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Simon Fairlie
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Meat: A Benign Extravagance Paperback – 28 Feb. 2013

by Simon Fairlie (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 67 ratings
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Meat: A Benign Extravagance is an exploration of the difficult environmental, ethical and health issues surrounding the human consumption of animal flesh. It lays out in detail the reasons why we must decrease the amount of meat we eat, both for the planet and for ourselves and explores how different forms of agriculture shape our landscape and culture. At the heart of this book, Simon Fairlie argues that society needs to reorientate itself back to the land, both physically and spiritually and explains why an agriculture that can most readily achieve this is one that includes a measure of livestock farming. Simon is an authoritative author writing about one of the key food and farming issues of the moment. This book demands the interest of the public and media alike and is a major contribution to a debate that is sure to run and run.
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  1. Print length
    336 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Permanent Publications
  4. Publication date
    28 Feb. 2013
  5. Dimensions
    15.7 x 1.7 x 23.3 cm
  6. ISBN-10
    1856230554
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1856230551
  8. See all details
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Product description

Review

Meat, animals and dairy have been in the firing line for so long that in some circles, the assumption is taken for granted that there is no case, ever, anywhere, to be made for the role of animals in farming, landcare or diet. This book by Simon Fairlie is a wonderful and challenging correction. As a former Welsh Black breeder who farmed upland wet English hills but who gave up meat years ago (but takes dairy produce), I found this book a riveting read. As an academic who grapples with what land is for and what a sustainable diet might be, I assure you that this book is essential reading. Fairlie's beautifully written, practical yet erudite book covers the terrain that policy-makers now realise needs to be addressed. Fairlie makes the case for not throwing the baby out with the bath water or should that be don't demonise the animal before you know its function and value? --Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy, City University London

No-one has ever analysed the world's food and agriculture more astutely than Simon Fairlie - an original thinker and a true scholar. Here he shows that while meat is generally a luxury it is often the best option, and could always be turned to advantage if only we did things properly; but this, with present economic policies and legal restrictions, is becoming less and less possible. Everyone should read this book especially governments, and all campaigners. --Colin Tudge, Biologist and author

This book is a masterpiece: original, challenging and brilliantly argued. Simon Fairlie is a great thinker and a great writer. --George Monbiot, Environmental and political activist, author and journalist

About the Author

Simon Fairlie worked for 20 years variously as an agricultural labourer, vine-worker, shepherd, fisherman, builder and stonemason before being ensnared by the computer in 1990. Simon was co-editor of The Ecologist magazine for four years, before joining a community farm in 1994 where he managed the cows, pigs and a working horse for 10 years. He now runs Chapter 7, an organisation that provides planning advice to smallholders and other low income people in the countryside. Simon is also editor of The Land magazine, and earns a living by selling scythes. He is the author of Low Impact Development: Planning and People in a Sustainable Countryside.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Permanent Publications (28 Feb. 2013)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1856230554
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1856230551
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.7 x 1.7 x 23.3 cm
  • Customer reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 67 ratings

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Simon Fairlie

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
67 global ratings

Top reviews from United Kingdom

Chris ap Alfred
5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 October 2010
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This is an inspirational book full of wonders.

Simon Fairlie has taken the time, patience and intellectual effort to research his subject in depth: that much of this was done through his local library is even more impressive. His analysis of the role of animals in food production strategies is quantitative, and closely argued. But he also brings in an engagingly human perspective on our relationship with animals, both domesticated and wild, based on his long, varied and direct experience, and insists that nurturing this relationship is essential for the future. He shows clearly how public debate and policy formation are so easily influenced by "facts" which are just plain wrong, and sometimes mischievously so.

For this reveiwer the book is also notable for three reasons.

First, it is the most balanced treatise I have read on land use, which is the invisible elephant in the room as far as most discussions of sustainability are concerned. It's a shame it's limited to agriculture, because the sourcing of energy and materials will also impact land use in the next few decades. Apart from nuclear power, all the alternative energy technologies are land hungry.

Second, its skilful dissection of the vegan position, revealing its fear of engaging with the realities of nature,is timely. Even Stewart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, has come out in favour of packing humans into cities (for the creativity, it seems)and surrounding them with regions reserved for agriculture and regions of "wilderness". I find this anti-human "industrial vegan" vision of the future almost too appalling to comtemplate.

Third, the permaculture approaches he writes about so lovingly derive from ideas I encountered in the late 60s and early 70s and which still resonate. "Self Sufficiency", "Small is Beautiful", "Diet for a Small Planet": all must have been seeds for his approach to life. How can one not admire a writer on sustainability who describes the poor outcome of his experiments in composting his own faeces? (Ok, I admit I tried as well, in 1974) These ideas need to be nourished if humans are to win the battle against the corporations.

To close: the book is impressive both for its sources and its sustained arguments, but also for the spicy titbits of information and stories that pepper it. Truly wonderful.
28 people found this helpful
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Richard Williams
5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful and logical
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 September 2010
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Being a vegan or vegetarian is a perfectly reasonable position for those with a religious objection to meat eating or those who believe that killing animals is morally wrong. In recent years a growing number of people have gone further and declared that eating meat is bad environmentally. Before reading this book I often pondered on what would happen if animals ceased to be farmed for food and skins in Britain. No cattle grazing the lush, lowland pastures and no sheep on our hills. Instead we might see massive fields of grain grown in a monoculture and the uplands left bleak and non productive. What I never questioned were the statistics that appeared to prove that meat was a wasteful use of land.

In masterful fashion the author demolishes the, often accepted, figures on water consumption and methane production of food animals. In a scholarly, but readable, work he provides a counter argument with sources cited for those who wish to study this subject more deeply. He argues that meat production is essential to provide a balanced farming economy and that the real problem is over consumption of meat and the farming methods employed to deliver this abundance.

A thought provoking work written by a man who has deep knowledge of the countryside and farming. This book provides us with a sustainable, alternative future where meat is an important part of out diet but is eaten in smaller quantities and is treated as an indulgence, as our not so distant forebears considered it.
40 people found this helpful
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Juggler
4.0 out of 5 stars A worthwhile and interesting read.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 October 2016
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Should be read by vegan and factory farmed meat eating audiences alike in order for all to get a little perspective and to see a way forward. An excellent breakdown of the issues and debunking of the myths around the impact of meat .
5 people found this helpful
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Spaniel J Faux
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant argument for massively reduced, but not zero animal husbandry
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 March 2021
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This book should really be called Sustainable Land Use in the UK or something similar to be accurate, but that wouldn't sell! It's a really excellent piece of work and deserves to be read and considered by anyone involved in food policy and environmental land management.
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Mr. G. Last
5.0 out of 5 stars Informative read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 November 2019
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This is an excellent book , written by an author who actually does his research, highly topical in this climate for blaming cattle for global warming.
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AS
5.0 out of 5 stars truly great book, wish more people would read it
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 October 2015
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interesting, well researched, cuts through loads of guarding headlines
2 people found this helpful
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S Thompson
5.0 out of 5 stars Best I've read on the subject
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 July 2014
Simply the best book I've read (and re-read) on the subject. It covers well where the numbers and arguments come from in the meat debate and how little is behind some of them. Simon Fairless then covers the other factors/adjustments you should consider...which many miss. Finally there is an interesting look at what a food system might look like that was sustainable and what that would mean for people. Its not a light read. Its a well researched, thoughtful book.
2 people found this helpful
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Dhanashree Gambhir
1.0 out of 5 stars Eat Plants and Plant Trees
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 October 2023
Invest time and money consuming fruits, nuts, vegetables and spices instead of buying this book promotes animal abuse. Animals are sentient people, just from a different species. They don't deserve to be hurt and killed. They are not on Planet 'for us', they're 'with us'.
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Top reviews from other countries

Amh3
5.0 out of 5 stars A great book for those who need research-based arguments
Reviewed in the United States on 28 September 2011
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I'm probably the last person I'd ever have expected to buy this book, let alone give it 5 stars. I've read about half of the essay-style chapters (which is great, because you can skip around to the issues at the forefront of your thoughts on any given day), and this guy really did his homework. If you are someone who wants to get a better focus on a very foggy picture of humans and their food, this is the book for you. I'm a microbiologist turned vegan in grad school, and I hadn't even scratched the surface in my own mind of some of the issues Fairlie brings up. I went vegan as an emotional reaction to the killing of animals, and mainly factory farmed ones. It is quite possible my reaction was so strong because I had been completely removed from a relationship with animal foods in particular, I mean I hadn't even really made the connection that a chicken breast in the store came from a chicken who most likely suffered a great deal, if the store is where you are buying said chicken...read Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, another well researched book. I was never exposed to any kind of farm education, or hunting really, although my dad did a bit when I was a kid, and I remember being mortified.

Anyway, I had multiple vitamin deficiencies being vegan for 2 years, despite an almost soy-free, veggie and beans based diet (multivitamin included). I started drinking raw milk, eating raw cheese, and then I got to thinking about veal and what happens when the cow is too old, etc. Since our local organic small-town family diary farmer eats her cows (the males as a result of producing the raw milk I drink, and probably others), I started to consider eating them as well. It didn't make sense to drink the milk and refuse her meat. So yes, vegan turned local omnivore, and trying to adhere to the default livestock diet that Fairlie lays out in this book.

This book has hundreds of references, you can just go right to those papers and look for yourself. Fairlie has just put all the info in convenient form. I really enjoyed the chapter on what a vegan society's landscape might look like. This is something that the big vegan organizations never really go in to, and they should, because the picture isn't pretty. If you need a book to help you explore what kind of diet really does less harm to the planet, this is a great read. I was shocked at the chapter with the graph showing how vegetable oil production takes up as much land as beef (the least efficient meat to produce), and even more to learn how the pork industry and soy bean industry (veg oil) are so intertwined.
13 people found this helpful
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ALBO
5.0 out of 5 stars and that there is no easy 'solution' to the ecological burden we humans place on ...
Reviewed in the United States on 8 February 2018
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Vegans and vegetarians - read this, because even if you end up disagreeing, you should at least discover the complexities of large-scale farming, and that there is no easy 'solution' to the ecological burden we humans place on the planet. "We should all be vegetarian" would mean vast use of synthetic fertilizers, vast areas of monocultural crops which cannot be organically grown, and harsh borders with wilderness. The benefits of mixed, low-scale farming utilizing animals alongside crops are spelled out really well. Still 'less meat' - but animals integrated with organic crops - and then the questions of how to treat and use those animals. Interesting read.
One person found this helpful
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exaltata
4.0 out of 5 stars Thought-Provoking
Reviewed in the United States on 17 July 2011
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In Meat: A Benign Extravagance, Simon Fairlie lays out an extremely detailed, multi-layered argument for how small "default" amounts of meat production can be part of a sustainable agricultural system. Fairlie asserts that small-scale, local livestock rearing can be an environmentally neutral, or even beneficial, aspect of sustainable food production, especially when animals are reared on non-arable land, fed on unpalatable-to-human grasses or food wastes, and used to transport nutrients locally in the form of manure. He assesses the environmental impact of a variety of food/agricultural paradigms, including veganism, organic, and factory farming. His measures for environmental effects include total land use required, water use, carbon dioxide production, and other greenhouse gas emissions.

While I did not agree with every single one of Fairlie's arguments or conclusions, I was extremely happy with his diligent reporting of where he got his facts and how he used them. Not every reader will enjoy such a detailed level of reporting and numerical analysis, but I did. It is definitely what sets this book head and shoulders about any other in its field. Giving the proper information ensures that the reader can draw her own conclusions, rather than blindly following the author's prose to only one possible ending.

This is a groundbreaking book, and I commend Fairlie for the effort. There are a few drawbacks, however. First, Fairlie is British, and the book was originally published in the UK. Understandably, the author uses Great Britain as a case study over and over again, which means Americans will have to decide for themselves which ideas will or will not hold true in the US, which has a markedly different geography, culture, and agricultural system. Furthermore, Americans should be prepared with their British English dictionaries, as there are numerous terms, especially agricultural ones, that are not in use or have completely different meanings in the US (corn, for example). The second drawback is that there is almost no discussion about the ethical and health issues pertaining to meat-eating. Fairlie makes vegans out to be misguided hippies intent on saving the world, but in my experience, most people become vegetarians or vegans for health reasons, not environmental ones. Similarly, his comparison of meat versus plants is limited to caloric value, protein levels, and fat content. He completely ignores any other nutritional differences between the two types of food. Finally, the book is very poorly edited. There are typos throughout the entire thing, at a much higher rate than I would ever consider acceptable for a published book. Perhaps the proofreader was too caught up in the author's detailed analysis to do his own job.

I'd love to give this book a 5 star rating because it is, for the most part, extraordinarily well done. However, there are just a few too many negative issues for me. So, it gets a 4 star rating, but I encourage everyone to read this book and think long and hard about their food choices.
4 people found this helpful
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece
Reviewed in the United States on 18 October 2020
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Well written and packed with information, clearly separated from opinion.
As relevant in 2020 than when it was published.
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G. Burgess
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing book
Reviewed in the United States on 30 January 2014
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This will arm you with the knowledge to dispute any claims from an environmental vegan. I would suggest this for anyone considering going vegan because of environmental factors and beef is more complex then people think.
One person found this helpful
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