More than just an excuse for the author to eat a variety of steaks of varying degrees of fabulousness, Steak is an exhaustive, highly entertaining study of the traditions and science of steak. In America, steak has a cultural reputation as weighty as Tiffany’s: both are symbols of prosperity and opulence. But like so many once-revered emblems of the good life, the quality of steak in the United States has steadily diminished, even if its reputation hasn’t.

Determined to get to the bottom of this increasing deterioration of his favorite food (“What makes the meat so bland?” Schatzker asks.  “And what could account for those rare standout steaks?”) Schatzker travels the globe to talk genetics, grass and marbling. Along the way he buys and slaughters his own cow, visits the vast feedlots of the United States, eats the closest thing possible to an ancient aurochs (the wild precursor to domesticated cattle, now extinct), and samples steak from six different countries.

Tellingly, Schatzer’s research tells us that most of the farmers producing steaks that can make a man cry are raising their cattle in a way familiar to AWA supporters. They limit transportation to reduce stress on the animals. They keep the herds intact. They don’t confine their herds to feedlots. They believe in pasture rotation. They feed grass not grain. They believe breeding cattle for faster weight gain is negatively affecting quality and taste. They respect their land and their animals. They let cows be cows. Steak reinforces farming practices based on animal welfare and health of the land as the best way to raise cattle and produce great beef—something that comes as no surprise to AWA or its farmers.

Schatzker’s experiences with American feedlot steak are uniformly bland and uninspired. It’s not until he reaches Idaho’s Pahsimeroi Valley, and the family owned and operated Alderspring Ranch, that he reaches the meaty holy grail of his quest. There, from a cow raised on grass grown in the mineral rich soil of the American West, a cow who would never see a feedlot, Schatzker experienced beef nirvana—a steak with flavor that “reached deep into my subcortex and uncorked a sensation that bubbled up and drowned out every other thought, concern, and anxiety….”

Steak is a book for anyone who reveres great steak—that most quintessential of American foods—and for anyone who cares about our food system in general.  Schatzker is a witty and engaging writer, but he never lets his storytelling instincts overshadow the basic truth of his mission: the American obsession with cheap steak has led to an overall deterioration in quality of life for cattle and quality of taste for steak eaters. Luckily, Schatzker’s travels show that while the feedlot system still has the upper hand in the United States, there are those who know that  an authentic pasture-based, grassfed system for raising cattle will be the way to return steak to its original beefy glory. And they are gaining in number every year.

To solve the modern “omnivore’s dilemma” (we can eat anything, but how do we know what to eat?), Pollan investigates four meals representative of four different food chains – the system for growing, making and delivery food. He wants to share with us where our food comes from and what exactly it is we are eating. So, he starts in the farms and fields where our food is grown and personably chronicles its creation and consumption.

First, Pollan documents the “industrial” food chain, which is where most of our food comes from today. This chain starts in giant fields of single crops and ends up in a supermarket or fast-food restaurant. Here we learn that corn is ubiquitous. More than a quarter of the forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket contain corn. We also learn that “industrial” is synonymous with genetically modified food (food created by changing plant DNA in the laboratory), feeding animals antibiotics, and CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations). It is here that Pollan documents the life of a steer traveling through the meat-making branch of the industrial food chain. After witnessing not only toxic pollution but the steer’s confinement and unnatural consumption of corn (not grazing grass as nature intended), he concludes that most people eat feedlot meat because they just don’t know where it comes from.

The second meal is the “industrial organic” meal in which food is grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides on industrial, monoculture farms (farms growing only one crop) far from the people who eat it. This food chain is an improvement over industrial agriculture because it helps keep more land free from pesticides and chemical fertilizer, but it is neither local nor seasonal and like industrial food it uses a tremendous amount of fossil fuel for refrigeration and delivery.

Next is “local and sustainable,” food grown on small farms that raise lots of different kinds of crops and animals. Food from this system doesn’t need to be processed, and it travels a short distance before it reaches the table. Unlike industrial production, local and sustainable does not contribute to water pollution, antibiotic resistance, foodbourne illnesses and higher taxes in the form of crop, oil and water subsidies. This type of production holds a lot of hope, but for it to be the best answer to the dilemma, it is essential that all aspects of animal production including breeds and slaughter methods are thoughtfully considered to ensure animal welfare.

Finally, the oldest type of food chain, “hunter-gatherer,” is explored.  Here Pollan hunts, grows and finds his own food, and the account is educational even if the production itself is not sustainable. Undoubtedly, Pollan’s adventures mushroom hunting will create unlikely enthusiasts.

Pollan wants us to rediscover the pleasures of food and learn to enjoy meals in a new way. To this end, he exposes the impact different methods of food production have on animals, workers, the environment, food quality, and ultimately us. The knowledge he imparts enables us to be thoughtful eaters who actively support food production that is ethical and healthful, thereby nourishing a compassionate society.

Ninny Nu’s Organic Farm

In this story Ninny Nu teaches the important lesson that high quality food comes from a healthy, happy farm. After the Mayor’s competition, she teaches other farmers about her way of raising livestock and vegetables compassionately. With short paragraphs on each page, this book is a good introductory look at farming for older children. The illustrations by Amber Alexander are expressive and full of farming landscapes and animals.

Rick Dove is just one of the ordinary citizens-turned-activists that Kirby follows in Animal Factory, and he wisely lets the power of their stories drive the narrative. For Rick Dove of New Bern, North Carolina, Helen Reddout of Yakima Valley, Washington and Karen Hudson of Elmwood, Illinois, farming originally meant what we’ve all been taught to believe—happy animals standing in lush grasses with a welcoming red barn in the background. It’s not until Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, known as CAFOs, move nearby, complete with stench and large manure spills, that they begin to realize what today’s industrialized agriculture really represents. Polluted fields and waterways, cruelly confined and mistreated animals, dreadful working conditions, fish kills, stink, illness.

Kirby is an experienced investigative reporter, Huffington Post contributor and the author of Evidence of Harm, an investigation into the possible link between mercury in vaccines and autism. For the latter he won the 2005 Investigative Reporters and Editors Award. In Animal Factory he skillfully weaves the personal and political to expose a world where profit and efficiency come at a steep price to people, animals and land. In Kirby’s capable hands, Animal Factory reads like a political thriller, but the stakes are hardly imaginary.

Corporate agriculture maintains that you can’t feed the world, much less the United States, without CAFOs to make meat, dairy and eggs plentiful and affordable. While Michael Pollan and others have talked about the “true” cost of food, Animal Factory plainly illuminates the incomprehensibility of industrialized animal farming. It’s a system where seemingly no one but the parent company profits yet all are at risk. Not only do the regions where CAFOs are located experience an alarming rise in pollution and reciprocal loss of quality of life, but the systems lead to increased and more deadly risk to humans from diseases such as antibiotic resistant E. coli and mad cow disease (BSE).

At its core, Animal Factory is a personal story—a story of individuals coming together to protect their land, the health of their community, the dignity of the farm animals and the safety of the nation’s food supply. Kirby uses the activists’ stories as the backbone of his book, weaving in science, statistics and politics to enhance but not overwhelm the reader’s experience. No doubt it’s been an unwelcome surprise to industrialized agriculture that three such disparate people as Rick, Karen and Helen would ever find each other, much less build a movement that is forcing them to be accountable, but they did. Using their compelling stories, Kirby shines a light into the dark corners of industrialized agriculture and what he finds isn’t pretty.

The stories are out there—books and films that chronicle the people and events vital to ensuring safe, humane, nutritious food reaches every table. Animal Welfare Approved is pleased to be launching a new section of its website dedicated to finding and reviewing the books and films that inform, educate and inspire.

We’re kicking off our reviews with a look at Nicolette Hahn Niman’s Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms. Published last year, it’s already a classic in the field.

Pigs, Love and Factory Farming Feature in Nicolette Hahn Niman’s Book

In the mid-20th century, the United States underwent an agricultural revolution that was largely unnoticed by the general public. Led by a few industry “creative thinkers,” farm animals were moved out of the pastures and into the warehouse, creating the cruel and disastrous system that is now known as factory farming.  Nicolette Hahn Niman’s new book, Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms (Harper Collins/Collins Living), is part memoir and part expose, taking the reader through the perils of factory farming and how it rose to dominance in American agriculture.

Hahn Niman was on the vanguard of the movement to shift livestock farming away from industrialized concentrated animal feeding operations—with all their attendant cruelties and harmful environmental effects—and back to the pasture. Her legal experience, solid history of working on behalf of environmental concerns and ability to view the issue with level-headed rationality give the book a sound foundation. She doesn’t engage in sentimental excesses or a narcissistic viewpoint—her credentials as reformer who will fight battles because it’s the right thing to do are solid.

Hahn Niman was an environmental lawyer when she went to work for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Waterkeeper organization, where he asked her to take on the issue of pig manure pollution in waterways.  Initially unenthusiastic about taking on “poop,” Hahn Niman traveled to North Carolina and entered the shadowy world of factory pig farming. And she didn’t like what she found: manure lagoons, thousands of ill-treated pigs crammed into warehouses, polluted waterways and neighborhoods spoiled by foul odors. Far from being an unsavory and somewhat dull topic, Hahn Niman found battling “poop” and factory farming to be her calling.

Not just a history of factory farming, Righteous Porkchop details the fight by farmers and others to return livestock farming to its traditional values of honoring the animals and the land. It makes the case that consumer awareness and action is integral to the farm animal welfare movement.  As a vegetarian and a rancher Hahn Niman rarely strays into the philosophical questions that surround meat as a food source, choosing instead to focus her attention on shifting farming-gone-bad back to a holistic and ethical approach.

A thoroughly engaging read, Righteous Porkchop details how we got where we are and what we can do to support the farmers who are doing it the right way.  It serves as a wake-up call to the uninitiated and a call to action for those ready to challenge the harmful status quo that industrialized agriculture has imposed on us all. Humane farming has a powerful and compelling spokesperson in Hahn Niman, who remains one of the leaders in the movement, and her book belongs on the bookshelf of everyone who cares about the impact of their food choices. We haven’t heard the last from her and that’s to everyone’s benefit.

About the author: Nicolette Hahn Niman, an attorney and regular blogger for the food section of the online version of The Atlantic Monthly and has blogged for Huffington Post and CHOW. Previously, she was the Senior Attorney for the environmental organization Waterkeeper Alliance where she was in charge of the organization’s campaign to reform the concentrated livestock and poultry industry.  She lives in Bolinas, California with her son, Miles Robert, and husband, Bill Niman, founder of Niman Ranch.