Book Review: Animals Erased: Discourse, Ecology, and Reconnection with the Natural World, by Arran Stibbe

Abstract

Animals Erased: Discourse, Ecology, and Reconnection with the Natural World. Arran Stibbe. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2013. 214 pp. $70.00 hbk. $25.99 pbk. $19.99 e-bk.Vegetarian leanings aside, I chuckled once at a bumper sticker on a beater car pro- claiming, If we're not supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat? Animals Erased: Discourse, Ecology, and Reconnection with the Natural World eloquently answers that question. Animals Erased is written by Arran Stibbe of the University of Gloucestershire, who is an important contributor to multidisciplinary research and education into environmental sustainability. Stibbe uses engaged critical models of learning that bring disparate audiences, such as researchers, policy makers, and stu- dents, to a greater awareness of their roles within, impacts on, and responsibilities for the natural environment.Stibbe's expertise is in linguistics and ecology, uniting fields in environmental sci- ences with journalism, public relations, and communication studies, among other dis- ciplines. Animals Erased is a wonderfully vexing book inviting healthy discussions in classes in any of these areas. It should be required reading for anyone working in public policy related to, or public communication on, the food industry nationally and internationally.Animals Erased stems from a variety of thought-provoking journal articles Stibbe published in the 2000s in reaction to tragic agribusiness events in recent years causing unprecedented-and he argues, unnecessary-human brutality leading to epic scale suffering of animals. Stibbe presents compelling moral and ethical arguments that posit animals are sentient beings, a term Tibet's Dalai Lama also uses. Stibbe recounts, for instance, misreporting about a sudden spread of hoof and mouth disease in Britain, which at its nadir led people to massacre and incinerate six million sheep, cattle, and pigs. Stibbe claims such hyped but fundamentally phony crises have global ramifications at all levels. He identifies how language is used to denigrate animals and to rationalize destructive practices that prioritize human desires over needs. He uncov- ers violent, unsustainable policies and procedures on animals. Stibbe maintains that grave human errors comprise prevailing human-animal relationships, extending from the highest government decision makers, to media reporting on food sector issues, to the world's largest animal production operations and food distributors, to smallest-scale rural farmers.The trajectory of the book is purposefully peripatetic. From the outset, Animals Erased defines how humans, particularly in developed nations such as the UK, have long used language, discourse, and visual symbols in everyday metaphors found in interpersonal conversation to books, images, movies, and food industry reports to rationalize how modern meat-eating habits unnecessarily, and unobserved, inflict large-scale trauma on animals.In chapters 1 and 2, Stibbe portrays linguistic and discursive slights capitalistic humans cast on specific animals being used in massive-scale food production. …