Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture

Rifkin, Jeremy

ISBN 10: 0670848441 / ISBN 13: 9780670848447

Published by Viking, 1992

About this Item

An analysis of the beef culture incorporates anthropology, history, sociology, economics, and ecology to demonstrate how "cattle culture" has changed our world.â There are currently 1.28 billion cattle populating the earth. They take up nearly 24 percent of the land mass of the planet and consume enough grain to feed hundreds of millions of people. Their combined weight exceeds that of the human population on earth.â Beginning with this startling and unsettling set of facts, Jeremy Rifkin interweaves anthropology, history, sociology, economics, and ecology in a brilliant and devastating examination and indictment of the cattle culture that has come to shape and warp our world.The fascinating story he tells goes back to the beginning of civilization, when the belief in the mystical power of cattle and magical properties of beef first was born. He charts the age-old conflict between those who raised cattle and those who farmed the land-a conflict that drastically affected the course of Western history and culture. Rifkin cuts through the myth of the cowboy to illumine the international intrigue, political give-aways, and sheer avarice that transformed the great American frontier into a huge cattle breeding ground. Then, taking us from the sprawling Chicago stockyards to the automated factory feedlots of the Iowa plains, he presents the most disturbing indictment of the beef industry since Upton Sinclair shocked the American public withÂThe JungleÂeighty-five years ago. Finally, he gives us a superb overview of the triumph of the beef mystique in America and the world-a triumph marked by the golden arches of McDonaldâ s in cities as distant from each other as New York, Tokyo, and Moscow.Above all, Beyond Beef adds up the cost of all this. It depicts a world in which the poorer peoples of the planet have been starved to support the beef addiction of a handful of wealthy nations. In Europe, the United States, and Japan, this addiction has resulted in millions of deaths from heart attack, cancer, and diabetes-the diseases of affluence. The book also describes the grim ecological effects of the cattle culture: rain forests burned, fertile plains turned into desert, and climate threatened by global warming.Beyond Beef may well take away your appetite for beef, but it will stir your hunger for change-before it is too late. This persuasive and passionate book is for the 1990s what Silent Spring was for an earlier decade-an urgent warning to everyone who cares about the fate of the earth.First Edition. xi, 353 p. ; 24 cm. #010424 Bibliography: p. 324-340. Beef -- Social aspects Food habits -- South America -- Case studies Beef industry -- Environmental aspects Cattle trade -- History Elizabeth's Bookshops have been one of Australia's premier independent book dealers since 1973. Elizabeth's family-owned business operates four branches in Perth CBD, Fremantle (WA), and Newtown (NSW). All orders are dispatched within 24 hours from our Fremantle Warehouse. All items can be viewed at Elizabeth's Bookshop Warehouse, 23 Queen Victoria Street\, Fremantle WA.

Seller Inventory # 84543

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture
• Publisher: Viking
• Publication Date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670848441
• ISBN 13: 9780670848447
• Binding: Hardcover in Dustjacket
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • 2388

About this title

Synopsis

From the sacred cow to steaks grilling in the backyard, this is the story of the complex, pivotal relationship forged between human beings and cattle over the millennia of Western history. Rifkin links the issues of animal abuse, environmental degradation and public health in this persuasive book. Photographs and line drawings.

From Kirkus Reviews

Rifkin (Biosphere Politics, p. 460, etc.), who seems to turn out environmental calls to arms on an assembly line, now turns his guns on beef--in this survey of the cattle culture's destructive role in the modern world and in history. Citing the works of others, Rifkin points to paleolithic bull and cow cults, to the clash several millennia ago between peaceful matrilineal agriculturalists and nomadic cattle herders who arose around the Ukraine and spread throughout the Old World, and to the North American West--where native populations and the buffalo they lived off were displaced and slaughtered to make room for the cattle industry, much of it financed by British interests, and where US taxpayers continue to subsidize beef ranchers and packers. None of this is original; and readers of vegetarian and animal- rights literature will already be familiar with the points addressed in Rifkin's subsequent indictment of our multinational- driven cattle culture with its devastating effect on the economies of developing countries; on the lives of starving Third World populations; and on the health of affluent populations who ``gorge'' on beef, tropical forests, the water supply, soil, and the global atmosphere. Animal Factories (1980) by Jim Mason and Peter Singer, as well as Food First (1977) and other works by Frances Moore Lapp‚ and Joseph Collins, are among the widely read works that are more forcefully and solidly argued. Nor are Rifkin's modish touches of punning deconstruction truly eye-opening. Rifkin's vision of a future ``beyond beef'' is only that, absent strategies or specifics. Still, by putting all this readably together, he might well win a new and different audience. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.