Pig Tales, Barry Estabrook
Pig Tales, Barry Estabrook
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Pig Tales
An Omnivore's Quest for Sustainable Meat

Author: Barry Estabrook

Narrator: Paul Boehmer

Unabridged: 9 hr 16 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 07/28/2015

Categories: Nonfiction, Nature, Animals


Synopsis

Barry Estabrook, author of the New York Times bestseller Tomatoland, now explores the dark side of the American pork industry. Drawing on his personal experiences raising pigs as well as his sharp investigative instincts, he covers the range of the human-porcine experience. He embarks on nocturnal feral pig hunts in Texas. He visits farmers who raise animals in vast confinement barns for Smithfield and Tyson, two of the country's biggest pork producers. And he describes the threat of infectious disease and the possible contamination of our food supply. Through these stories shines his abiding love for these remarkable creatures. With the cognitive abilities of at least three-year-olds, they can even learn to operate a modified computer. Unfortunately for the pigs, they're also delicious to eat.

Estabrook shows how these creatures are all too often subjected to lives of suffering in confinement and squalor, sustained on a drug-laced diet just long enough to reach slaughter weight, then killed on mechanized disassembly lines. But it doesn't have to be this way. It is possible to raise pigs responsibly and respectfully in a way that is good for producers, consumers, and some of the top chefs in America.

Provocative, witty, and deeply informed, Pig Tales is bound to spark conversation at dinner tables across America.

About Barry Estabrook

James Beard Award-winning journalist Barry Estabrook was a contributing editor at Gourmet magazine for eight years, writing investigative articles about where food comes from. He was the founding editor of Eating Well magazine and has written for the New York Times Magazine, Reader's Digest, Men's Health, Audubon, and the Washington Post, and contributes regularly to the Atlantic Monthly's website. His work has been anthologized in the Best American Food Writing series, and he has been interviewed on numerous television and radio shows. Barry lives and grows tomatoes in his garden in Vermont.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Dacod on August 09, 2015

Immigrants with shit filled diapers, piglets operating computers and crazy Danish people seeking to do things right. Barry Estabrook's journalistic endeavor to educate the average american bacon fetishist and artisan of such unparalleled jokes as "I love pigs....THEY'RE DELICIOUS. hee hoo hug!" is a......more

Goodreads review by Melle on June 27, 2015

This is a well-written book and, unlike Ted Genoways' The Chain, this book examines pigs as the amazing and smart creatures they are while still, like The Chain, looking at the ugly side of modern mass industrial hog-producing/-raising and hog-slaughtering. Estabrook also looks at people humanely ra......more

Goodreads review by Susan on April 27, 2017

Pig Tales is divided into three parts. Part 1 covers pig intelligence (about the same as a 3-year-old human), pig lifestyles (lots of rooting), and the worldwide problem of feral pigs (they're everywere and very destructive). Part 2 covers the problem of industrial agra-biz. Part 3 provides a glimps......more

Goodreads review by Alex on October 19, 2021

Good pork.......more

Goodreads review by Carol Weisensel on May 10, 2015

Amazing Page-Turner Well written, well researched, well told. This book has opened my eyes and touched my soul. I am grateful for Barry Estabrook's efforts to get this information to the public. I bought the book after hearing his interviews on public radio "Fresh Air" and "Science Friday." Miss Pig......more