Project Animal Farm
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Sonia Faruqi had an Ivy League degree and a job on Wall Street. But when the banking industry collapsed, she found herself on a small organic dairy farm that would change her life for the better, although it didn't seem that way in the beginning.First, she had to come to grips with cows shocked into place, cannibal chickens, and "free range" turkeys that went nowhere. But there were bright lights as well: happy, frolicking calves on a veal farm, and farmers who cared as much about the animals as their pocketbooks. What started as a two-week volunteer vacation turned into a journey that reached into the darkest recesses of the animal agriculture industry.Surrounded by a colorful cast of characters, Faruqi's quest to discover the truth about modern agribusiness took her around the world. Lively, edgy, and balanced, Project Animal Farm sheds light on the international agribusiness, with the ultimate goal of improving the lives of farm animals here at home. Using her finance background to forecast the future of agriculture, Faruqi discusses the changes we need to make—using our forks and our votes.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After being laid off from her job as an investment banker in New York City, Farqui decides to volunteer on an organic dairy farm in Canada. But what she expects to be an uplifting, bucolic reconnection with nature turns out to be the opposite. She is shocked and sickened at the treatment of the cows and their filthy living conditions in an "organic" environment (a term she generously describes as nebulous), but that is nothing compared the harsh commercial environments in which chickens and pigs are raised and slaughtered. She learns that cramped conditions and a cruel indifference to the animals' basic needs are de rigueur on such farms, as is the vicious nonchalance with which they are slaughtered. Equally alarming, Farqui observes complicit indifference by the government inspector who was tasked to oversee (and then paid by) a sheep processing firm. Even more disheartening is the revelation that this approach is hardly confined to North America she encounters similar conditions in Malaysia and Indonesia. Farqui thoughtfully explores the way in which this brutality and disregard of animal welfare is endemic in the industry on a global scale, and provides suggestions for realistic actions that readers can take to encourage change. The book begs a comparison to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, but Farqui's effort is not precisely a call to arms, as she takes a more studious approach which doesn't lessen the impact of her findings.
