Book Review: Transfarmation

Image: The cover of the book is a lime green background with large wording taking up the entire page. Across the top in brown is "transfarmation," below that in cream and yellow is "the movement to free us from factory farming," at the bottom in smaller yellow letters is the author, "Leah Garcés."

It is rare to encounter a book regarding farming or the (mis)treatment of animals that is for so many audiences at once. Transfarmation, by Leah Garcés, happens to be one of those books. Garcés is the president of Mercy for Animals. While this particular org is often quite good at bridging divides, I still expected this book to either lean towards something mostly vegans would go for (screaming to the choir in our void of despair where everyone ignores us (joking... sorta)) or one of those books that insultingly erases the most vulnerable individuals of all species involved in farming so that the reader doesn't have to feel bad (or responsible.) Transfarmation is both emotionally honest and intellectually rigorous. It is for the city dwelling vegan with a one-dimensional view of animal farming and for the rural residents whose exploitation and injury via animal agribusiness seems like an inescapable fact of life. It is for the person most moved by true stories that tug at their heartstrings and for the person who says, "show me the numbers." Possibly most importantly, it involves a plan: Tangible, attainable solutions to the current crises we find ourselves in. There is definitely a place for exposure of the absolutely heinous abuse of animal agribusiness alone. When paired with solutions though, it leaves the reader feeling less hopeless.

The writing and structure of this book is extremely well thought out. Every section has a central individual interest storyline (aka human interest, but since this includes other species I've made it more general.) It is well documented that this is the sort of story that causes most people to change their mind. You can tell people all day about the trillions of animals who die per year for food, slaughterhouse covid transmission statistics, how many farmers take their own lives, and so on. For most people though, this isn't enough to make it stick. As much as we like to pretend otherwise, we are not rational beings. To absorb the data, we need to relate to it. Garcés does this exceptionally well. 

We first focus on the farmers themselves who are manipulated by industries who profit from their work while the farmers descend further into crippling debt and despair from the actions they must take against other animals and their community to meet this capitalist need. The titular name of the book refers to the Transfarmation Project which "provides resources and support to industrial animal farmers interested in transitioning their farms to plant-focused operations." After reading this book, it is clearly about much more than that. It is about forming relationships and bridging divides. I always knew that factory farmers likely weren't evil moustache twirling animal abuse fetishists, but I also didn't realize just how much they have been manipulated to fail and how that failure is basically a central tenet of the profit model of animal exploitation corporations.

"Farmers aren't factory farming because they love the idea of being under the thumb of corporate entities and picking up dead and dying chickens. They do it because they are trapped in debt and have few other economic options."

We learn next about farmed animals by focusing on a few who make up the miniscule minority who are rescued and can have their tales told. I particularly like that she focused on a chickens and cows exploited for dairy as agribusiness industries have lobbied hard to make these seem like less horrific options (they are not.) We learn of three chickens a farmer was willing to let go of and the bits of freedom they were allowed to experience before succumbing to the inevitable demise caused by industries who breed their bodies to be their own enemies. We learn of Norma the former dairy cow who was rescued after defending her calf Nina after so many forced inseminations she had experienced previously where her calves were stolen from her within a day. This story has a happier ending where we learn that both she and her calf were rescued and reunited. I also love that Garcés chose VINE Sanctuary as the focus for one of the stories as their collective liberation models of organizing and care are revolutionary. They fit well into the aims of the book to further the conversation to include the humans most exploited by these industries.

The narrative of the book is next expanded into the larger community, where we learn about the disproportionately low income BIPOC communities who find themselves surrounded on all sides by farms imprisoning pigs that spray literal feces into the air they breathe and the homes they sleep in. We learn about the lengths they have had to go to to literally organize for the right to breathe shit-free air when the county sheriff is also a hog farmer. We learn how even the BIPOC communities who have homes to hand down over generations find those homes and neighborhoods now uninhabitable. Following this, we move on to the immigrant communities- a large number of whom are undocumented or are still awaiting citizenship approval- who work in the slaughter facilities. We learn of the heinous lengths they go to to survive their trip into the country, only to be forced into a processing plant that demands impossible speeds of killing and dismembering animals, resulting in physical injuries, severe PTSD, disease, and death. We also learn of the refugee communities who may have more support, but who find themselves placed into and therefore harmed by the same job in order to gain any benefits from their refugee status. "Processing" plants rely on the vulnerability of these workers along with prison laborers paid 25 cents an hour. This means they are also often run by men who sexually harass and assault workers, who make threats and defy the already meager legal restrictions, and so on. We learn what it is like to be a mother forced to do a job bludgeoning baby pigs. We learn of the slaughter rate of 3 chickens per second allowed by both democrat and republican legislatures, causing immense pain for the workers and resulting in the birds who are not killed fast enough drowning in scalding water. 

That summary may make it seem like a trauma dump, but I assure you that this book is not that. My already long review has its limits. We also learn of these peoples hopes, desires, and joys. We learn of the lives they could have- lives that are indeed possible with change. The book ends with a grounded and detailed section including solutions for every problem it presents which include further support for farmers to transition away from factory farming, animal welfare measures making animals lives slightly less miserable, unions and worker protection measures for those laboring in farms and slaughterhouses, and systemic economic changes. While I have not followed every single effort, I have generally found Mercy for Animals to be an org that understands how to mix welfarism with abolition (a long standing argument occurring between animal advocates.) However, I was not the biggest fan of how cage free eggs were spoken of. While she does acknowledge that the practice does not come close to eliminating suffering, she neglects the marketing aspect of these (predominantly also factory farming) companies that make well intentioned but misled people imagine chickens running around happily in the grass and dying of old age, when the reality is far more horrific. These corporations lack empathy but not cunning. They know how to market any loss to turn it into a win and we need to think of that. That said, if I was in a battery cage the size of a small closet with 7 other people and someone offered me a large, crowded, dank warehouse to die in instead, I would choose the latter.

If you will allow me a final moment for a more personal vent. The information in this book not only infuriated and hurt due to the horrifying nature of atrocity. It bothered me because I worry that, no matter how perfectly the information is presented, it won't be heard. The group I kept thinking of most throughout this book, were the non/anti-vegan leftists who use strawmen and tokenization to avoid taking a hard look at our relationships to these industries and their victims. This is likely because anti-vegan sentiment often hurts the most when it comes from a respected leftist turned reactionary, a skilled environmentalist turned agribusiness lobbyist, and so on. White, single issue vegans (like white single issue proponents of any movement) are in part to blame for the divide, and there are legitimate criticisms. But, I rarely find honest conversation. I find defensiveness and cognitive dissonance. It reminds me of the Rob Zombie quote, "Everyone "loves" animals until they hear the word 'vegan'. Then they'll argue tooth and nail why it's acceptable to abuse them." I would love to see non/anti-vegan leftists read this book. I want to hear what they have to say about farmworkers picking vegans' plants (who they only bring up when veganism is a topic despite most farmland going to animal agribusiness and feed,) after they read about the struggle of slaughterhouse workers (who they of course never mention.) I want to hear from the upper middle class white person who tokenizes BIPOC communities in these discussions (while simultaneously erasing them) explain to me why spraying pig feces on their homes for bacon is helping. I also want the vegetarians and the "humane" slaughter proponents to pay attention- not the ones who are just doing the best they can, but the "not like the other girls" subset who are hostile to animal rights and veganism. I want them to understand the cost of dairy and eggs and how it is often higher than the meat they abstain from for ethical reasons. I want them to read about what happens to these animals and the humans forced into hell with them.

I say this as someone who almost 19 years ago was a non-vegan. Most of us were not born with perfected leftist ideals making us immune to the world influence we grew up in. Many of us, including recovering teen edgelords like myself, were first hostile to the idea of animal liberation or criticism of various related systems. This vent isn't meant as a superiority thing. It's meant to lay bare that many of the arguments my usually otherwise like minded kin make against animal liberation and veganism are awful and self-contradictory. They are almost always a hard turn to the far right or doing the work of capitalism via tokenization. They are often bad faith and even recreate the oppression dynamics that we claim to be against. This hurts not just because the arguments are harmful, but because I don't think they believe them in their hearts. There is room for more. There is room for a better world for all of us.

Please read this book. Read it even if you think you and I have nothing in common. You may find that we do. I hope this book helps others create the kinds of relationships and successful transitions that the author and her fellow organizers have created. Despite how tough it was at times, it gave me more hope than I have had in a while.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: Family Abolition

Image: The cover of the book is a gradient of pink at the top fading down into purple and then blue at the bottom. In large letters stretching the entire page, dark over the lighter parts of the background and light over day, is "family abolition - capitalism and the communizing of care" and at the bottom, "M.E. O'Brien"

Anyone who has followed my reviews likely knows by now that I have mixed feelings about academic texts, especially queer theory and the like. I often find them to be deliberately inaccessible, often discussing communities with the least access to the kind of vocabulary one needs to understand a single sentence. Sometimes a book comes along that straddles the line between academia and accessibility quite well. I found Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care by M. E. O'Brien to be one such text. The book will be rewarding to academics or others who frequently immerse themselves in nonfiction reading while also being readable both stylistically and regarding vocabulary. Someone unfamiliar might need to google here and there, but overall, the book emphasizes the arguments therein rather than the biggest most obscure words that can be used to make those arguments. This book challenged the way I thought about some things, validated others in ways I did not realize I needed, and offers a great deal of imaginative praxis in terms of reaching the goals set out by the author. The book is also very well organized.

This review is years after the publication date because this book and I got off to a rough start. My attempts at the PDF ARC version (I usually get hard copies or ebooks) made reading too impossible and I abandoned it for a while. I am glad I was able to return to it in another format later as it is one of the better and more original nonfiction texts that I have read.

I am actually quite estranged from most of my blood relatives, though that is something I am working on changing at the moment. Still, I did have a slight knee jerk reaction to this subject that many people may have. The Family is something woven deeply across cultures and holds great power almost everywhere in its own way. One may think of abolishing such a structure as to mean taking away the very foundation many need to survive and have relationships. O'Brien acknowledges this inevitable reaction early on. She then effectively argues that abolishing the family does not involve taking away safety, security, cooperation, nurturing, etc, but rather adding them (or creating them for the first time in some situations.) O'Brien exemplifies this through an excellent and well researched history of the intersection and interplay between the Family and Capitalism as well as other forms of oppression. 

Aside from teaching me many things I did not know about this history, one thing that stood out to me most in this book was the criticism of communities. I have always sort of blamed solely myself for my isolation, yet O'Brien discusses the phenomenon of older organizers/activists/counterculture community members etc becoming isolated through age, disability, etc as a very common problem. I still believe I could have done a much better job working on relationships in my past, but it was interesting to read that there is more to it. The argument is essentially that communities fail because capitalism causes them to and the family helps capitalism in this task. When community always ends up secondary to the family, even for those without one, communities will fall apart socially, financially, distance wise, or any other number of ways. Without fighting capitalism and other oppressions including the family, things disintegrate and fall apart. Using (antiauthoritarian) Marxist and other arguments- including also criticism of Marx and others' oppressive flaws and prejudices- the author discusses how the focus needs to be on the commune rather than the community.

O'Brien offers extensive descriptions of what the commune is, why it is important, what it and its components look like, and how they could be implemented. To tackle a rehashing of said arguments would make this review far too long. I can say that I was already on board with some things and became convinced about the others that I had not been aware of yet. I hate to admit it as an anarchist, but I am terribly misanthropic and pessimistic at times. I have a difficult time believing in utopias where everyone cooperates that do not- at best- fall apart. O'Brien's discussion of both the failure of community and an all-inclusive commune, ripe with strategies for  tackling harm and conflict, felt much more realistic to me than many things I have read. I might have found a disagreement here and there, but they were far fewer than other such proposals. 

It is clear that O'Brien created a very complex but believable whole with this book. She covers the past, present, and future in honest and accurate ways. I won't pretend that I cease to be pessimistic, as that is generally my baseline. But, this book made many things I think about and desire actually seem possible. All of this is to say that Family Abolition isn't just about critiquing and dismantling "The Family." It is about creating something better and more enriching it its place- something critical texts often fail to do properly. While critiques alone definitely have their place, this one won't leave you thinking, "Well, then what? Now what?" when you reach the end. It did not surprise me to find an optimistic speculative fiction about a future commune in her repertoire when I looked into the author. Needless to say, I look forward to giving that a read as well, hoping that O'Brien is one of the few whose academic writing skills are not at odds with her fiction ones.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: The Gull Guide

image: the cover of the book is a grey, white, and black bird in flight with a blurred blue sky in the background. Across the top in white letters is "the gull guide: North America," and in the bottom left corner is the author "amar ayyash."

Even master birders with decades of experience will often concede that they struggle with identification of gulls. These birds are so diverse yet so similar, have so many different phases where they look drastically different, yet very similar to one another in similar cycles, and sometimes telling them apart is a matter of the edge of a single feather or something equally ridiculous. As a result I was excited to get my hands on a copy of Amar Ayyash's The Gull Guide: North America.

I myself am not a master birder. While I am not a complete amateur since I have some years of experience under my belt, I only very recently started venturing out into interactions with other people who can teach me new things outside of my own reading and studying. As a result a guide like this is exceptionally valuable. The reason this book works so well, in my opinion, is that it does not fall into the trap that some guides do and trying to simplify something complicated. The author discusses this in how some people do not want to teach the different feathers and parts of the bird so as not to confuse someone new. However, with gulls as well as some other species, being able to tell these minute differences apart is critical. Ayyash also critiques the "x winter" labeling style since it's inaccurate given the differences in molt and breeding months between species and instead uses a far more accurate "x cycle" labeling structure. 

The information as well as the many charts and labels are indeed somewhat intimidating, but I found myself completely engaged. I was not intimidated in the way one can feel like they're drowning in information that's impossible to parse. There are copious amounts of photos showing each bit of information from a different angle. All of the photos have clear descriptions that help to learn things by sight quite well. Each section on an individual species has tons of photos and many different ways of identifying and thinking about the birds. There is even a section on aberrant birds such as leucistic and melanistic gulls. 

Ayyash also offers general birding tips on when to step back and when to hyper focus. He gives examples of confusing identifications that were made in error. The only criticism I have of the book's structure is that the multitude of images in an average sized book means that it's tough to see some of the details in smaller images. But, I'm not sure this could have been created any other way because making the images large would make the book so massive and heavy as to be unusable. I'd rather have this structure than fewer images.

Approaching the material this way not only helps one see the whole bird and learn more, it gives the reader multiple ways to focus on the birds. What I mean by this is that people learn and perceive things in different ways with different traits dominating their minds. This gives enough information on each identification type to be used by each person. Because it is full of photos and the print is high quality, it is a heavier guide. Sort of like a medium-sized Bible. So, to use in the field, I imagine this guide would be better for something like a stationary birding session. However, as someone who uses both apps in the field and print guides at home, don't let this deter you. There's something about book guides in hand that aid identification in ways that are different than those on electronics, including the wonderful pages available on Cornell's website. I can't even describe what this is, I just know that there are many times that I've been stumped only to open a book that makes everything clear to me. This book is indispensable as one of those on my shelf. None of my other guides, of which I have many, managed to make it possible to more confidently identify gulls. 

I still have a lot of practicing to do. Recently a group of ring-billed gulls in multiple cycles stood in a nice little line for me. Thanks to this guide, I was able to pick out the features and cycles of each which was a great exercise with an abundant species I'm somewhat familiar with. The next time a rare bird alert goes out for a gull, I'll be much more confident in my ability to find that needle in a haystack. 

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.