Should We Eat Meat?

Smil opens by acknowledging that meat eating is a contentious subject, whether the argument is technical, ethical, environmental, political or health-related, and then offers a wide-ranging interdisciplinary examination and critique of human meat consumption across evolution and around the world. He sets the scene with meat's role in human evolution and its growing influence as agricultural practices developed, then turns to modern production systems and assesses their efficiencies, outputs and impacts. Describing the major global trends in consumption, he asks what part meat plays in the changing diets of countries worldwide. The heart of the book addresses the consequences of what he calls the massive carnivory of western diets, examining the inefficiencies of production and the heavy impacts on land, water and the atmosphere, together with health effects that he treats as both positive and negative. He closes with a vision of rational meat eating, in which environmental and health impacts are reduced, animals are treated more humanely, and alternative sources of protein make a larger contribution. Smil is explicit that the book is not an ideological tract for or against eating meat but a careful evaluation of its role in human diets and of the consequences of producing and consuming it.

Written from the catalogue listing at Blackwell's reproducing the Wiley publisher's synopsis.

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