categorized various animal species, especially in the course of the development of domestication?


• How does this categorization relate to the representation of specific animal species in the symbolism of religion, mythology, and folklore?


• How do other primates and other animals seem to categorize animals based upon field research and behavioral testing?


• When humans de-humanize each other, what categories of animals are evoked?


• What does archaeological evidence seem to indicate to be the order of development of these different categories in the history of human culture?


• What does research indicate about our history as scavengers, as hunter-gatherers, and as agriculture and industrialization emerged? What were past human transitions of diet associated with and how has animal categorization changed over time?


• What is similar and different between the intuitive categorizations of animals and groupings of edible and inedible plants?


• How does this categorization relate to essentialism and other aspects of human intuitive biology?


• How have these adaptations related to human survival and proliferation over the course of human history?

Perhaps good questions, but these are not ones the author explorers in this book.

Joy does briefly discuss the eating of dogs in the Korean culture and other atypical categorizations, but for the most part, the biological questions raised by the title of this book go unanswered. In Hume’s Is-Ought divide, Joy is solely on the “ought” side. While the title of the book seems to indicate relevance with scientific work on the “is” side and work on this topic in evolutionary psychology is long due, never does Joy explore the anthropologically and culturally deep human journey of the categorization and domestication of other animal species. She only, albeit without much dogmatic and high-minded ethical pronouncement, seems to indicate simplistically, in a philosophically blank slate kind of way, that we, now in the twenty-first century, ought not be domesticating animals for consumption.

Domesticated bovines are treated horribly in our industrialized society. As are pigs. And poultry. And fish. And more. We’ve known this since Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Yet we seem to continue to hide from ourselves its truths in our supermarketed modern lifestyles. The fact that we, as modern humans, systematically distance ourselves from awareness of the breeding, fattening, and slaughter of these animals seems to indicate an inconsistency in our belief system. Frankly, many, it seems, prefer a good, juicy cheeseburger and avoidance of a bit of distasteful cognitive dissonance over consilience in our understanding of how we (often cruelly) relate to other animal species.

We've long been omnivorous. Yet we have theory of mind and empathize with the sufferings of others. Now there's a dilemma.

Despite the title of this book, Joy doesn’t explore. One would think there’s some interesting anthropological research, some actual work, worth doing.

Why we love dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows?

Joy offers no hypothesis.

She simply presents the case that our beliefs are inconsistent. Well, obviously they are. And they have long been.

But why?

Joy asks the question. But never answers it.

(This book review was done in participation of the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program: http://www.librarything.com/er/list) ( )

A brief book about animal cruelty and exploitation that happens for meat to reach our plates. There is a lot of information about the slaughtering process, which is painful to read.
Personally, I already eschew animal products, but her aim is definitely to get others to do the same. Still, this book has strengthened my convictions.
The main argument made is that people are able to eat some animals but keep others as pets only through logical inconsistencies.
I haven't read other books on this topic so I can't compare or say whether she is really adding anything new on this subject.
In short: a book about animal rights that at the least should make you question why you eat what you do, and questioning is good. ( )

Before I start, let me declare my vegetarianism. Despite my inclination to be sympathetic toward animals, I found Joy's book to be naive in the extreme.

I was expecting a book on the cultural reasons for why Americans have differing attitudes toward consuming different animals, and, while she has included some of that, there is also content I was not expecting -- perhaps it is my own fault for thinking a book with an attractively cute title and describes itself as an introduction to "the belief system that enables us to eat some animals and not others" would be a bit more about that topic.

The one salient point of the book, in my opinion, is her discussion of the slaughtering process. Better oversight and more transparency is needed to ensure the safety of food that is consumed and to give food animals humane treatment at all steps of their lives.

The call to activism throughout the book is rather strident and unpleasant to get through. People can decide on their own whether to get involved, and providing some contact information at the end would be appropriate, but the oppressive nature of her encouragement is uncomfortable to get through.

Toward the end of the book, she encourages the reader to "view ourselves as strands in the web of life, rather than as standing at the apex of the so-called food chain." From where I sit, the food web includes animals eating other animals. Humans are omnivorous creatures, and simply because eating animals is not strictly necessary for a complete diet does not mean that people are required to, or should, suppress the urge to consume animals. ( )

I guess if this book was titled "Why eating meat is disgusting and nasty", I might be able to give it a fair review. However, Joy has in theory written a book about the philosophy behind why people eat meat and their attitudes about what kinds of animals are meant to be eaten. I'd love to read this book, instead of what she actually wrote, which is pure vegan propaganda (not badly written propaganda, just certainly all written before by better writers.) ( )