If you actually ask this question, according to McWilliams, “What you end up getting are these platitudes: The animal is treated well while the animal is alive; This is just one day of an animal’s life; the rest of the life was good; we were meant to eat meat, so we might as well do it humanely. But those aren’t answers — those are just excuses.”
(Macmillan)
McWilliams examines this question more closely in his upcoming book “The Modern Savage: Our Unthinking Decision to Eat Animals.”
“The title is intended to play up the idea that while we perceive ourselves to be civilized and sophisticated, that our behaviors are really barbaric, we just hide in a number of ways,” McWilliams told me.
In the book, McWilliams raises what he calls the “omnivore’s contradiction,” the idea of raising an animal with respect and dignity and then killing that animal. “I find that a contradiction, and I outline how very famous writers embrace that contradiction without resolving it.”
McWilliams re-assesses these seemingly idyllic farms, ones perhaps not unlike the farm owned by Watson’s Uncle George.
“In a sense, I’m holding a mirror up to it for consumers to see that in fact the promises of humane agriculture are not being met and very likely can’t be met,” McWilliams said. “The nature of animal agriculture is such that it is defined by the kind of exploitation that most decent people would find unacceptable.”
The book is out 6th January, at amazon.co.uk
