Books

The CAFO Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories
Edited by Daniel Imhoff, January, 2010

The CAFO Reader is a collection of essays by over 30 of today’s leading thinkers on one of the most important environmental and ethical issues of our time: the rise of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs, where increasing amounts of the world's meat, dairy, eggs, fish, and seafood are produced. Contributors include Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Fred Kirschenmann, Anna Lappé, Matthew Scully, Eric Schlosser, Andrew Kimbrell, and Wenonah Hauter. These essays analyze and vividly depict the devastating impacts and current conditions in and around factory farms. The collection also provides a compelling vision of “putting the CAFO out to pasture,” in which food systems become more healthy, humane, and sustainable.

Your Right to Know: Genetic Engineering and the Secret Changes in Your Food
Earth Aware Editions, 2007

More than half of America's processed grocery products — from corn flakes to granola bars to diet drinks — contain genetically altered ingredients. They are unlabeled and untested, and we are eating them. Your Right to Know is a complete, full-color reference guide outlining how unmarked genetically modified foods go from the factory to the family dining table, and what consumers can do about the health risks they present. This accessible guide is for concerned parents — as well as anyone concerned about genetically altered foods — who want to know more about the potential health risks, the organic alternatives, and the methods available to counter the corporate takeover of the food we eat.

Praise for “Your Right to Know”:

“Andrew Kimbrell, America’s leading critic of genetically modified crops, has written a lively and comprehensive field guide to this treacherous new landscape that both citizens and consumers will find indispensable.” - Michael Pollan

“In this important primer, Kimbrell explains the threats that GE foods pose to our health, our environment, and our farming communities. He reminds us that the everyday decisions we make about the food we eat have the power to change the world.” - Alice Waters

“…This new book by Andrew Kimbrell is wise, sane, and reliable. It will enable you to make informed and healthy choices. It’s the answer we’ve been needing.” - John Robbins

“This book will be an invaluable resource to the American public in understanding the hazards of GE foods. Their informed choice to avoid these foods will have a positive impact on our farms, communities, and biodiversity worldwide.” - Vandana Shiva

Salmon Economics (and other lessons)
October, 2003
E.F. Schumacher Society Lectures

Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture
Foundation for Deep Ecology, 2002

Fatal Harvest takes an unprecedented look at our current ecologically destructive agricultural system and offers a compelling vision for an organic and environmentally safer way of producing the food we eat. It includes more than 250 profound and startling photographs and gathers together more than 40 essays by leading ecological thinkers including Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, David Ehrenfeld, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Vandana Shiva, and Gary Nabhan. Its scope and photo-driven approach provide a unique and invaluable antidote to the efforts by agribusiness to obscure and disconnect us from the truth about industrialized foods.

The book's many photographs and essays offer graphic testimony to the tragic consequences of how our food is produced. Readers will come to see that industrial food production is indeed a "fatal harvest" - fatal to consumers, as pesticide residues and new disease vectors such as E. coli and "mad cow disease" find their way into our food supply; fatal to our landscapes, as chemical runoff from factory farms poison our rivers and groundwater; fatal to genetic diversity, as farmers rely increasingly on high-yield monocultures and genetically engineered crops; and fatal to our farm communities, which are wiped out by huge corporate farms.

As it exposes the ecological and social impacts of industrial agriculture's fatal harvest, the book also details a new ecological and humane vision for agriculture. It shows how millions of people are engaged in the new politics of food as they work to develop a better alternative to the current chemically fed and biotechnology-driven system. Designed to aid the movement to reform industrial agriculture, Fatal Harvest will inform and influence the activists, farmers, policymakers, and consumers who are seeking a safer and more sustainable food future.

The Human Body Shop: The Cloning, Engineering and Marketing of Life
Gateway Editions, 1997

This is the most disturbing and damning report to date on the biotechnology revolution and its ethical and social consequences and risks. Kimbrell, policy director of the Foundation of Economic Trends in Washington, D.C., first looks at a new multibillion-dollar industry involving the manipulation and marketing of blood, organs and fetal parts. He then moves on to the patenting of genetically engineered animals and even of human "products" (e.g., cells and genes) and the selling of human reproductive materials. He condemns surrogate motherhood as a form of "bioslavery," and warns of the high ethical price of the new eugenics. Extrapolating from current trends, Kimbrell ominously predicts the genetic engineering of workers to enhance productive traits and the cloning of humans in the coming decades. His sane prescriptions for restricting the engineering and marketing of life cap his scary, Orwellian glimpse into a new biofuture (Publishers Weekly review).