David Robinson Simon - Meatonomics: How the Rigged Economics of the Meat and Dairy Industries Are Encouraging You to Consume Way More Than You Shouldand How to Eat Better, Live Longer, and Spend Smarter

Consumers can only make wise purchases of meat if the price they pay reflects the full cost of producing itwhen 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. BAILEY NORWOOD, 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.

PATTI BREITMAN,
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 recommendationa book that liberates as it illuminates.

WILL TUTTLE, 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 seethe 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.

JOHN ROBBINS,
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.

ROBERT GOTTLEIB,
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.

RORY FREEDMAN,
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.

JANICE STANGER, 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 corporate greed and systematic consumer deception. Depressing as the story of meat can be, Simon leaves the reader feeling empowered and inspired to eat in a way that reflects our deepest values as concerned consumers. One finishes this book ready to make a change.

JAMES MCWILLIAMS, PHD
author of Just Food

Meatonomics provides what is perhaps the first thorough look at the shocking economic impact factory farming has had on all Americans.

NICK COONEY,
author of A Change of Heart and the founder and director of the Humane League

First published in 2013 by Conari Press, an imprint of

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

665 Third Street, Suite 400

San Francisco, CA 94107

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2013 by David Robinson Simon

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Simon, David Robinson.

Meatonomics : how the rigged economics of meat and dairy make you consume too much-and how to eat better, live longer, and spend smarter / David Robinson Simon.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-57324-620-0

1. Meat industry and tradeGovernment policyUnited States. 2. Dairy products industryGovernment policyUnited States. I. Title.

HD9416.S56 2013

338.1'7600973dc23

2013016514

Cover design by Jim Warner

Cover photograph Kitch Bain/shutterstock.com

Interior by Maureen Forys Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Typeset in Warnock Pro and Universe

Printed in Canada

F

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992 (R1997).

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To K. B. B.

Let me begin by getting a couple things off my chest. For starters, economics is subjective. John Kenneth Galbraith said the field was one in which hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension. The figures I propose for the costs of meatonomics are based on data that are slippery and hard to find, and the calculations themselves can vary based on how the math is done. Still, I think it's worthwhile to try. I've sought to present figures that I believe are reasonable and as accurate as possible, and in each case, to explain where they came from. Nevertheless, I'm the first to admit that this book's cost figures are, like almost everything in economics, subjective estimates.

Furthermore, while parts of this book deal with economics, medicine, and ecology, I'm not an economist, a doctor, or an ecologist. I'm a lawyer, and that's why I like to write disclaimers. A number of specialists in these areas have read and commented on the manuscript, which I hope means it contains no glaring errors. The book's analysis and conclusions are supported by research cited in more than seven hundred endnotes. Most of this information comes directly from government reports or published, peer-reviewed studies.

If you want to understand what's going on in the animal food industry, sometimes it helps to be an expert. But more often, you just need to keep your eyes and ears open, and approach the subject with what some Zen practitioners call beginner's mind. As Zen master Shunryu Suzuki observed, In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few.