Intensive Agriculture and Sustainability—a farming systems analysis edited by Glen C. Filson looks interesting but not surprisingly pays scant attention to animal welfare issues whereas the latter looks interesting but I’ve already found one inexcusable factual inaccuracy without much searching.
Glen C. Filson is Associate Professor of Rural Extension Studies at the University of Guelph in Canada. Of the 20 contributors, 12 are academics at the University of Guelph and the remainder except one is Canadian. Cleary, this anthology’s focus is from a Canadian perspective. Sadly, its attention span is limited when it chooses to consider animal welfare, which only receives two page references in the index. This book is for those who want to deepen their understanding of how agribusiness critiques its on practices.
Historian Richard W. Bulliet teaches at Columbia University and – according to the blurb – well known for his work in Islamic history. Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers explores what Bulliet describes as four stages in the history of the human-animal relationship: separation, predomesticity, domesticity, and postdomesticity. As I write, I’ve only had the opportunity to peruse its contents but already one glaring error leaped off the page at me. He incorrectly associates Tom Regan with the University of North Carolina when it should have been North Carolina State University. It can be argued that this is an innocent error overlooked when the book was fact-checked but it does beg the question, How many more are there? I will put this prejudice aside and devote time to a serious read. Clearly, it deserves it and will discuss it in the future.
