Pig Tales: An Omnivore's Quest for Sustainable Meat by Barry Estabrook

Pig Tales: An Omnivore's Quest for Sustainable Meat Reviews

• 
  Dacod

  Immigrants with shit filled diapers, piglets operating computers and crazy Danish people seeking to do things right. Barry Estabrook's journalistic endeavor to educate the average american bacon fetishist and artisan of such unparalleled jokes as "I love pigs....THEY'RE DELICIOUS. hee hoo hug!" is a comprehensive overview of all you need to know about pigs.
  To begin with Pigs are intelligent--very intelligent in fact. Previously unbeknownst to me, pigs are emotional beings with individual personalities, who are capable of remembering individuals for long periods of time, recognizing themselves in mirrors and as previously stated, operate computers (an ability that many parents lack). But I'm not here to preach the Pig Gospel or be one of those annoying people who says "I hate humans, humans are awful blah blah fart"--and neither is Estabrook. Instead the two of us are here to present the facts that are at times shocking to consider. After all, pigs are not all cute and cuddly, in fact, in their wild form they are a highly dangerous and incredibly successful invasive species whose strength and violence are purported to have killed black bears. Brought to North America as a failed Canadian hunting venture, wild piggies braved cruel canadian winters and eventually swarmed to just about every state and country on earth.
  As I said before, some pigs are cute, but the wild ones are undeniable assholes and pests. Not only will they fuck you up and kill you, but further these large beasts love to uproot vast quantities of crops and land in the night, causing a considerable amount of stress and anger for american farmers who wake up to fields which look as though they have been ravaged by large machines.
  Aside from the plentiful and interesting information that this book provides on the amazing things that pigs do, the main focus of the book is on "Big Ag" and the ways that large corporations perform horrible acts not simply upon the pigs they slaughter, or the communities that they endanger, but also the poorly treated mexican immigrants that they employ.
  Starting with the conditions of pigs in large factory farms, Estabrook provides information that most of us are probably already aware of and yet somehow remain to be unfazed by (myself included) e.g. small crates, high usage of antibiotics, cruelty, unbearable stench and unanesthetized castrations etc. YUMMY (i still eat meat I'm imperfect). The new and more shocking information that he adds involves how these companies treat waste. For instance, in most large scale factories pigs shit in their undersized crates and the excrement falls through slats into a disgusting "lagoon" of piss and shit products. The book goes on to cite instances in which employees have fallen into the lagoons, dying soon after. In parts of the south and the Carolina's pig shit is literally raining from the sky as corporations spread the waste across the land as manure.
  And if all this were not bad enough, there are the horror stories of vulnerable immigrants and the dangerous jobs that even Donald Trump would shudder to watch Mexicans face. One man described the pace as so "relentless" that "women on the line wear adult diapers, particularly when they are pregnant or have their periods" and that he had "stood beside three men...who defecated in their trousers" (206). If that wasn't convincing enough for you and you still hate pigs and Mexicans enough to let them shit all over themselves, perhaps the description of another immigrant, a single mother of four will twist your nipple and persuade you. She describes having to " remove stainless-steel meat hooks from hanging hog carcasses as they sped past. She had to stand on a narrow platform above a container full of entrails, and several times nearly lost her balance. When she requested a transfer, the boss told her that abandoning her job was a firing offense" (203). WHAT THE FUCK. What year is it m'lord?
  In the end, Estabrook provides examples of a growing number of farms that are attempting to raise pigs right and treat them with respect rather than using them as 'instruments in a machine.' But even then, the pork produced in the correct way ends up costing about five times that of the average holocaust produced meat that is affordable to the poor and immigrants. While the book attempts to end on a positive note and does highlight the fact that some progress is actually being made, the bottom line seems to be that whatever progress is made the poor will continue to suffer.
  As usual, being presented with such horrendous information seems somewhat useless as the book gives no real suggestions as to what people like me can do to stop this from happening. The answer isn't as simple as ceasing to eat pork--in fact, Estabrook never once suggests to do so or stops eating it himself. So long as you buy the expensive and well treated pork, there isn't a whole lot wrong with doing so. But when immigrants and the poor are living in locations where shit is literally raining on them from the sky, when they are disrespected and mistreated by cruel corporations, when government agencies fail to do their jobs and protect workers, citizens and the environment then the question that still remains is: how can I, a regular person stop the powerful abuse of large scale agricultural operations and make sure that both pigs (as intelligent creatures) and lower class workers (also as intelligent creatures) can both receive the quality of life and treatment that they deserve. I don't have an answer for that. I really enjoyed this book and recommend it but I'm unsure of what to do with all of this alarming information.
  
• 
  Melle

  This is a well-written book and, unlike Ted Genoways' The Chain, this book examines pigs as the amazing and smart creatures they are while still, like The Chain, looking at the ugly side of modern mass industrial hog-producing/-raising and hog-slaughtering. Estabrook also looks at people humanely raising pigs as a source of meat and also delves into problems with feral pigs. For me personally, this book felt like too much of a stretch to make omnivores feel better about their decision to eat fellow living beings who are smart, capable of emotions and learning, and to do it in a better way. I can't argue with the "better way" but I don't think bacon is worth the suffering. Still, I think this is a worthwhile book and one that should get in the hands of people who choose to eat pigs.
  
  Minne the Cat's review, since she slept next to me during my reading adventure and is now trying to get on our keyboard:.... ]===79n;\;\p=k=k===========================-o0 ]\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\|}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
• 
  Shaun

  I was a little leery going in that this book would be either all pro pork/meat or anti pork/meat. It really isn't either. The subject matter accepts the fact that eating pork isn't going away, but the book dives in to the question of how we, in the United States, process that pork from piglet to slaughter.
  
  Barry Estabrook travels from California to Iowa to North Carolina to Denmark to research how pigs are raised for consumption. He dives into the treatment of raising pigs from small independent farms to large industrial factory farms. Also, how those pigs are ultimately slaughtered. He doesn't really try to persuade the reader, instead opting to just present the facts as they are. That, inevitably makes large scale factory farming in a negative light, but there are also some large scale factory farms that do things in a better way. There really is very little politics in the book, which I thought was a good thing.
  
  Overall, I found the book fascinating. I'm not much of an eater of pork in general and I'm not really an 'activist' on one side of the issue or the other. It really made me realize why good pork costs more and why I should care about how the meat I eat is raised and processed.
  
  I received an ARC of this book through a Goodreads First Reads giveaway.
• 
  Casey Kiser

  a mighty and well-researched book that is particularly perfect for anyone interested in how their pork is being manufactured but may be turned off by a book written by a biased vegan or vegetarian. But, every American should read this! I found this book at the dollar tree (cries). A lot of research went into this book and it's well done in my opinion. I don't eat meat but my family does and I feel like it's SO important for us as humans (as well as for the animals) to care how the meat is manufactured.
  Though the author concentrates mostly on actual production practices, he does slip in briefly, experiments done to test pig's intelligence, even using computers.
  
  *We always heard 'you are what you eat' . Let us break down this simple statement. Every living thing is energy/ has light. If you are constantly consuming meat from animals that died horribly, you are consuming that energy and making that negative experience part of your light. Just something to consider. Bottom line: pigs deserve to be treated humanely and anyone who thinks they are only put on the earth for eating, and how they are killed doesn't matter, just may have some soul searching to do. This is just a wonderful source of information to have on your bookshelf.
  *my own opinion = not from the book
• 
  Susan Rainwater

  Pig Tales is divided into three parts.
  
  Part 1 covers pig intelligence (about the same as a 3-year-old human), pig lifestyles (lots of rooting), and the worldwide problem of feral pigs (they're everywere and very destructive). Part 2 covers the problem of industrial agra-biz. Part 3 provides a glimpse into economically viable, sustainable ways of raising and slaughtering pigs. Think Chipotle and Niman Ranch.
  
  Part 2 neatly dovetails into one of my previous reads, The World of the Salt Marsh. Both authors cover the ways that industrial farming damages rivers, marshes, and other waterways, often destroying fish habitat in the process.
  
  The result of industrial pig farming is lousy pork, sick farmers, injured slaughterhouse workers, Americans eating too much meat, and a few rich corporations.
  
  The takeaway — seek out pork and other meat that is sustainably raised. It's better for pig and human alike.
• 
  Erin Poll - Tanis

  This book was fascinating, informative, and gave straight facts so you didn't feel like you were reading propaganda. It was also very well written. Never once did I get bored or feel weighed down with facts or information- all of it was told with humor and compassion. I'll say it again, fascinating! One of those books you wish everyone would read. Also one where you feel smarter after reading it, so that is always a good thing! I loved it!
• 
  Alex

  Good pork.
• 
  Kristen Lo

  Pig Tales has an amazing amount of information-- and what's wonderful is even though the information is mostly terrifying, the stories are so well told that just when you want to put the book down in disgust, hope comes into the picture and you feel like everything could be ok. Also, the book is pretty empowering because it's very clear what we all must do. Factory farms are bad for people, animals, the environment, and the health of the world.
• 
  Maria

  This book has changed where I purchase meat. Knowing what I know now, it's worth the extra money to eat meat free of hormones and pasture raised. And if I'm honest, I already knew that corporate owned hogs had a tough life, but now that the stories in this book have sunk in I can't in good conscience purchase blindly.
• 
  Courtney

  The first emotion most have when presented with a book on animal agriculture practices or meat processing is guilt. In Pig Tales Barry Estabrook challenges the popular notion that any look at the meat industry is a vegan-biased horror show. Estabrook presents interviews, eye-witness accounts, and legal proceedings in a way that allows the reader to see that while not all meat practices should be halted, the public is more manipulated by "big pig" than we realize. The most salient aspect for me was the focus on the welfare of humans affected by the pork industry. Factory farms on the edge of family homesteads have caused waves of protests from small towns that are slowly eroded by the smells and medical side-effects of large-scale industrial pig farming. North Carolina, my home state, is one of the biggest offenders of manipulating poor residents when the gross pig-waste practices negatively impact the air and water quality for the area. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. In the last several chapters, Estabrook explores the emerging small-scale, pasture-raised pig farming practices. This gives me hope that soon there will be enough of these much more ethical and healthy options for consumers. The main takeaway is that the pork industry is here to stay, but hopefully soon it will no longer be driven by profit-hungry factory giants and will instead return to the more sustainable pastured livestock model.
• 
  Books on Stereo

  A very informative, borderline info-dumping, tale about sustainable pig farming. At times highly repetitive, Eastabrook is able to keep the reader's attention even though not much is to be gained.
• 
  Selim Tlili

  A fascinating look into the hog industry in America and a compelling argument for the dangers of prizing profit margins above all other principles.
  I believe that Estabrook didn’t quite go far enough in his categorization of some of the troubles to which the factory animal farming model has contributed; he discusses environmental challenges but doesn’t go far enough in showing the correlation between consumer health and chronic illness beyond only increased infectious diseases.
  
  Overall a fascinating book. I learned a lot about pigs and was entertained by his travels and his conversations with experts in this field. Anyone interested in environmental sustainability would find this fascinating.
• 
  Jessica

  Pig Tales is a thorough and comprehensive book that is also a quick and easy read. Estabrook divides the book into three sections - exploring pigs as animals, the world of factory farmed pork, and how some farmers are going back to traditional, sustainable hog farming. Pigs are easily trained and incredibly smart animals with an intellectual capacity comparable to a three-year-old child. Because of their high intelligence and social nature factory farming is even crueler for pigs. Estabrook goes through every aspect of the process from breeding and gestation crates to the slaughtering process to highlight the horrors of industrial hog farming. He also shows the damage to the environment and how anyone who is unfortunate enough to live beside an industrial hog farm is affected by the odors, manure spray, and toxic gases and bacteria that come from these farms. Thankfully he ends the book with farmers who are going against the industrial grain to raise hogs in a humane and sustainable way. There have been many books written about the horrors of factory farming, but Estabrook does a great job of succinctly explaining the issues and getting the information across in a very easy to read way. Like Tomatoland where Estabrook explored industrial agriculture through tomatoes, he does the same for industrial meat farming through pigs with Pig Tales. An excellent book that explores a complex and horrific issue.
  
  Some quotes I really liked:
  
  “The work of Held, Mendl, Broom, and Croney suggests that there’s a lot more that pigs could tell us about their mental capacity – given the chance. Unfortunately, funding for research into pig cognition has dried up, particularly in the United States. ‘A lot of our research has not been published because there are some people who don’t want that information out there. We had people trashing our work and saying that animal welfare wasn’t a good enough reason to fund research and that our findings could potentially harm the pork industry. [says Croney] Think about who funds this work – the industry.’” (p. 36)
  
  “It’s hard to imagine a more formidable candidate for America’s most destructive invasive species than the feral pig. A pig can run 30 miles per hour and leap over three-foot fences. They are virtual breeding machines. On average, a feral sow has one litter of six piglets per year, but can have up to twelve. The young typically begin breeding at around one year old. Unguarded piglets are susceptible to predation, but once a wild pig has matured, humans are the only major predator it faces. Bears and panthers do take the occasional hog, at some risk to themselves. Mature pigs have killed black bears.” (p. 49-50)
  
  “Since 1975, more than thirty hog workers have been asphyxiated by hydrogen sulfide, the common rotten-egg-smelling gas that rises from pits below barns and from open-air ‘lagoons,’ the industry’s euphemism for the manure-filled ponds that range from the size of an Olympic swimming pool to ones that would cover a city block. Even a few breaths of hydrogen sulfide at levels above 500 parts per million can cause a worker to collapse and stop breathing. Levels of the gas greater than 100 parts per million can cause eye and lung irritation, nausea, and vomiting, and leave those exposed with lasting problems involving concentration, learning, memory, and muscle function. Routine agitation of manure lagoons can cause hydrogen-sulfide levels to rise as high as 1,000 parts per million.” (p. 114)
  
  “Estimates of a pig’s manure output vary from twice as much as a human’s to ten times as much. But even at the low end of that range, the 7.5 million hogs in the five contiguous North Carolina counties (including Duplin County, where Herring lives, which has more than 2 million hogs, the most of any county in the United States) produce as much waste as all the residents of the three largest US cities, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago combined.” (p. 122)
  
  “Shortly after Watson lost her seat in the legislature, Wing published a paper indicating that factory farmers deliberately built big hog barns in areas with poor, black populations that were unlikely to complain. He showed that in North Carolina, a factory pig farm was seven times more likely to be in a poor district than a better-off one and five times more likely to be in an area with a large black population than a predominately white region. For operations owned by large corporations, as opposed to individual operators, the discrepancies between white/black and rich/poor locations was even larger.” (p. 130)
  
  “[Bill] Stowe’s [CEO and general manager of Des Moines Water Works] main complaint is that the government holds agricultural polluters to a different standard than other sectors. ‘Nonagricultural polluters are heavily regulated. Cities and towns have to have sewage plants, storm sewers are tightly controlled, factories have to treat their wastewater. When you buy a car, the government mandates that it comes with an expensive catalytic converter to control emissions coming from your exhaust pipe,’ he said. ‘If it’s human waste, it’s highly treated before it ever makes it to a waterway, but if it’s pig’s waste, which there is a lot more of than human waste in Iowa, it can be piped right into a stream.’” (p. 150)
  
  “In the 1970’s, Stuart B. Levy kept a couple of flocks of chickens on the rolling countryside west of Boston. No ordinary farmer, Levy is the distinguished professor of molecular biology and microbiology and of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine and also the president of the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics…Levy’s chickens took part in a never-before-conducted study. Half the birds received feed laced with a low dose of antibiotics. The other half received drug-free food. Within two days, the treated animals began excreting feces containing E. coli bacteria that were resistant to tetracycline, the antibiotic in their feed. After three months, the chickens also excreted bacteria resistant to such potent antibiotics as ampicillin, streptomycin, carbenicillin, and sulfonamides. Even though Levy had added only tetracycline to their food, his chickens had somehow developed what researchers now call ‘multi-drug resistance’ to a host of antibiotics that play important roles in treating infections in humans. More frightening, members of the farm family tending the treated flock soon began excreting resistant strains of E. coli, even though they were not taking antibiotics themselves. When Levy’s study was published in 1976, it was met with skepticism. ‘The other side – the industry – thought we had fabricated the data,’ he told me. ‘They could not believe that this would have happened. The mood at the time was that what happens in animals does not relate to people. Be we had the data. It was obvious that using antibiotics this way was an error that should be stopped.’ Instead of stopping, industrial agriculture spent the ensuing four decades shoveling more and more antibiotics into the mouths of animals – from about 18 million pounds per year in 1999 to 30 million pounds in 2009.” (p. 165-6)
  
  “Although the FDA wisely forbade feeding food made of most animal tissues to cattle in 1997 [in response to mad cow outbreaks in Britain]…farmers can feed pigs rendered bones, viscera, heads, beaks, and tendons from slaughterhouses that process cattle, poultry, and even pigs. Worse, the pig by-products that go into hog feed can come from sick and dying hogs and hogs that have died on the farm…Other common ‘animal protein products’ used in pork production include: dried feces of cows and pigs (manure contains protein); poultry litter, including excrement, dead chickens, and uneaten chicken feed; hydrolyzed hog hair; feather meal (ground-up chicken and turkey feathers); rendered roadkill; animal fat, including pig fat and poultry grease; dried blood; food that has been condemned for human consumption because it has been adulterated with rodent, roach, or bird excrement; and unsalable products from bakeries and candy manufacturers. Factory-farmed hogs not only provide inexpensive meat to humans but also act as convenient disposal systems for the waste products of large-scale food production. The industry calls the practice ‘recycling.’” (p. 252-3)
  
• 
  Natasha

  
  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
  
  “Pig Tales” by Barry Estabrook is a super interesting book that dives into the pork industry in America. This book uncovers the dark and messed-up side of pork production, showing us the harsh reality behind our meals.
  
  You won’t be able to put this book down - it’s a perfect blend of personal stories and in-depth research. Estabrook talks about his experiences hunting wild pigs at night in Texas and visiting huge pig barns of major pork companies like Smithfield and Tyson. He makes it clear how much better the more humane, sustainable practices are compared to industrial pig farming.
  
  You can really see how much Estabrook loves and respects pigs on every page. He’s all about how smart and clever they are, which makes it even more heartbreaking how they’re treated in the industry. This book reminds us that we gotta change our demand for pork and how clueless we are about how it’s made.
  
  “Pig Tales” gets you thinking about where your food comes from and the ethical and sustainable choices you have. Estabrook demonstrates that you can have your pork and eat it too, all while supporting ethical, sustainable, and economically sound practices. If you give a damn about where your food comes from and want to help make a difference in the industry, you need to read this book. It’s thought-provoking, funny, and teaches us a lot about what we eat.
  
  Get it at…
  
  📗 - Hard Copy -📗
  
  Your Local Canadian Book Seller
  
  Indigo
  
  Amazon Canada
  
  📱 - Digital - 📱
  
  Kobo
  
  Kindle
  
  🎧 - Audio - 🎧
  
  Audible
  
  Libro.FM
• 
  Claire

  I expected it to be more entertaining after hearing a highly memorable and endearing excerpt from it on NPR some time ago. These more interesting tidbits are interspersed with long slogs through "bad news" stories - endless tales of both people and pigs getting shafted by industrial farming, with very little accountability or justice. It's good to know, but it's not exactly an uplifting book. I realize now what I expected out of the book was actually more about pigs themselves, their personalities, their intelligence etc. But mainly this focuses on the ins and outs of pig farming, which I should have anticipated from the title. All in all, the fact that I read the whole thing is a testament to the fact that it held my interest the whole time.
• 
  B.

  Part 1 was beautifully written, full of all kinds of wonderful pig facts and a ton of interesting information about the relationship between pigs and humans (domesticity and so forth). Part 2 was a complete let down for me. I expected/ hoped that part 2 would continue in the same vein as part 1, but alas, different source material, different approach to writing, completely different tone. Part 3 says, in essence, eat it or don't, but if you do eat it, find more sustainable approaches to doing so, concluding the text in a very practical manner. Basically, I would have been happier with the book if part 2 kept the same tone and approach as parts 1 and 3.
• 
  Jostalady

  I have a pet pig and recently read the Omnivore's Dilemma so this popped up in books I might be interested in and the algorithm was correct!
  
  Barry chills us with peeks inside of large production operations and shows us some hopeful examples of smaller, sustainable farms free of the cruel practices seen at the large farms. I was especially glad to hear that there is a method of knocking the pigs unconscious before butchering that is reassuring.
• 
  Leah

  The loveliest book about hogs, hog farming, sustainability, and how we promote and preserve this way of life. It explores the darker side of factory farming too, but Estabrook gives each type of farm a say to explain all about pigs, how they grow and butcher them, etc. Wonderful read if you want to know more about where your pork comes from!
• 
  Julie Reagan

  I love bbq and by bbq, I mean chopped pork. So why wouldn’t I read a book about my favorite food? This nonfiction about the pork industry is fascinating and disgusting - eye opening and nostril filling. But not a great conversation starter. What do I do with all this information I’ve learned about pig poop? Let it stew?