Imagine you are at a dinner party.  After what seems like hours of waiting, the host finally brings a steaming pot of stew to the table.  Impressed by the fusion of aromas of meat, herbs, and vegetables, you ask your friend for the recipe. “I’d be happy to tell you,” she replies.  “The meat was from a golden retriever, tenderized with a meat pounder and marinated before hours of simmering.” 

How would you react?  Would you continue eating?  

This is the thought experiment that Harvard-educated psychologist Dr. Melanie Joy poses to her reader in the opening chapter of her book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism.  

The title of the book captures the fundamental question regarding the differential treatment of animals in American society (and many others).  The answer Dr. Joy provides is no less provocative than the question itself: “carnism”—an invisible belief system that conditions people to eat some animals and not others.  

What does that mean?  Dr. Joy explains carnism by comparing it to the film The Matrix.  In the movie, the brains of all humans were plugged into “an illusion, a virtual reality, fabricated by a computerized matrix…. [T]his matrix uses us as batteries … keeps us complacent by remaining invisible while generating the illusion of our freedom.”  Just like the protagonist in the movie has been deprived of the ability to think for himself, Dr. Joy suggests that an “invisible hand” has led consumers to accept meat eating as a given—to unknowingly participate in carnism.  

If the term “carnism” might sound preachy, rest assured that this book does not shame carnists—the term Dr. Joy uses to describe meat eaters.  Rather, it aims to deconstruct the entrenched, dominant, and violent system of carnism, under which eating meat has been normalized, naturalized, and necessitated.  Dr. Joy’s calls the society in which we live a “meatocracy.” In this “meatocracy,” we do not think of eating meat as a choice.  Rather, it is the default option, while being vegetarian or vegan is a choice that one needs to announce, defend, and even apologize for.  Barriers to choosing a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle abound—social norms, the false perception that chickens are stupid and pigs dirty, the widely held belief that eating meat is natural and necessary for our bodies, to list a few examples.  Having little incentive to question the normalized practice of meat eating, most of the public has remained shielded from witnessing the cruel operations in meat production.  

To bring to light the wrongdoing that has remained largely invisible and unknown and yet fills our bodies every day, Dr. Joy recounts many investigations at confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs).  Filled with graphic descriptions of obscene torture, chapter three shakes loose the belief that meat products could come from “happy cows” and “contented hens.” We learn how baby calves are castrated and that “‘the[ir] testicles are … grasped and extended one at a time … and pulled until the cord breaks.’”  We read excerpts from an undercover investigation at a chicken slaughter plant, where “chickens [fall on top of each other] with broken legs and wings, limbs sticking out in unnatural angles.” We learn of the stressful human working environment of CAFOs, where “‘[f]orklifts crash, saws overheat, workers drop knives, workers get cut, workers collapse and lie unconscious on the floor, as dripping carcasses sway past them and the chain keeps going.’”  

Such accounts make it clear that carnism depends on the invisibility of a system that has disconnected the experiences of eating animal products and the reality of their production.  To that end, Dr. Joy explains how language camouflage has also made its contribution. “Beef” and “eggs” simply do not tell the whole story of our food when they are in truth distorted body parts of animal carcasses and reproductive cells of hens.  

One of the most controversial arguments Dr. Joy makes in the book is equating carnism with other already identified ideologies and systems of oppression such as slavery, Nazism, and sexism.  She argues that at the basis of all is the construction of “‘natural hierarchy.’” In doing so, she makes a compelling case for change based on history. Just as people have often demanded change once they became aware of systemic injustice, she expects they will disavow carnism, too.  

These claims which have generated substantial debate and resistance will surely challenge some readers.  Anticipating the controversies that her arguments might raise, Dr. Joy explains that the reason we might feel offended or attacked by this comparison, and thus likely to resist the truth of carnism, is because this idea challenges our identity as human beings who have always felt “entitled to kill and consume animals.”  In other words, we are offended not by the question of who the victims are, but by who the perpetrators are. 

A compassionate and empathetic change agent, Dr. Joy reminds us of the importance of  “witnessing ourselves” while witnessing the truth of carnism as we have fallen—psychologically—individual victims of this social system and have internalized carnist ideologies as the default.  “[R]ecognizing ourselves as victims in a system that has led us down the path of least resistance,” we cannot be blamed for our conditioning. But once our blinders are removed, she argues, we become responsible for what we do.  In Dr. Joy’s words, witnessing is “staying mentally and emotionally open to the experience of oneself and others.” By expanding our empathy and compassion into the lives of our own kind—animals—we as human beings have nothing to lose and everything to gain.   

Now return to the thought experiment at the beginning and ask yourself: would you choose to continue eating the golden retriever?  Why or why not? What about a pig?