User:ImagineWorldPeace/farmageddon

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Farmageddon (book)

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?

I have read the book thoroughly as well as listened to it as an audiobook.

Evaluate the article

Lead section

The Lead includes an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic. The lead does not include a brief description of the article's major sections, and does not include information that is not present in the article. The lead is concise, and frankly, an excellent example of listing the "who, what, when, where, why, and how" of the book.

Content

The synopsis is a good representation of the book's contents. Unfortunately, the links to Philip Limbery's website are broken. The page does not link to the Wikipedia page for Isabel Oakeshott, the second author. I suggest including a list of the book's table of contents. The first paragraph of the synopsis does an excellent job of summarizing the authors' main points, which essentially provide evidence to show why the normalized idea that the world population can (or should) be fed via the industrialized model of animal agriculture is a worrisome myth.

Tone and Balance

Wikipedia articles should be written from a neutral point of view; if there are substantial differences of interpretation or controversies among published, reliable sources, those views should be described as fairly as possible.

The article is neutral. It provides a fact-based description of the book's contents. The description of the authors' findings and claims about the veterinary field seem overrepresented, but I think that is because other chapters are not summarized with the same level of devoted space within the article. The article does not highlight what is likely to be a common assumption: The authors are not trying to make the case for readers to stop eating meat. Instead, they are providing the reader with an open and honest discussion about the problems associated with this gargantuan industry and possible solutions.

Sources and References

Many of the sources are to either reviews of the book or the author's website. Unfortunately, the link to the author's website is broken. When reading this book I recall making notes to myself to look up the scientific articles cited in the book. As this book makes such a compelling argument, I would like to see this article become like a "Cliff's Notes" version of the book, where each chapter is thoroughly summarized and particularly, the noteworthy academic study findings are described and cited.

A Wikipedia article should be based on the best sources available for the topic at hand. When possible, this means academic and peer-reviewed publications or scholarly books.

Organization and writing quality

The article is well written, well organized, neat and concise.

Images and Media

The use of images in the article is visually appealing and informative. They certainly enhance understanding of a dominant, yet, to the average person, visually distant or obscure business model.

Talk page discussion

The article is a part of four WikiProjects and rated C-class on all of them. There is not a discussion about this particular page. I think I might start one including the feedback I provided above. I find it noteworthy that I see some of the WikiProject Animal Rights discussions carry an air reminiscent to the ideological in-fighting within the movement. As Wikipedia articles must provide unbiased, fact-based, and encyclopedic content, I think it's worth ensuring those values serve as a moral compass when editing.

Overall impressions

The first paragraph of the article's synopsis is excellent. The article can be developed further to include more of the powerful revelations in the book--particularly the groundbreaking peer-reviewed studies cited in the book.

Farmageddon

Author	Philip Lymbery Isabel Oakeshott
Publisher	Bloomsbury
Publication date	2014 (2014)
ISBN	978-1-40884-644-5
OCLC	900181396

Dairy Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation

A sow will often stay in a gestation crate for the four-month period of her pregnancy.

A nursing sow in a farrowing crate.

Fish meal factory

Manure lagoon in California

Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat is a 2014 non-fiction book by Philip Lymbery and Isabel Oakeshott. It surveys the effects of industrial livestock production and industrial fish farming around the world. The book is the result of Lymbery's investigations for which he travelled the world over three years. Isabel Oakeshott is the political editor of The Sunday Times, Philip Lymbery is CEO of Compassion in World Farming. The book was published by Bloomsbury.

Synopsis

The thesis examined in the book is that globalised production chains of industrialised agricultural systems negatively affect farmed animals, human health, the countryside, rivers and oceans, biodiversity in rainforests and many of the world's poorest people. The authors seek to shed light on the conditions in intensive agriculture which, according to them, often differ from the image that the industry wants to sell to the public. Intensification in animal farming goes along with a growing demand of cropland to grow animal feed – factory farming is thus not a means to save space. They argue consequently that to feed the world population factory farming is not the solution but a threat, not least since more than a third of the world's arable harvests are being used to supply farmed animals. According to the book the consumer price of cheap meat does not include the overall costs of industrial meat production.

The reader follows Lymbery's journey from his start in California's Central Valley. There he finds dairies where 10,000 cows can be milked at once. He travels to enormous piggeries in China and visits the fishmeal industry of Peru, which converts millions of tonnes of anchovies to fishmeal for supplying the livestock industry with feed. In Taiwan he visits a farm (labelled "organic") where 300,000 laying hens are being starved and held in batteries. A visit is paid to the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, US where he finds the marine ecosystem impacted by waste from the poultry industry. The author talks to a community in Mexico in an area dominated by pig sheds. There he documents a lake of effluent and air and water pollution, and discusses the outbreak of swine flu.

One chapter of Farmageddon is dedicated to the question "What happened to the vet?" Lymbery says that veterinarians work in an industry with an "inbuilt flaw". He states that veterinarians often comply with the industrialization of animals, for example in the prophylactic use of antibiotics which are applied in the mass production of animals, eggs and milk instead of demanding a different (pasture-based) agricultural system. According to Lymbery, veterinarians should not support systems that are "inherently bad for animal welfare", which allegedly is the case in "mass production of broiler chickens, caged production of eggs, the large-scale permanent housing of dairy cows (so-called mega dairies) and highly intensive pig production where mothering pigs are kept in confinement where they can't turn around for weeks at a time".

In order to prevent Farmageddon the authors come up with suggestions for consumers, policy makers and farmers: Consumers should eat less meat. Fish should be fed to people rather than converted into fishmeal. Animals should be fed with grass and animal farming should be a pasture-based system. These changes would save resources by reducing the competition of humans and animals for food and land.

Contents

The book is divided into the following sections:

I RUDE AWAKENINGS (chapters 1-2)

II NATURE (chapters 3-6)

III HEALTH (chapters 7-8)

IV MUCK (chapters 9-10)

V SHRINKING PLANET (chapters 11-13)

VI TOMORROW'S MENU (chapters 14-19)

The following is a list of chapter titles:

1. California Girls: a vision of the future?
2. Henpecked: the truth behind the label
3. Silent Spring: the birth of farming's chemical age
4. Wildlife: the great disappearing act
5. Fish: farming takes to the water
6. Animal Care: what happened to the vet?
7. Bugs 'n' drugs: the threat to public heath
8. Expanding Waistlines: food quality takes a nose-dive
9. Happy as a Pig: tales of pollution
10. Southern Discomfort: the rise of the industrial chicken
11. Land: how factory farms use more, not less
12. Thicker than Water: draining rivers, lakes and oil wells
13. Hundred-dollar Hamburger: the illusion of cheap food
14. GM: feeding people or factory farms?
15. China: Mao's mega-farm dream comes true
16. Kings, Commoners and Supermarkets: where the power lies
17. New Ingredients: rethinking our food
18. The Solution: how to avert the coming food crisis
19. Consumer Power: what you can do

Notable Evidence

• Poultry litter disposal, although not the only source, is a central source of watershed pollution

Reception-

Tristram Stuart wrote in a review for The Guardian that although he is critical towards the "orthodoxy that large-scale farms and industrial agricultural technology are inherently wrong", "this catalogue of devastation will convince anyone who doubts that industrial farming is causing ecological meltdown".

See also

• We are fed up

References

Category:2014 non-fiction books Category:2014 in the environment Category:Bloomsbury Publishing books Category:Agriculture books Category:Ethically disputed business practices towards animals Category:Environmental non-fiction books Category:Intensive farming Category:Meat industry