"Farmageddon. The real cost of cheap meat ".

"How feeding people all over the world, created with such good intentions can become so deteriorated?"

Death of the country, a plague of diseases and billions of starving people... Philip Lymberys book, an activist engaged in the protection of animal welfare, reveals the dark side of the agricultural industry and shows a catastrophic vision of the future of our planet. Is Farmageddon scenario inevitable?

Do you know what you eat?

For a long time industrial farming has nothing to do with the idyllic images of a farm life, which are presented in books for children. Its more like an image of the earth after a cataclysm - vast areas of impoverished soil, thousands of animals packed together in a closed space, thousands of hectares of monocultures ...

Farmageddon is a call to perceive the industrial farming as one of the most horrific manifestations of wasting food, animal suffering, the extinction of endangered species, water pollution and a growing number of diseases of affluence.

When collecting material for the book in the United States, I stood among the almond trees growing in perfect rows on thousands of acres and I breathed the air so heavy because of chemical sprays that it smelled like a washing-up liquid. There was neither a blade of grass, nor a single butterfly or insect. In the distance there was a dairy mega-farm, one of the many operating in this state. Thousands of listless cows with a beach balls size udders stood in the mud, waiting to be fed, milked or dosed with drugs- its a real, dramatic picture of industrialized agriculture described by the author. For three years Philip Lymbery have travelled the world and watched how industrial farming looks like. The book shows the whole process "from the back", as well as its effects on humans, animals and the planet. It shows how quality of food on our tables is getting worse deliberately: starting with the artificial acceleration of animal growth and through the use of huge amounts of chemicals, antibiotics, hormonal drugs, to the overproduction of grain for feed.

A large part of the meat on supermarket shelves hides its dark secret, that you will not find on the label - the way it was produced. For manufacturers, this ignorance of consumers is convenient, they dont know that meat and milk comes from an animal that has once lived and breathed, so no one will tell how the breeding was conducted. Some manufacturers go to great lengths not to changed it; to cloak it in - the author writes. Then he reveals the truth about what we do eat. The author doesnt leave the reader only with a disturbing picture of the food industry – he explains how to avoid an upcoming food crisis by making conscious consumer choices and proposes new models of animal breeding and food production. Respect for nature, animals and humans will be their basis.





* Every year, all over the world, 70 billion animals are slaughtered for human consumption, of which up to 11.6 million chickens, 270 million pigs and 59 million cattle are wasted.
* The global industrial farming produces 14.5% of the greenhouse gases generated by human beings – it is more than all the cars, planes and trains put together.
* 1/3 of the worlds grains crops are used as a feed for breeding animals. If they have been used as food for humans, about 3 billion people could be fed.
* 28% of global cultivated land is used to produce food that is wasted, it costs about 750 billion dollars, an equivalent to the GDP of Switzerland.

About the author:
Philip Lymbery is an activist for the protection of animals, and a president of Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), an international organization, the mission of which is to promote the animals welfare all over the world. He contributed to significant changes in the law concerning the breeding conditions of hens and pigs. He has also conducted negotiations with representatives of the farming industry, which resulted in the reduction of livestock exports from Great Britain. Privately, Lymbery is a great lover of nature and a certified specialist in bird ringing. He lives in Hampshire village with his wife, stepson, a rescue dog and a flock of hens, which he succeeded to saved from a cage breeding.