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The Movement to Free Us from Factory Farming
by Leah Garcés
The story of factory farmers, rescued farm animals, and rural communities standing up to big corporations and constructing their own new world that will change the way we eat.
In Transfarmation, president and CEO of Mercy For Animals Leah Garcés explains how food and farming policies have failed over decades and offers insights into the wave of change coming from a new crop of farmers and communities who are constructing a humane and sustainable farming system. Factory animal farming faces an abundance of issues—from environmental concerns and animal cruelty, to exploited farmers and poor working conditions—and more and more farmers are searching for a way out and for a new start.
Using insights from interviews and fieldwork, Garcés shares the perspectives of three groups:
—Farmers—such as the Halley farm, where a family crushed by chicken factory farming builds a new way by transitioning their farm to growing hemp and rescuing dogs.
—Animals—like Norma, an industrial dairy cow who was sentenced to death after injuring a worker in an effort to protect her calf.
—Farm communities—including stories like how the hog industry in North Carolina preys on historically Black communities by contaminating the air and water for decades with hog pollution.
Garcés demonstrates the reasons why we must end factory farming and calls on readers to imagine a future world where Transfarmation is complete and we have transitioned to a just food and farming system.
"Impassioned treatise ... Garcés makes clear how animals and humans suffer under the status quo, and she offers practical suggestions for reform, including bolstering animal welfare protections and improving labor standards for farmers. This strikes a chord." —Publishers Weekly
"By giving birds, pigs, and cattle proper names, Garcés heightens readers' sympathies for abused creatures while making a good case for alternative farming methods." —Booklist
"For many years, Leah Garcés has been an outspoken advocate of mercy for animals. In this wise book, she also expresses great compassion for the farmers, ranchers, and workers trapped in an industrial food system that sickens consumers and poisons the land. Factory farms are a crime against nature, and Transfarmation convincingly argues that we can feed ourselves, must heal ourselves, without them." —Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
"Transfarmation is a brilliant, essential read, clear-eyed and kind, showing how animal agriculture is cruel not just to farm animals but to farmers, farmworkers, and the land, and how there's a happier, gentler path forward for all of us. It comes from one of the world's authorities on transforming what we eat and how we eat." —Annie Lowrey, author of Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World
"What a wonderful antidote to the negativity and cynicism all around us. Leah Garcés gets things done! She makes the world better in concrete ways by reducing the suffering and creating solutions. She tells us how we can all do the same in this great and important book." —A. J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
This information about Transfarmation was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Leah Garcés is the CEO and president of Mercy For Animals and author of Grilled: Turning Adversaries into Allies to Change the Chicken Industry.With decades of leadership experience in the animal protection movement, she has partnered with corporations, communities, and governments around the world on a mission to build a better food system. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post,and Chicago Tribune,among many other media outlets. She lives in Georgia, with her husband, three kids, and cat.
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