Why Vegan? by Peter SingerCall Number: Polk/Lakeland Circulation GT2868.55 .S56 2020
ISBN: 9781631498565
Publication Date: 2020-10-20
From his 1973 manifesto for Animal Liberation to his personal account of becoming a vegetarian in "The Oxford Vegetarians" and to investigating the impact of meat on global warming, Singer traces the historical arc of the animal rights, vegetarian, and vegan movements from their embryonic days to today, when climate change and global pandemics threaten the very existence of humans and animals alike. In his introduction and in "The Two Dark Sides of COVID-19," cowritten with Paola Cavalieri, Singer excoriates the appalling health hazards of Chinese wet markets--where thousands of animals endure almost endless brutality and suffering--but also reminds westerners that they cannot blame China alone without also acknowledging the perils of our own factory farms, where unimaginably overcrowded sheds create the ideal environment for viruses to mutate and multiply. The book ultimately becomes an urgent call to reframe our lives in order to redeem ourselves and alter the calamitous trajectory of our imperiled planet.