Project Animal Farm

Review by Josie Moody, Office Manager

Project Animal Farm by Sonia Faruqi is not an easy read, but it is an important one. It is painfully and necessarily graphic. There’s no way to sugarcoat the subject matter, and that’s why it is so powerful.

Project Animal Farm is a project Faruqi set about unintentionally after she lost her position as an Investment Banker during the American recession. After lots of reading during her time off, she decided to put her free time to good use by volunteering on an organic dairy farm in Canada. After reaching out to dozens of farms, only one agreed to take her on as a volunteer, and, as they say, the rest is history.

Rudely awakened from her fantasy of what life on a modern farm would be like, Faruqi is disturbed by the mistreatment of the animals at these operations and the apathy of the humans who work there. She then uses her connections and experience at the dairy farm to investigate if this is an isolated incident, or a widespread practice.

Unfortunately she finds the same horrors at the chicken, pork, turkey and veal operations she subsequently visits. By the books end, she has explored agribusiness in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Belize, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. I have read books, visited websites and seen footage that exposes what happens on factory farms over the past four years, and was distressed to learn of more torturous practices she uncovers in this book that I had been previously unaware of.

Writes Faruqi, “I found that the pattern of factory farming everywhere follows the trajectory of the United States. Chickens and egg-laying hens are confined and commoditized first, followed by pigs, then by cows. It’s as if the industry starts with animals it considers least sentient first, then works its way up the ladder.”

At the end of the book she concludes,“The agriculture industry claims to be strong and healthy, but upon inspection one finds that he is not a vigorous young man bursting with life, but a paranoid and senile old man who lives in terror that any encounter with outsiders will spell his death.”

If you’re interested in reading it, you can buy it here: http://amzn.to/1Ygu5IU