Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism

I've been a meat eater- a carnist- my whole life,as well as a dog lover, and have been a hunter since I was 12 back in Wisconsin. I found Dr. Joy's book compelling, thrilling to read, and pointing the finger at the culture we've all grown up in, not at individuals.

I was able to take in her message because it was presented in a non blaming, non shaming way.

I may still hunt and bring home an animal to the table every now and then. I know the paradox and pain of what I'm doing for my food.I accept it even as I wrestle with it. But I will never purchase or knowingly eat another morsel of factory meat. I've been to Auschwitz and Birkenau, and seen how mechanized slaughter works, and how inhumane it is, whether it's people, pigs or pugs. Joy points out what "we" are doing- there's no blame in her tone. The systemic structure of carnism, just like the systems of racism, sexism, totalitarianism, is evil at it's core, precisely because there is no "we" there, seeing what "we" are causing to done in "our" name. Thanks to Dr Joy for sending a message to open our eyes. After reading this book, we know, and must take responsibility for our choices.Negligence starts tomorrow.

I may still hunt and kill an animal on occasion, and many will berate me for that. But I will no longer be party to wholesale slaughter.

OK, so this book should be called "CARNISM: I am Trying To Coin A New Word For The Animal Rights Movement."

I thought the book would be some kind of socialogic history of why, in America, we actually do not eat dogs, etc..see the title. But the author never, EVER addresses the question of the title. Instead, the reader is given a very short, 7-chapter rehashing of all the points of various animal rights organizations, without a deep exploration of any of them: factory farm conditions, slaughterhouse conditions, and the various reasons we should not eat meat. Most of the suthor's points consist of referencing other books on the subjects.

This book is a ridiculous waste of paper. If you are against eating meat, there are much better, well-researched ways to get your information. If you're interested in the history of WHY we eat what we do and why we don't eat what we don't...don't be fooled into buying this book, because it won't tell you.

Do we not eat dogs because they look directly at us, unlike wolves? OR because they have historically been a help to the American farmer and too valuable to eat? If you're wondering, you still WILL BE WONDERING when you finish this book.

It's pretty easy to be the leading expert in a field that *you* created. It's this short of faux intellectual schlock that makes me embarassed to be vegan. Seriously. I at the least expected some sort of well thought out exploration of culture, not the same old song-and-dance that has been written about infinitely more enticing and less agrivating in countless photocopied anarcho zines. Poorly written, filled with that "well, I know everything so there" arrogance that makes the text seem more like parental chastisement than anything else. Is it so much to ask for at least one "idiots guide to veganism" that does make us look like pricks? Boo.

When I read the synopsis of this book, I was looking forward to learning about "Why we love dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows". The author almost covers the "eating pigs" part of the title for us, but skips the other two elements. It was a rehash of Omnivore's Dilemma and other books about the source of our food in America. Then it attacks what the author calls "Carnism". You feel guilty for the eggs you ate this morning, the chicken you had in your salad at lunch, and the beef you have at dinner. I'm not a vegan, but do have the empathy for animals. Attacking 90% of Americans for eating the diet that we eat in this book, and comparing that diet to the Nazi movement was in poor taste. I barely finished reading the book, the only thing that kept me reading is that I was curious to how many more times the author can relate eating meat to being a Nazi.

As far as why we love dogs and wear cows, maybe I can learn that in another book. I certainly didn't get that from this one.

Yes, it is full of magic. If you get all tingly thinking about PETA and consider the Macrobiotic Diet just wonderful, you will love this book. If you are looking for an answer to the title, either serious or funny, you won't find it. This book is full of magical thinking--that by naming something, you have controlled it. This is the thinking that believes racial prejudice in American society will go away if we just say 'colored'no, 'people of color' no, 'black' no, Afro-American. . . . Changing the name does not change reality. Dropping 'carnivor' and calling it 'carnism' will not cause Archer-Daniels-Midland stock price to drop even one percent.

Doctor Joy's answer to the why of the title is 'because'. Page 17. "Despite the fact that taste is largely acquired through culture, people around the world tend to view their preferences as rational and any deviation as offensive and disgusting.. . . .we fail to make the connection between meat and its animal source. . . . Why are we not averse to eating the very small selection of animals we have deemed edible? The evidence strongly suggests that our lack of disgust is largely, if not entirely, learned." Not even the barest hint as to what lies behind those cultural differences.

This failure to make the connection between meat and its animal source is only true for the modern urbanite. I am old enough to have participated in killing and preparing on Saturday the chicken that was on the family platter on Sunday. There is no consideration of the many individuals, families, communities in the world today who grow, husband, their meat animals and then personally kill and butcher them for their own consumption.

The book is a strong argument that the factory farm for animal production common in America today is bad for the animals and bad for the consumer. But the argument is emotional and with little else to support it. And it does nothing to explain why we love dogs and wear cows. Besides, America is becoming a nation of cat lovers.

I discovered Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows through the well-done promotional video for the the same book on YouTube which shows a man refusing to eat what is on his plate when he discovers it's a dog, rather than a cow, pig, etc... This is exactly how most of us would react, isn't it? Joy's book goes into detail explaning how we are able to go through life with this kind of cognitive dissonance regarding our beliefs about animals. I think for those of us living in the U.S., it's a relatively easy thing to go through life in such a fog since most of us never see the suffering that animals endure who are raised for food, clothing or subjected to experiments. My eyes were opened on a trip to India a few years ago because animal suffering and exploitation is not so well hidden as it is here. I was a carnist for most of my life all the while calling myself an ardent animal lover. It took so many things, so many conversations, so much reading to shift my thinking and thereby change my life. I wish I'd had this book available to me back then. I think the lightbulb would have switched on for me sooner since Joy's book shines a very bright light on our inconsistent treatment of animals. After reading a book like this, one faces a choice - continue on as usual or begin to view all animals as being worthy of our moral consideration and respect.

Ms. Joy's book claims to explain why we choose to eat some animals and not others. Just as she begins to build on her thesis, the book quickly turns into another vitriolic rant against meat production and consumption. Like similar rants, Ms. Joy uses the most graphic and horrifying details possible to bring the reader to their knees and turn them into vegans. It is not that the things Ms. Joy is saying are unimportant, but the bait and switch tactics and screaming voice Ms. Joy uses will probably hinder many from absorbing the message she wants to spread. And unfortunately, she is probably preaching to the choir. I had hoped to learn something new, but did not feel that Ms. Joy did justice to her subject.

Ms. Joy graphically dramatizes the misery of animals that are victims of modern meat production, but she completely avoids the fact that plants feel pain too. Many studies have proven that plants know when something painful is going to happen to them, and they try to move away from it. Can we really say that it is OK to cut down plants for human and animal consumption and then say that animals should not be eaten when both plants and animals are aware and feel pain? And what of the animals that eat other animals? Should that be stopped as well?

It is an undeniable fact that our world is an eating world, and eating cannot be avoided. It is how we eat that matters, not what we eat, but Ms. Joy doggedly supports the belief that animals and animal products should never be eaten by humans. I agree that the cruelty involved in producing meat and other animal products must be stopped, but how can we draw the line on what can be eaten or not eaten when the entire world is conscious and aware?

Ms. Joy also fails to address the issue that humans have not only put themselves at the top of the food chain, they have taken themselves out of the food chain. Humans go to extravagant lengths to make sure that their precious bodies do not become food for another plant or animal when they die. In our eating world, this seems to me to be one of the most outrageous things humans do. We do not address this issue because we do not want to admit our animal nature or accept our place as a small part of a greater system.

If we were to truly care about the plants and animals in our world, we would treat them humanly and put their health, comfort and enjoyment of life ahead of our greedy drive for money and comfort. And when our bodies give out, we would offer them to the earth and return the favor we have received as we ate our way through life. The most important point Ms. Joy makes is that humans are the cruelest animal on this planet. Sadly, the cruelty and injustice that is meted out each day will not end until we understand that we cannot harm any part of our world without harming ourselves.

Ms. Joy has missed the opportunity to say something new. If she had hoped to draw more supporters to her cause, her name-calling shrillness will probably cost her an audience she might have had if she had fully developed her thesis in a scholarly manner. Lee & Steven Hager are the authors of [[ASIN:0978526104 Quantum Prodigal Son: Revisiting Jesus' Parable of the Prodigal Son from the Perspective of Quantum Mechanics]]

As a dietitian involved in vegan education, I found this book absolutely fascinating. It's written for meat eaters and explores the ways in which "carnists" avoid the moral discomfort inherent in viewing some animals as pets and others as food. Carnists embrace what Joy calls the three Ns of justification: Eating meat is normal, natural, and necessary --the very same justifications that have been used to defend every exploitative system in history, including African slavery and efforts to deny voting rights to women.

Until now, carnism as a belief system has not been named because it is the norm in our society. It's mainstream--which is simply a way of describing an ideology that is so widespread and entrenched that its practices are regarded as "common sense." Ideologies that fall outside the mainstream--like vegetarianism--on the other hand, are easier to recognize.

More importantly, though, the way in which entrenched ideologies remain entrenched is by staying invisible. And the primary way in which they stay invisible is by staying unnamed. "If we don't name it, we can't talk about it," Joy says. "and if we can't talk about it, we can't question it."

Carnism depends on another type of invisibility as well. The agricultural industry goes to great lengths to protect the secrets of how animals are raised for food on modern factory "farms." The system is necessarily cruel because, from a business standpoint, animal welfare is a barrier to profit. Producers don't want consumers to see these cruelties, nor do consumers want to see them.

Joy identifies the cognitive defenses that carnists employ, and suggests that, because empathy appears to be hardwired in our brains, carnistic defenses may actually go against our nature. We cannot be wholly integrated if we care about animals but support widespread animal cruelty. Joy is honest about the difficulties involved in closing the gap between values and behavior, but she is encouraging about the benefits to the individual, and practical in her recommendations.

Based on research in the field of psychology, including Joy's own, this book is a thought-provoking analysis of how meat eating has become so entrenched as to over-ride what people actually believe and hold valuable. Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows is highly recommended for both vegetarians and carnists and for anyone interested in the psychology of food choices.

It is a difficult trick to pull when one tries to write a scholarly work on such an charged subject as the slaughter of animals for meat and clothing. So, one must praise Melanie Joy, the professor, for attempting to place this topic within a psychological (and hence scientific) framework. Unfortunately, it is Melanie Joy the activist that most often defends the hypthotheses of Melanie Joy, Ph.D. in this confused garble that too often serves as little more than, at best, completely unsourced (if not unsubstantiated) opinion. At its worst, it is propagandizing drivel.

The premise of the work is simple: in a paraphrase of her own words, Professor Joy says that while the questions surrounding meat consumption can be very complicated, their answer is simple, and indeed, boils down to one word: carnism. The word carnism is meant to evoke the same emotional disgust as racism or sexism would in the average human. Unfortunately, even here, confusion arises: what constitutes a "carnist"? From the cover, Joy defines this loosely as "the belief system that enables us to eat some animals and not others". Thus, would a person who, say, drinks the milk of a cow be considered a carnist? While there is nothing in the statement I cited to suggest this, Joy's work at least implies that this is a perfectly reasonable interpretation. Similarly, while there is no statement here regarding the wearing of the skin of one animal over another, one infers from the title that this is also an appropriate interpretation. Thus, the choice of the portmanteau of "carnist" (seemingly combining "carnivore" with whatever negative "-ism" the reader wants) seems ill-equipped for the group of which it supposedly consists. Indeed, the use of this word is problematic throughout the work; I will describe this briefly below.

To attempt to detail (or even describe) the myriad arguments Joy puts forth in her work is an endeavor of which I am neither capable nor in which I am interested. While this allows for quick reading of the work as a whole, it is one of the weakest points of her work. Rather than giving a few strong clear arguments, Joy has chosen instead to give a series of vignettes of around 1-3 pages. These hang together only loosely in the chapters in which they are found, and often consist of random anecdotes. Occasionally, you will see a statement of the form, "Scientists now believe...". The vast majority of the time, these statements are unsourced and uncredited.

This is unfortunate, because Joy dangles some very tantalizing theories in the book. One of the biggest failures: on page 82, Joy suggests that "While psychological disturbance and even sadism may result from a prolonged exposure to violence, they do not necessarily cause individuals to seek out a career in killing." Read this again: there is a LOT to be explained in such a quote, such as:
1) What percentage of people in the animal slaughter industry report psychological side effects from their exposure to violence?
2) What percentage of people were known to have such psychological effects before such exposure?

As stated above, this is a pretty meaty statement, and one would expect a vigorous defense consisting of various opinions from multiple sources (including workers, psychologists, etc.) , statistical data, and the like. Unfortunately, the best we get from Dr. Joy is three quotes, apparently from two anonymous sources. Numbers would go a LONG way toward supporting such a provocative statement. I mean, I could probably prove that ghosts exist and are often visible if my burden of proof is to consist of two people who have seen them.

Perhaps the strongest point made in the work is our apparently irrational disgust at the eating of dogs and other species to which we are more accustomed. Here, Joy's work yields its strongest support: she describes (in somewhat more detail than usual) American and British efforts to stop the dog meat market in South Korea (pages 68-70). And indeed, the rationale for such arguments seem to stem from the fact that, e.g., cute little puppies are often the ones being eaten, as opposed to any real disagreement on the comparative treatment of animals.

Again, this would have been the nice place to cite a statistical study consisting of responses to simple questions regarding the emotional response to, e.g., how one would feel about the slaughter of puppies versus the slaughter of calves. Instead, this powerful anecdote is followed up with typical (and typically unsourced) psychobabble involving our knowledge of slaughterhouses and the "knowing without knowing" inherent in evil ideologies.

As for weaknesses, they are many and varied. The first (and most egregious, IMHO) comes from Joy's insistence to place her work as a scholarly writing (indeed, judging from the tone, it would seem that she views this book as a textbook in a psychology subdiscipline). The complete and utter lack of any substantiation for the scientific opinions appearing throughout the book seem to destroy any such effort. Sadly, Joy provides an extensive bibliography. It is a shame that it is so poorly cross-referenced.

Moreover, Joy too easily falls back on anecdote as if it is some panacaea for her claims. Perhaps the most embarrassing example of this comes right at the beginning of the book: from page 24-27, Joy gives an example of a class in which she essentially proves that the reasoning behind eating one animal and not another is due to the fact that "it's the way things are". The problem? The entire class is anecdotal, unsourced, and probably fabricated. I have no doubt that at one time, she has received each of the answers to the questions she asks. But too often, Joy's anecdotes serve merely as a Socratic device: the anonymous classroom, or carnist, etc. plays into the questions that Joy's Socrates asks. And just like in many of Plato's works, these dialogues seem completely imaginary. Expect to hear phrases like, "Countless students of mine," "many carnists," etc. throughout the work, without one whit of citation to substantiate the claim.

Joy often (and shamelessly) reduces the tone of her work to pure propaganda. For example, did you know that Chinese eat animal penises (feel free to enter whatever adjective you desire, since no number is actually given)? Ooooooh, that's gross! Of course, there is the requisite section regarding the meat-packing industry and industrial farming. As mentioned in a previous review, this is easily skirted if one does not buy their meat from factory farms.

Finally, as mentioned above, the word "carnist" loses whatever emotional impact it might have otherwise held, due to Joy's vague definition and her insistence to refer to everyone as a carnist. I could not get a firm handle on who exactly these carnists were. Is a vegetarian who eats cheese a carnist? Almost assuredly, they receive such products from an industrial farm, and as such, they propagate the "evil ideology". On the other hand, they don't actually eat meat.

But I have waxed incoherent for too long. In short, this book will appeal to those vegetarians/vegans with whom the ideas resonate, in the same way that a Rush Limbaugh book appeals to that crowd. I believe that it is accurately described as a "manifesto" (as suggested by one of the blurbs appearing on the book). But as a scholarly work, it's pretty embarrassing. I find it hard to believe that this resembles in any way, shape or form a dissertation.

From the title "Why we Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows" I was hoping for a sociological study on why some cultures perceive certain animals as food while the same animal might be seen as a pet in a different culture. I was hoping for something more along the lines of [[ASIN:0802715885 An Edible History of Humanity]] rather than just another Vegetarian Manifesto.

Unfortunately, "just another Vegetarian Manifesto" is what I got. Even though the question of "Why" is asked right in the title of the book, there is no attempt to answer this question. Clearly, this mistake was partially mine as well for not doing more research on the book before ordering it, but I do feel a title should at least be a reasonable representation of what lies between the pages.

With that aside, after reading the introduction, and seeing that this book was originally the author's PhD dissertation, I was at least hoping that I would read a scientific evaluation of vegetarianism and perhaps a different angle on the topic. Instead, what I got was standard-issue emotional appeals by detailed descriptions of slaughter houses and a comparison of the meat-eaters (or Carnists, as author Joy calls them) to Nazis and perpetrators of a culture of violence. There are many quotes from unnamed people, but no consideration of opposing points of view. Only supporting evidence is presented.

I am actually surprised that this passed a PhD evaluation due to its unscientific nature and overly subjective nature. I can only assume that the emotional language was put in later when transforming the dissertation into a book.

It is not that the information in here is bad, but it has been written before and by much more skilled authors. Joy quotes heavily from Michael Pollan's [[ASIN:0143038583 The Omnivore's Dilemma]] and Eric Schlosser's [[ASIN:0060838582 Fast Food Nation]]. She quotes from them so heavily in fact that it is quickly apparent that one would do better putting down "Why we Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows" and picking up either of those excellent books instead. There is no question that the meat industry is atrocious and in desperate need for reform. What is in question is if we need another book telling us so.

The only original idea advanced by Joy, and what I presume was the focus of her PhD, is the concept of Carnism. She feels that while Vegetarianism represents an ideology separated from food, the term meat-eater only implies to food choices. By not naming something, it remains invisible and Carnism is an ideology that many people subscribe to without even being aware that they are subscribing to an ideology. Herbivore/Carnivore/Omnivore are biological terms, whereas Vegetarianism/Carnism are ideological ones.

I found this interesting, but also that her definition was too limited. Joy's ideas, and this book, attempt to talk in general terms but really are focused one hundred percent on Americans, and more specifically white middle-class Americans. She does not call this out by name, but she does make notes as to "things you see in Chinatown" being different from what is "American."

Her ideology of Carnism is based on a disassociation of meat product from the animal it came from. Joy feels that if people were face-to-face with the animals they eat, and truly understood that a living animal died in order to provide dinner, than all people would become vegetarian. It is only the distance that allows for the consuming of meat. This idea falls apart however when considered from the idea of non-white cultures who typically eat whole animals and whose butcher shops sell all parts of the animal, heads, hearts and hooves, ready to cook side-by-side. Rural communities also live much closer to the animals that they eat, and fail Joy's limited definition of Carnism.

Her concept seems especially outdated coming as it is on the rise of the head-to-tail cooking movement that uses all parts of the animal instead of blocks of "meat product" divorced from the actual living creature, and television shows such as Gordon Ramsay's [[ASIN:B001JFKVSG The F Word]] where he regularly shows the raising of meat animals from conception to slaughter in order to teach people to be more conscious of where their food comes from. Things such as these would fall outside Joy's stated concept of Carnism, and thus are not mentioned.

If you are already a Vegetarian and want to experience some confirmation bias, then you might enjoy "Why we Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows." Otherwise, this book is going to change nobodies minds and anyone interested in the topic would be much better off with "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "Fast Food Nation," or any of the dozens of other titles out there on the same topic.