Meatonomics by David Robinson Simon

Praise for Meatonomics
    “Consumers can only make wise purchases of meat if the price they pay reflects the full cost of producing it—when there are no ‘hidden’ costs like subsidies or environmental damage. Simon is the first author to attempt a complete accounting of all these hidden costs, something that should be applauded by the vegan and meat-lover alike.”
    —F. B AILEY N ORWOOD , PhD,
author of Compassion by the Pound ,
associate professor, Department of Agricultural Economics,
Oklahoma State University
    “This important book joins the ranks of T. Colin Campbell's Whole and The China Study in its power to expose the truth and begin to repair the health care crisis.”
    —P ATTI B REITMAN ,
co-author of How to Eat Like a Vegetarian,
Even If You Never Want To Be One and How to Say No Without Feeling Guilty
    “ Meatonomics will grab you and not let you go. It's a critically important and absolutely fascinating and astonishing in-depth look into the devastating effects of an industry's economic take-over of our culture and our well-being. David Robinson Simon not only cogently and systematically exposes the many facets of cost externalization by the meat, dairy, egg, and fishing industries, but he also makes a compelling case for practical solutions that we can all work for, discuss, and implement, including a meat tax, changes in government subsidy programs, and personal food choices. Meatonomics has my highest recommendation—a book that liberates as it illuminates.”
    —W ILL T UTTLE , PhD,
author of The World Peace Diet
    “We like to think we live in a democracy, where public officials tend the general welfare. But increasingly, corporate lobbyists write our laws, and corporate interests dictate what we are allowed to know. David Robinson Simon's book is spectacularly important, because it lifts the veil and shows how the meat and dairy industries rig the game, and thus are able to stuff us with foods that imperil our health, devastate the environment, and cause unrelenting cruelty to billions of animals. He reveals the massive subsidies that make industrial meat and dairy products seem cheap, when in fact they are destroying our lives and our future. He lets us see what these industries don't want us to see—the true cost we are paying for their products. And he shows us the steps we need to take, as individuals and as a society, to restore both our economic sanity and our health.”
    —J OHN R OBBINS ,
author of The Food Revolution, No Happy Cows,
Diet For a New America , and other bestsellers
    “The need to transform the unhealthy, unsustainable, and unjust food system that prevails today runs deep. It will require food activists and researchers to undertake what will constitute a long march through the entire food chain. A critical starting point involves the corporate-dominated meat production system. David Robinson Simon takes us on that journey and helps us identify what we will need to confront and the changes that will need to be made.”
    —R OBERT G OTTLEIB ,
co-author of Food Justice , Professor, Urban & Environmental Policy Institute, Occidental College
    “A lively, well-researched look at society's many misconceptions about the production and consumption of meat. If you eat meat, you owe it to your body and your planet to read this book.”
    —R ORY F REEDMAN ,
author of Beg and co-author of the Skinny Bitch series of books
    “The knowledge in Meatonomics will free you and put you in control of your own food choices and health.”
    —J ANICE S TANGER , PhD,
author of The Perfect Formula Diet
    “Bringing cheap meat to the American table not only degrades the American palate, but it requires a series of corrupt bargains. David Robinson Simon exposes this corruption with impressive research, incisive prose, and the passion of a muckraker. The ultimate novelty of Simon's book is to portray our excessive consumption of animal products as a profound governmental failure, one abetted by