Book Review

RIGHTEOUS PORKCHOP: Finding A Life And Good Food Beyond Factory Farms

Nicolette Hahn Niman

William Morrow, 2009

Reviewed by Georgia Geis

Imagine yourself locked in a small concrete space, never seeing the outdoors and almost never seeing another living being. You are forced to eat (so much you could break your legs just turning around), sleep and go the bathroom in the same small space. This is not the latest installment of the "Saw" horror movies. No, this is how the majority of animals raised for food are treated in America. This is a stark contrast to the beautiful landscapes with green pastures and freshly painted red barns the mass confinement factory farms use to sell their products.

The inhumane and environmental-devastating practices of large factory farms are no secret with popular books such as Omnivore's Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life and documentaries like Food, INC and HBO's recent release of Death on a Factory Farm. In recent months there has also been an outcry, most notably by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, about the overuse of antibiotics in animal feed, causing the rise of deadly "superbugs," namely the staph infection MSRA. Of course the industrial farmers give their animals so many antibiotics to try and make up for the horrid living conditions the animals face.

Nicolette Hahn Niman's Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms adds another important and powerful voice in the fight against the billion- dollar factory farm industry. Niman, an attorney, takes us on her personal journey, which started nearly a decade ago when she was asked by Bobby Kennedy, Jr. to lead his Waterkeeper Alliance's "hog campaign." The focus of her Waterkeeper's investigation was on the mega-giant Smithfield Foods in North Carolina.

Righteous Porkchop is more than a fact-filled and convincing indictment of the meat industry. While it is that, is also a personal memoir of an ambitious environmental lawyer who travels across America and witnesses first-hand the path of destruction to the air, water, rural communities, not to mention the countless pigs the large confinement hog farms have left. The descriptions are hard to stomach at times. "Gestation crates are designed to virtually immobilize the sow, so each crate was intentionally too narrow for her to turn around. She could not lie down without bumping up against the metal bars. Scabs resembling bedsores and abrasions were scattered everywhere on the herd's sides, stomachs, and legs." Along the way, she meets many activists and citizens whose voices are often drown out by the large corporate PR machines.

Nicolette introduces the reader to the history of animal agribusiness, the how and why we as a nation has turned to industrial-produced meats, eggs, dairy and fish. Nicolette explains the lack of regulation on such important issues such as the 296,000 tons of liquid manure leaked into soil and waterways each year by confinement factories. This waste can contain almost 400 dangerous substances, such as nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide. Not to mention the hormones, steroids and medication given to the confined animals.

Just when you wonder how bleak it can get, the story refreshingly turns to a different kind of farming. A type of farming closer to our "ideal" of a farm, one in which the animals are raised in a humane and sustainable way. One of the traditional farmers Nicolette meets is Bill Niman who owns a California cattle ranch and the East Coast vegetarian finds herself at another crossroads in her life. The unlikely pair marries and she is now trying her hand at ranching, the traditional grass-fed way.

There is not much self-righteous about Righteous Porkchop. As a vegetarian, Nicolette does not judge people for eating meat and eggs. She does condemn the unhealthy and inhumane practices of the mass confinement factory farms.  As she points out, factory farming is not the only way. There are many other family farms that produce higher quality meat, eggs and dairy products without being inhumane or harming the environment.

Georgia Geis writes from Chicago where she and her husband have started a backyard "victory" garden complete with tomatoes, tomatillos, eggplants, peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, strawberries and hops for the home brew.

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