Louise Gray's Reading List

"One interesting thing with this book is that while there are lots of animals in it—and they’re being tortured horribly, literally being skinned alive in the background of many, many scenes in the novel—it’s what’s happening to the humans that is so terrible, and that’s what you’re left with, especially reading it now. When it first came out, people were really shocked by what went into their meat, and I think people would read it now and think things are a bit better, and they probably are… but when you think about it we had the horsemeat scandal a few years ago, a lot of what happens in meat factories is still unknown to us. I think sometimes when we discuss meat-eating, we talk about the suffering of the animals, we even talk about the environment, but we often forget to talk about the people and I think that’s really important: the people who do it on your behalf are worth considering. I think they have to process those issues, but they shouldn’t be blind to them. All of the places I went to were in the UK which meant they were really highly regulated. Also, I would say they were probably quite good abattoirs because they were allowing a journalist in—I wasn’t undercover, I was being quite open about what I was doing. So those people weren’t blind to the issues because they had to be very good at what they did in order to keep their job. In one abattoir, the slaughter-men who were doing the killing had trained for seven years on all the floors, and so I don’t think they’re blind to it. They have to be trained in all of the welfare stuff and they have to care for the animals because they’re being filmed. They have CCTV in most abattoirs in the UK and there’s a big campaign to get CCTV in all abattoirs—I don’t know why the government will not legislate on this as it protects the abattoirs as well. If they are doing a good job it should not be a threat to them. “They had to control their emotions, otherwise they couldn’t do the job” When I interviewed slaughtermen and -women they were aware of what they were doing, that they were killing a beautiful animal. They admitted that they had to control their emotions, otherwise they couldn’t do the job, but also said they were keenly aware of ensuring the animal had a quick death. They were proud of doing a job well. I think it also becomes part of your lifestyle, often there are whole families working in these industries. It is normalised in the sense it is part of your life and that’s just how things are. One of the most interesting interviews I did was with Temple Grandin, an animal behaviourist. She’s audited a lot of abattoirs, and she said that the majority really care about their jobs and do it well but yes, like anything, there are a few bad apples. She admits it and is trying to redesign the industry, so that those kind of people are weeded out. I guess a few people don’t because I’ve had quite violent reactions to my book by people who often eat meat and really don’t want to know. It’s almost like they feel it’s a personal affront, that they’re being attacked when I start telling them where meat comes from. I try to be delicate because I can sort of understand that it is quite upsetting for people. But the majority of people absolutely do want to know because they want to know it is being done right. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter I think [most] people do want to know, but you have to contextualise it. The first time I went to an abattoir to write about it, I was traumatised. It is a death factory, there is no way of getting around that. But you have to put it in context if you really want to understand, so I think people should know about the whole picture—another reason I wrote the book. You need quite a lot of education because you have to think about how the animals are bred and how they’re treated as well as how they are killed. I think that should probably be part of school education. We should know where our food comes from, otherwise we’re susceptible to the kinds of things that happened in The Jungle , or the horsemeat scandal, because people are getting away with stuff where no one’s wanting to look."

"It was like Upton Sinclair’s but in the UK. It led to the UK government changing the law—the 1968 Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act and also the European Convention for the Protection of Animals Kept for Farming Purposes. Ultimately it led to the ‘five freedoms’, which vets had been working on, being brought into law. These summarised animal welfare as freedom from hunger and thirst, from discomfort, from pain, injury or disease, from fear and distress and, most controversially, the freedom to express most normal behaviours. What I liked about Ruth Harrison was that she was really ordinary—a bit like me, she was not an animal rights activist, she just was an ordinary person who wanted to know where her food came from so she went to farms and she had a look, and that sounds quite radical, even now. In the 1960s it was especially important because that’s when things were changing. Farm animals were being bred in bigger numbers and meanwhile the population was moving to the cities, away from farms, so they did not know about it. Harrison came along at the very moment when people began to be disconnected from animals and asked people to look again, and she still has a huge influence today. No. I suppose it’s to be expected because people have to live the message of their book and most books about meat are questioning the killing of animals. Something I’ve found is that it’s very hard to talk about these issues without being a paragon of virtue yourself. I was aware right from the start that I’d expose myself to accusations of hypocrisy just for daring to write about meat whilst failing to be a vegan. But I also thought that is why I should write it. Perhaps in the past people were frightened about writing about meat because they felt they had to be vegan or vegetarian but I argue that you can question where it comes from, you can try to make better choices, you can be an ethical carnivore. “It’s very hard to talk about these issues without being a paragon of virtue yourself” Also, I would point out that authors often change their minds after writing a book. Upton Sinclair was a vegetarian for a time, but I don’t think he kept it up. Writers try to reflect what they’re feeling when they write a book, but it might change in the future. I don’t think it’s surprising that most people who write these books are vegetarians and vegans , but I think it’s necessary that people who aren’t write them as well, because if they’re all advocating vegetarianism and that doesn’t work then you’re left with a huge number of people in the middle who aren’t listening because they don’t want to hear the vegetarian message. Those people are the majority and by persuading them to question where their meat comes from, you can make a huge difference. It’s really interesting because it’s a little bit like your question on the meat-eating: it’s not simple. You can’t just put a line down between large-scale and small-scale, and say that large-scale is always bad, especially when you are considering affordability. I’m not saying that as an excuse—when you go and talk to the people who are producing food and the people who are eating food, price is a huge issue and I’d like to know how food is produced affordably. So a good example would be intensive chickens raised to RSPCA Assured standards. Unlike slightly cheaper intensive chickens, they have daylight, they are dry, they’re not too squashed in. I went to see them and to me they looked content. Chickens are jungle birds, so they like being in the warm and the dry in a flock. But when I went to see intensive pigs indoors, they did seem unnaturally bored. They’re so puppy-ish and so intelligent, it’s hard to see how they can have the freedom to express ‘normal behaviour’ in that environment. It’s quite a contrast to when you see pigs rooting around outdoors. In fact I’d say you’re better off to go and see a pig outdoors if you really want to be inspired to buy free range because the animals are so obviously happy. “You’re better off to go and see a pig outdoors if you really want to be inspired to buy free range” But again, it’s complex. If you live in Scotland, how many pigs can be kept outdoors? So then you’re talking about how the intensive units can have straw inside them and perhaps more space for the pigs. Ultimately I’m afraid the consumer has to educate herself or himself."

"It’s brilliant. It’s a really amazing book, and it’s very feminine. It’s really how women experience meat as often the cook for the family, but also perhaps as the daughters and wives who are given meat, and it’s about what meat means to different cultures and how we try to sell one culture to the other. The central character is a Japanese-American woman making a documentary for the Japanese market about American meat. In Japan they haven’t got a history of eating a lot of red meat but the Americans were trying to sell it to them, so trying to change their culture. It makes you think about why we eat meat: a lot of it is because of cultural reasons. Think of the Sunday roast. We think we are more cosmopolitan now but even in Britain today, meat is for men, and in many places for a man to become vegetarian is seen as maybe a little bit effete. Isn’t that ridiculous? The book is also a fairly damning exploration of intensive meat. If you go back to Upton Sinclair, it’s about what’s happening in meat factories in America still to this day. Ozeki talks about Japanese culture and what really stays in your mind are these delicate vegetarian Japanese meals which are served and seem to be a much more accurate reflection of their culture than the American roasts being plonked on the table. So I don’t think a culture necessarily does have to have that big heft of red meat at the centre. Also cultures can evolve and change. I think we are at that moment now. In the past in the west we all subscribed to the American model of a good meal as having a big hunk of red meat in it, and to be healthy you eat a lot of red meat, and that’s a sign of success, and maleness, etc. But frankly we are running out of resources and beginning to think, ‘are there different ways to eat?’ Actually, we are not always putting meat at the centre of a meal any more and I’m interested in tracking the evolution of our culture as we move to a more mixed model. “Actually we are not always putting meat the centre of a meal any more” A lot of people have said to me that the western ideal of red meat is spreading to other parts of the world, but I think that’s a little simplistic and patronising. Yes, in some parts of the world people will want more meat as they grow richer. But in others, such as Japan , their own culture is stronger. Also, it works both ways, maybe we are taking on their cultural ideas of food. India is a really good example: they’ve had access to our culture for a long time but they still, because of Hinduism, have a very vegetarian diet, and meanwhile over here, we’re eating a lot of vegetarian curry, so it goes both ways. The idea of meat bringing a family together does still work, and I’m a social anthropologist by training so I sort of celebrate those cultural norms and see them as quite interesting—but I don’t think they need to stay the same forever when we can’t afford to produce that much red meat for all of us to eat all of the time. And whale. I don’t know, I guess if you were going to be really simplistic and you said we were all going to eat a certain kind of diet that was going to help the environment it would help, but I think the great joy of life is diversity. A lot of what My Year of Meats is about is one culture trying to overtake and destroy another but I think there are probably benefits in both cultures. In our conversation so far we’ve very much talked about all of the damage that can be caused by the meat industry, but I think if your culture is northern German and you live in a forest where there are wild pigs, and indeed free-range pigs that are being farmed, then I would argue perhaps to celebrate your local culture, and to eat locally—in that case, there’s no harm in maintaining your pork industry, or your pork-eating habits. But do we want to be doing that everywhere in the world where there are perhaps better, different ways to eat? It’s one of the great joys of travel and life, to discover all of the different ways we eat around the world so I’d hate for it all to be the same."

"It really explained to me the benefits of meat-eating, particularly in the UK as part of a mixed farm. The personal history of Simon Fairlie is quite interesting. He lived in these very progressive communes in Somerset and was milking the cows and slaughtering the pigs, but most of the people were vegetarian or vegan so instead of drinking the milk and eating the meat they were importing almond milk or soya margarine. He was frustrated that these homegrown products were being wasted while more energy was going into importing products. So that’s what motivated him to write the book. He wanted to show the true impact of eating meat if you take local factors into account. He questions the statistics on how much emissions livestock produce. For instance it’s often said that cattle in particular can produce up to 50% of carbon emissions. But Fairlie points out that this is if you’re grazing cattle where there used to be Amazon rainforest. Similarly if you’re grazing cattle in California or Arizona where there’s no water, it’s going to require a lot of water. But if you’re grazing cattle in Somerset where all that grows is grass then that can be an environmentally good thing and it can even store carbon. I think it’s a really important voice to balance out the argument on the effect meat-eating has on the environment. “I can’t think of many other issues that we discuss publicly where the first question is ‘what do you eat?” Fairlie has a great word for animals raised without damaging the environment, he calls it ‘default livestock’. He argues that if meat is raised from animals that are being grazed on land that could be used for nothing else—or on waste, so pigs, or because you need the leather or, I guess, medical products or other things—then that is part of a process and that’s a good thing to do for the environment. It’s quite refreshing, isn’t it, to see that Fairlie influenced environmentalists, that the argument all doesn’t have to go towards veganism, and it’s really interesting to see people like George Monbiot go back and forth [on the issue]. I can’t think of many other issues that we discuss publicly where the first question is ‘what do you eat?’ Yeah. When I go to people with my book, saying ‘perhaps let’s eat less meat,’ some people ask ‘why do I have carnivorous teeth then?’ Others say ‘you weren’t hard enough—when you talk about jobs in the countryside or maintaining the landscape, it’s just an excuse for torturing animals.’ So everyone’s got a really strong view. I think it’s the most natural thing—food is so emotionally loaded—and, at the moment, our culture seems obsessed with food and how we eat. I guess it’s because we’ve got so much food, as well as the time to consider how we eat it. So perhaps our questioning of meat is a result of that [renewed interest], but I don’t think we can deny that it’s emotional, too. If you deny that it’s emotional, you just end up sneaking off and closing the door and stuffing yourself with something bad because you are ashamed. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Yes. What’s so interesting about all these books, particularly Simon Fairlie’s, is he goes into the history and this is nothing new. [Percy Bysshe] Shelley was a vegetarian for a time because he believed in a better future where no one needed meat, or clothes, or marriage, or religion, and many of the Greek philosophers were vegetarian. But I think now with food and veganism in particular, because people feel so powerless, and because the state of the environment is so frightening, especially with climate change, it is a simple thing you can do to help minimise your impact on the planet. I wouldn’t take that away from people, but for me it’s simplistic: I would like to explore a more inclusive theory, a way of maybe bringing it into the mainstream. It’s happening already. “In the past a rich person would have been a glutton, but now a rich person would probably be a vegan with a personal chef” It’s not an extreme thing anymore to eat a certain proportion of vegan food—especially with all these chefs like Deliciously Ella, promoting plant based food. It’s aspirational. In the past a rich person would have been a glutton, but now a rich person would probably be a vegan with a personal chef. Yes, I guess there’s an element of that, but I wouldn’t want to patronise people who feel so strongly about eating animals that they would argue that if they had no choice, they wouldn’t do it. I think it’s dangerous to say that you have to be privileged to worry about these things. If you say that it’s just a middle-class worry, you shut down any conversation and the corporations peddling bad food get away with it. A lot of people who don’t have much money care about food and where it’s from and they shouldn’t be palmed off with ‘oh, it’s cheap, you don’t care about it’, when they do. A lot of nutritionists and chefs who are better versed than me, people like Jamie Oliver, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Jack Monroe, would say you can cook on a budget using ethical products. And it’s not just meat that we’re concerned about—it’s all sorts of things, like clothes. I guess it’s a bit of a twenty-first century thing to be worrying about where all the stuff we consume comes from."

"I read it before I started the book and it really influenced me. It’s a really powerful book and I know many people who it has made vegetarian. There’s a passage in it that says only eating animals you kill yourself is ridiculous [what Gray does for a year, in The Ethical Carnivore ], that it’s a stupid argument. He’s actually got a line: ‘It’s a way to forget the problem while pretending to remember.’ But I was a fan of this book and it was quite interesting to feel like I had to move beyond someone else’s opinion to do it on my own terms. I wasn’t living in the city, like Safran Foer, at the time, with lots of vegan restaurants about the place. I was living in the countryside, in a place where I was being offered venison quite regularly from animals that were being harvested as part of reforestation. I didn’t have a problem with this meat and I wanted to to explore that. Later in the book Safran Foer goes to see farmers who raise animals in a particular way and says ‘I would eat meat if I could do this realistically’—I would argue we could do that. “A lot of books about meat are lobbying but this isn’t a lobbying book, it’s just the author’s story” The book was also a big influence stylistically. There are a lot of books that I considered to put on this list which are about the facts and figures of eating meat, and are really interesting, but I feel like this is such an interesting book because it’s looking at the facts and figures in an emotional way. It’s about his personal history and about the people he meets. Just like Upton Sinclair’s book, it’s about the people. I just thought it was very interesting to explore our emotions, and a way of having some influence on an environmental issue but through storytelling not lecturing. A lot of books about meat are lobbying but this isn’t a lobbying book, it’s just his story. It’s an example of a way of exploring issues through telling a story, which I would argue is the only way to explore it honestly. I hesitate, when you ask that question, as I hate to to feel like I’m moralising. I would try not to be negative and say you can’t eat this or that. But I think there are so many positive messages in being an ethical carnivore. I feel like what you eat gives you control. Michael Pollan, a US author who writes a lot about food, says: ‘You vote with your fork three times a day.’ So I would say it is a good thing to discuss, because it gives people power and we don’t have much of that. “You vote with your fork three times a day” How you eat meat is especially powerful because of the environmental impact and climate change—it produces more emissions than all of the transport in the world put together, so reducing the amount we eat can make a difference. To understand where your meat comes from not only enables you to have an impact on the environment, but gives you a link to the land and the farmers and where the meat is from, and that’s empowering to you as an individual and to the small farmers getting your money. So I think eating less meat and understanding where it’s from can be a great thing for people, as can exploring the alternatives. We have got ourselves into this situation where the environment is under threat but we can find new ways which would really help the environment—like by reintroducing oysters to help waterways, or enabling smaller farmers to have an income. You can have a positive affect through eating meat. Also, there is all this amazing vegetarian food, vegan food, meat alternatives, as well as the meat. You can engage with and enjoy all of it, so less and better—or different—can work for you on a lot of levels."

"To understand the power and possibility of regenerative agriculture you have to get excited by soil. And boy is Nicole Masters excited by soil! She describes life underground as ‘like something out of Alien ’ with hideous creatures eating other from the inside—and it is, kind of. A single handful of soil can contain more life than the human population of Planet Earth. This complex ecosystem can easily be knocked off balance by artificial chemicals, but equally, with the right care, it can regenerate easily. Masters has dedicated her life to helping farmers understand their own soil. She travels the world explaining to farmers how to ditch the plough and instead pick up the spade to understand the soil beneath their feet. She has been described to me by one—very sensible—farmer as a ‘soil goddess’. In this book she not only tells the story of how farms can regenerate the soil but how she herself recovered from ‘chemical toxification’ and how we can recover human health more widely through growing food in healthy soils."

"You could not get a more typical Midwestern farmer than Gabe Brown. He loves his family, he loves his country and he loves his God. But as a conventional farmer he was struggling. Year after year, his crops were failing and he was struggling to keep the farm afloat. He took the very brave and—to his neighbours—crazy decision to switch to regenerative agriculture. It was not an easy decision, he came close to bankruptcy many times, but gradually as his soils recovered, he noticed his crops were able to survive the changing climate. Brown became an advocate for regenerative agriculture, appearing in the Netflix documentary Kiss the Ground , which is narrated by Hollywood A-lister Woody Harrelson. His farm Brown’s Ranch now has its own brand, Nourished by Nature, selling pasture-fed meat and eggs. “Regenerative agriculture argues that the first principle is to not just to look after the soil, but ‘regenerate’ the soil after every crop” The power of this book is it rings true for ordinary farmers who would be put off by a ‘hippy environmentalist’ telling them what to do. Brown is an ordinary farmer, he’s one of them. He does not pull his punches in telling how hard it is to make the transition, but ultimately argues it is a necessary one."

"I found it refreshing to read a book about regenerative agriculture by an outsider and a woman. Langford does have farming in her background but her early professional life was in criminal and family law. She wrote In Your Defence: True Stories of Life and Law about her time as a criminal barrister in London. She brings the same critical approach to farming life when she finds herself in the countryside running a farm alongside her husband. In one scene, she describes how she had read up on the science of agroforestry and tries to share her enthusiasm with a conventional agronomist only to feel dismissed and ridiculous for bringing up ‘kooky’ ideas. I know that feeling. Farming can be a closed world and I am grateful for her for suggesting, quietly and powerfully, that there could be another way."

"With regeneration of the soil comes the return of wildlife. Jake Fiennes is a gamekeeper turned conservation manager who has overseen the return of species like grey partridge, lapwing and yellowhammer to English farms. He also happens to be the twin brother of the actor Joseph Fiennes and brother of Ralph Fiennes. I must admit I enjoyed the passages about early life in this bohemian somewhat unconventional family. But you cannot deny Fiennes has earned his stripes. As a young gamekeeper he trapped and killed animals as part of ‘pest control’ but as he grew up and tried different methods such as planting cover crops to provide food for birds over the winter months, he realised there were ways to boost wildlife. He argues that regenerative agriculture needs a diverse farm to cut down on chemicals and keep the soil healthy, and with that comes more wildlife. Fiennes is open about the fact he now works for very wealthy landowners but he makes the case for a kind of farming—with hedgerows and wildflower strips—that can be introduced on highly commercial operations without losing money. Fiennes is also open about his dyslexia and the help he got to write this book, which I do not think diminishes his work. Like Gabe Brown, he’s the kind of person that farmers and land managers trust to tell a true story."

"The beauty of this book—and it is beautiful—is it celebrates the produce of regenerative agriculture: what we eat. First generation farmer and chef Julius Roberts makes light of the fact he is farming in a regenerative way on his farm in Dorset. He lets the food do the talking, the crunchy apples in autumn, pink rhubarb in winter and pasture-fed lamb in spring. His message is clear, looking after the soil can result in great tasting food. With over a million followers on social media , he is a voice who can really engage young people with the potential of regenerative agriculture."