Contemporary Authors

• The Ethical Carnivore: My Year Killing to Eat - 2016 Bloomsbury Natural History, London, United Kingdom

• Bloomsbury Publishing - http://bloomsbury.com/author/louise-gray/

  Louise Gray
  Media for author Louise Gray
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  Louise Gray is a freelance writer based in Scotland. She trained with The Press Association and was a staff writer forThe Scotsman. From 2008 to 2013 she was Environment Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph. Louise specialises in writing about food, farming and climate change. In recent years she has written for The Sunday Times, Scottish Field,the Guardian and The Spectator, among others. She has also appeared on BBC television and radio.

  Louise is passionate about environmental issues, increasingly focusing on how individuals can make a difference through the choices they make, such as the food we eat. The Ethical Carnivore is her first book.

  @loubgray / louisebgray.com

  Writes: Natural History

  Author of : The Ethical Carnivore

• Louise Gray Home Page - http://www.louisebgray.com/

  Freelance Environmental Journalist
  Hello, I’m Louise Gray. After five years at The Daily Telegraph as Environment Correspondent, I am now a freelance writer. I have worked for the BBC, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Country Life, The Spectator and Scottish Field. I have excellent contacts across the world and a deep knowledge of environmental issues. I have chaired a number of debates and am also available for public speaking events.

  I have written a book for Bloomsbury entitled The Ethical Carnivore, that discusses the ethics of meat by only eating animals I have killed myself. I am represented by Patrick Walsh. It was recently shortlisted in the Fortnum and Mason Food Awards for Best Debut Food Book 2017. The book has received positive reviews, including in The Guardian and Evening Standard, which are all listed on the Amazon page, but this one is my favourite.

  Please feel free to browse my portfolio, or contact me to discuss ideas for print or broadcast and other media work.

• Five Books - http://fivebooks.com/interview/eating-meat-louise-gray-ethical-carnivore/

  QUOTE:
  I think eating less meat and understanding where it’s from can be a great thing for people, as can exploring the alternatives. We have got ourselves into this situation where the environment is under threat but we can find new ways which would really help the environment—like by reintroducing oysters to help waterways, or enabling smaller farmers to have an income. You can have a positive affect through eating meat. Also, there is all this amazing vegetarian food, vegan food, meat alternatives, as well as the meat. You can engage with and enjoy all of it, so less and better—or different—can work for you on a lot of levels
  Louise Gray recommends the best books on
  Eating Meat
  Interview by Cal Flyn
  What does it mean to be an ethical meat-eater? Author and journalist Louise Gray chooses five books that examine the impact of our omnivorous lifestyle, and explains why she spent a year only eating the animals she had killed herself.

  Louise Gray
  Louise Gray is an author and journalist based in Scotland. Formerly The Daily Telegraph's environment correspondent, she specialises in writing about food, farming and climate change. Her book, The Ethical Carnivore, charts a year spent eating only meat from animals she had killed herself, and her broader investigation into meat production in the UK.
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  You’ve just published a book called The Ethical Carnivore. What does it mean to be an ‘unethical carnivore?’
  Well, to me, being an unethical carnivore means just stuffing your face with meat without caring where it comes from. Being an ethical carnivore means trying only to eat meat that you understand comes from a good source. I tried to define it in my book by saying that ethics is the effort to live a good life. My question was how can we ensure the meat we eat does not harm the environment and comes from animals that have lived a good life?

  I know to some people that can sound a little wishy-washy, but I was aiming the book at the majority of people in this country. I accept that people eat meat; I myself was a carnivore. Those who are vegetarian have already made their choice, so I wanted to talk to the carnivores about how they could be more ethical. And I wanted to make it realistic, so you have to leave room for trying your best and not always being perfect—the occasional drunken kebab. I believe that is the way to make a difference, by giving people an opportunity to try their best.

  In the book, you spend some time discussing the capacity of different animals, with molluscs at one end of the spectrum, to feel pain. Is this the main moral or ethical issue that we need to consider?
  No, I think it’s a lot more complex. For a start, how do we judge the pain of other animals? You mentioned molluscs—there is still ongoing research into whether these particular animals can even feel pain. I think you have to always consider that, but also look at the wider impacts, such as upon the environment.

  In the book, for example, I write about scallop dredging on the west coast of Scotland. This is not just affecting the molluscs but the wider marine ecosystem as all the coral and other life on the seabed is ploughed up just for the scallops. So, I would argue in this case the question of the environmental impact is worth considering as well as the ability of the animal to feel pain.

  “Between an animal’s birth and it getting to your plate, there are many ethical questions to consider”

  The other question to ask is how does the processing of that animal affect the humans around them. For example, you might choose free-range organic chickens because the animals are better cared for, but if they’re being processed in a factory where people are being treated appallingly, then isn’t there a moral question about the labour that was used to get that meat to your table? Between the animal being born, or hatching, and getting to your plate, there are so many questions to consider in terms of ethics.

  It can halt you in your tracks and make you think ‘I won’t bother’. But I think asking questions and trying to understand is a good start. There are a lot of grey areas, I don’t see how you can have black and white answers when it comes to something so complex.

  Would a simpler answer be instead of us tearing our hair out over the ethics of meat-eating, to not eat any meat at all?
  Yep, that’s the easiest answer. I have enormous respect for people who choose to be vegan. They are undeniably having a lighter impact on the planet because it generally takes less energy, and therefore fewer greenhouse gas emissions, to produce plant-based foods than meat. There are also fewer concerns about welfare, the wider environment and labour. I would say that one of the big discoveries from the book is people often expect vegans to be very extreme and to lecture everyone else, but actually I’ve had some really nice responses to the book from people who choose to eat no animal products. They want to encourage more people to think about what they eat and welcome any effort in that direction. They understand that a clear message in the book is that if you are desperately worried about the environment, then one of the simplest things you can do is eat less meat.

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  You mentioned one non-environmental impact as being to do with labour and the first book that you’ve chosen, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (1906)—a novel that portrays the working conditions of those in the meat-packing industry at the turn of the twentieth century—deals with this labour question. It touches on immigration, and class, and many issues beyond that of eating meat. Why have you chosen to start here?
  One interesting thing with this book is that while there are lots of animals in it—and they’re being tortured horribly, literally being skinned alive in the background of many, many scenes in the novel—it’s what’s happening to the humans that is so terrible, and that’s what you’re left with, especially reading it now. When it first came out, people were really shocked by what went into their meat, and I think people would read it now and think things are a bit better, and they probably are… but when you think about it we had the horsemeat scandal a few years ago, a lot of what happens in meat factories is still unknown to us.

  I think sometimes when we discuss meat-eating, we talk about the suffering of the animals, we even talk about the environment, but we often forget to talk about the people and I think that’s really important: the people who do it on your behalf are worth considering.

  When you were writing The Ethical Carnivore, you went into slaughterhouses and onto fishing boats and spent a lot of time with people who are at the coalface of producing meat, often on industrial scales. How do you think that affects the people who do it, and do you think they have to become blind to some of these issues to be able to work in that industry?
  I think they have to process those issues, but they shouldn’t be blind to them. All of the places I went to were in the UK which meant they were really highly regulated. Also, I would say they were probably quite good abattoirs because they were allowing a journalist in—I wasn’t undercover, I was being quite open about what I was doing. So those people weren’t blind to the issues because they had to be very good at what they did in order to keep their job.

  In one abattoir, the slaughter-men who were doing the killing had trained for seven years on all the floors, and so I don’t think they’re blind to it. They have to be trained in all of the welfare stuff and they have to care for the animals because they’re being filmed. They have CCTV in most abattoirs in the UK and there’s a big campaign to get CCTV in all abattoirs—I don’t know why the government will not legislate on this as it protects the abattoirs as well. If they are doing a good job it should not be a threat to them.

  “They had to control their emotions, otherwise they couldn’t do the job”

  When I interviewed slaughtermen and -women they were aware of what they were doing, that they were killing a beautiful animal. They admitted that they had to control their emotions, otherwise they couldn’t do the job, but also said they were keenly aware of ensuring the animal had a quick death. They were proud of doing a job well. I think it also becomes part of your lifestyle, often there are whole families working in these industries. It is normalised in the sense it is part of your life and that’s just how things are.

  One of the most interesting interviews I did was with Temple Grandin, an animal behaviourist. She’s audited a lot of abattoirs, and she said that the majority really care about their jobs and do it well but yes, like anything, there are a few bad apples. She admits it and is trying to redesign the industry, so that those kind of people are weeded out.

  Publication of The Jungle caused public outrage, and as a result new legislation was brought in in the United States, the Meat Inspection Act. Do you think that the public want to know about what happens in their slaughterhouses?
  I guess a few people don’t because I’ve had quite violent reactions to my book by people who often eat meat and really don’t want to know. It’s almost like they feel it’s a personal affront, that they’re being attacked when I start telling them where meat comes from. I try to be delicate because I can sort of understand that it is quite upsetting for people. But the majority of people absolutely do want to know because they want to know it is being done right.

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  I think [most] people do want to know, but you have to contextualise it. The first time I went to an abattoir to write about it, I was traumatised. It is a death factory, there is no way of getting around that. But you have to put it in context if you really want to understand, so I think people should know about the whole picture—another reason I wrote the book. You need quite a lot of education because you have to think about how the animals are bred and how they’re treated as well as how they are killed. I think that should probably be part of school education. We should know where our food comes from, otherwise we’re susceptible to the kinds of things that happened in The Jungle, or the horsemeat scandal, because people are getting away with stuff where no one’s wanting to look.

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  Your second book, Ruth Harrison’s Animal Machines (1964), revealed the indignities and the suffering of animals in industrialised agriculture. What impact did the book have?
  It was like Upton Sinclair’s but in the UK. It led to the UK government changing the law—the 1968 Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act and also the European Convention for the Protection of Animals Kept for Farming Purposes. Ultimately it led to the ‘five freedoms’, which vets had been working on, being brought into law. These summarised animal welfare as freedom from hunger and thirst, from discomfort, from pain, injury or disease, from fear and distress and, most controversially, the freedom to express most normal behaviours.

  What I liked about Ruth Harrison was that she was really ordinary—a bit like me, she was not an animal rights activist, she just was an ordinary person who wanted to know where her food came from so she went to farms and she had a look, and that sounds quite radical, even now. In the 1960s it was especially important because that’s when things were changing. Farm animals were being bred in bigger numbers and meanwhile the population was moving to the cities, away from farms, so they did not know about it. Harrison came along at the very moment when people began to be disconnected from animals and asked people to look again, and she still has a huge influence today.

  So many books about eating meat, particularly the ethics of meat-eating, are written by vegetarians. Do you think that’s strange?
  No. I suppose it’s to be expected because people have to live the message of their book and most books about meat are questioning the killing of animals. Something I’ve found is that it’s very hard to talk about these issues without being a paragon of virtue yourself. I was aware right from the start that I’d expose myself to accusations of hypocrisy just for daring to write about meat whilst failing to be a vegan. But I also thought that is why I should write it. Perhaps in the past people were frightened about writing about meat because they felt they had to be vegan or vegetarian but I argue that you can question where it comes from, you can try to make better choices, you can be an ethical carnivore.

  “It’s very hard to talk about these issues without being a paragon of virtue yourself”

  Also, I would point out that authors often change their minds after writing a book. Upton Sinclair was a vegetarian for a time, but I don’t think he kept it up. Writers try to reflect what they’re feeling when they write a book, but it might change in the future.

  I don’t think it’s surprising that most people who write these books are vegetarians and vegans, but I think it’s necessary that people who aren’t write them as well, because if they’re all advocating vegetarianism and that doesn’t work then you’re left with a huge number of people in the middle who aren’t listening because they don’t want to hear the vegetarian message. Those people are the majority and by persuading them to question where their meat comes from, you can make a huge difference.

  Animal Machines had a huge impact, in making people see the industrialisation of farming in a negative light. In your experience of going to larger-scale commercial meat or egg producing places, how did you react?
  It’s really interesting because it’s a little bit like your question on the meat-eating: it’s not simple. You can’t just put a line down between large-scale and small-scale, and say that large-scale is always bad, especially when you are considering affordability. I’m not saying that as an excuse—when you go and talk to the people who are producing food and the people who are eating food, price is a huge issue and I’d like to know how food is produced affordably.

  So a good example would be intensive chickens raised to RSPCA Assured standards. Unlike slightly cheaper intensive chickens, they have daylight, they are dry, they’re not too squashed in. I went to see them and to me they looked content. Chickens are jungle birds, so they like being in the warm and the dry in a flock. But when I went to see intensive pigs indoors, they did seem unnaturally bored. They’re so puppy-ish and so intelligent, it’s hard to see how they can have the freedom to express ‘normal behaviour’ in that environment. It’s quite a contrast to when you see pigs rooting around outdoors. In fact I’d say you’re better off to go and see a pig outdoors if you really want to be inspired to buy free range because the animals are so obviously happy.

  “You’re better off to go and see a pig outdoors if you really want to be inspired to buy free range”

  But again, it’s complex. If you live in Scotland, how many pigs can be kept outdoors? So then you’re talking about how the intensive units can have straw inside them and perhaps more space for the pigs. Ultimately I’m afraid the consumer has to educate herself or himself.

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  Your next choice, I’m really intrigued by: My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki. It’s a novel about a documentary-maker working on a Japanese TV show that is essentially a shameless promotion of US beef from a particular beef company. What made you choose this book?
  It’s brilliant. It’s a really amazing book, and it’s very feminine. It’s really how women experience meat as often the cook for the family, but also perhaps as the daughters and wives who are given meat, and it’s about what meat means to different cultures and how we try to sell one culture to the other. The central character is a Japanese-American woman making a documentary for the Japanese market about American meat. In Japan they haven’t got a history of eating a lot of red meat but the Americans were trying to sell it to them, so trying to change their culture.

  It makes you think about why we eat meat: a lot of it is because of cultural reasons. Think of the Sunday roast. We think we are more cosmopolitan now but even in Britain today, meat is for men, and in many places for a man to become vegetarian is seen as maybe a little bit effete. Isn’t that ridiculous? The book is also a fairly damning exploration of intensive meat. If you go back to Upton Sinclair, it’s about what’s happening in meat factories in America still to this day.

  Every episode of this fictional Japanese TV show ends with some interesting way of eating meat—like beef fudge, or a Coca-Cola roast. The idea of meat being the heart of a meal, the idea of a roast bringing people together, that’s certainly very important in British and American cultures. How common is that, worldwide?
  Ozeki talks about Japanese culture and what really stays in your mind are these delicate vegetarian Japanese meals which are served and seem to be a much more accurate reflection of their culture than the American roasts being plonked on the table. So I don’t think a culture necessarily does have to have that big heft of red meat at the centre. Also cultures can evolve and change. I think we are at that moment now. In the past in the west we all subscribed to the American model of a good meal as having a big hunk of red meat in it, and to be healthy you eat a lot of red meat, and that’s a sign of success, and maleness, etc. But frankly we are running out of resources and beginning to think, ‘are there different ways to eat?’ Actually, we are not always putting meat at the centre of a meal any more and I’m interested in tracking the evolution of our culture as we move to a more mixed model.

  “Actually we are not always putting meat the centre of a meal any more”

  A lot of people have said to me that the western ideal of red meat is spreading to other parts of the world, but I think that’s a little simplistic and patronising. Yes, in some parts of the world people will want more meat as they grow richer. But in others, such as Japan, their own culture is stronger. Also, it works both ways, maybe we are taking on their cultural ideas of food. India is a really good example: they’ve had access to our culture for a long time but they still, because of Hinduism, have a very vegetarian diet, and meanwhile over here, we’re eating a lot of vegetarian curry, so it goes both ways. The idea of meat bringing a family together does still work, and I’m a social anthropologist by training so I sort of celebrate those cultural norms and see them as quite interesting—but I don’t think they need to stay the same forever when we can’t afford to produce that much red meat for all of us to eat all of the time.

  Of course in Japan they eat a huge amount of fish, and there are myriad environmental questions over fish.
  And whale.

  And whale, very controversially. Would it be any good for us to switch, as a globe, to a Japanese-style diet, or would that cause at least as much environmental impact as eating meat?
  I don’t know, I guess if you were going to be really simplistic and you said we were all going to eat a certain kind of diet that was going to help the environment it would help, but I think the great joy of life is diversity. A lot of what My Year of Meats is about is one culture trying to overtake and destroy another but I think there are probably benefits in both cultures. In our conversation so far we’ve very much talked about all of the damage that can be caused by the meat industry, but I think if your culture is northern German and you live in a forest where there are wild pigs, and indeed free-range pigs that are being farmed, then I would argue perhaps to celebrate your local culture, and to eat locally—in that case, there’s no harm in maintaining your pork industry, or your pork-eating habits. But do we want to be doing that everywhere in the world where there are perhaps better, different ways to eat? It’s one of the great joys of travel and life, to discover all of the different ways we eat around the world so I’d hate for it all to be the same.

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  Equally, coming back around to this idea of eating meat as not necessarily being an inherently negative thing, Simon Fairlie’s Meat: A Benign Extravagance (2010), famously convinced George Monbiot to publicly state he would stop being vegan [although he reverted in 2013]. Clearly it’s a work of some import and is extremely persuasive. What have you brought away from reading the book?
  It really explained to me the benefits of meat-eating, particularly in the UK as part of a mixed farm. The personal history of Simon Fairlie is quite interesting. He lived in these very progressive communes in Somerset and was milking the cows and slaughtering the pigs, but most of the people were vegetarian or vegan so instead of drinking the milk and eating the meat they were importing almond milk or soya margarine. He was frustrated that these homegrown products were being wasted while more energy was going into importing products. So that’s what motivated him to write the book.

  He wanted to show the true impact of eating meat if you take local factors into account. He questions the statistics on how much emissions livestock produce. For instance it’s often said that cattle in particular can produce up to 50% of carbon emissions. But Fairlie points out that this is if you’re grazing cattle where there used to be Amazon rainforest. Similarly if you’re grazing cattle in California or Arizona where there’s no water, it’s going to require a lot of water. But if you’re grazing cattle in Somerset where all that grows is grass then that can be an environmentally good thing and it can even store carbon. I think it’s a really important voice to balance out the argument on the effect meat-eating has on the environment.

  “I can’t think of many other issues that we discuss publicly where the first question is ‘what do you eat?”

  Fairlie has a great word for animals raised without damaging the environment, he calls it ‘default livestock’. He argues that if meat is raised from animals that are being grazed on land that could be used for nothing else—or on waste, so pigs, or because you need the leather or, I guess, medical products or other things—then that is part of a process and that’s a good thing to do for the environment. It’s quite refreshing, isn’t it, to see that Fairlie influenced environmentalists, that the argument all doesn’t have to go towards veganism, and it’s really interesting to see people like George Monbiot go back and forth [on the issue]. I can’t think of many other issues that we discuss publicly where the first question is ‘what do you eat?’

  Perhaps I like this book because it says something that people like me want to hear. To me it feels like a natural thing to eat meat, and so an argument which essentially backs up my own point of view, which is that we seem to be built to eat meat, is the one I grasp at because I want it to be true. Is that something that you find a lot?
  Yeah. When I go to people with my book, saying ‘perhaps let’s eat less meat,’ some people ask ‘why do I have carnivorous teeth then?’ Others say ‘you weren’t hard enough—when you talk about jobs in the countryside or maintaining the landscape, it’s just an excuse for torturing animals.’ So everyone’s got a really strong view. I think it’s the most natural thing—food is so emotionally loaded—and, at the moment, our culture seems obsessed with food and how we eat. I guess it’s because we’ve got so much food, as well as the time to consider how we eat it. So perhaps our questioning of meat is a result of that [renewed interest], but I don’t think we can deny that it’s emotional, too. If you deny that it’s emotional, you just end up sneaking off and closing the door and stuffing yourself with something bad because you are ashamed.

  Veganism, although it’s a simple philosophy, can seem an almost impossible ideal. So many people, like me, don’t even try.
  Yes. What’s so interesting about all these books, particularly Simon Fairlie’s, is he goes into the history and this is nothing new. [Percy Bysshe] Shelley was a vegetarian for a time because he believed in a better future where no one needed meat, or clothes, or marriage, or religion, and many of the Greek philosophers were vegetarian. But I think now with food and veganism in particular, because people feel so powerless, and because the state of the environment is so frightening, especially with climate change, it is a simple thing you can do to help minimise your impact on the planet. I wouldn’t take that away from people, but for me it’s simplistic: I would like to explore a more inclusive theory, a way of maybe bringing it into the mainstream. It’s happening already.

  “In the past a rich person would have been a glutton, but now a rich person would probably be a vegan with a personal chef”

  It’s not an extreme thing anymore to eat a certain proportion of vegan food—especially with all these chefs like Deliciously Ella, promoting plant based food. It’s aspirational. In the past a rich person would have been a glutton, but now a rich person would probably be a vegan with a personal chef.

  Do you think the push toward veganism is the result of a culture of excess? We have the time to worry about these questions, or the luxury to?
  Yes, I guess there’s an element of that, but I wouldn’t want to patronise people who feel so strongly about eating animals that they would argue that if they had no choice, they wouldn’t do it. I think it’s dangerous to say that you have to be privileged to worry about these things. If you say that it’s just a middle-class worry, you shut down any conversation and the corporations peddling bad food get away with it. A lot of people who don’t have much money care about food and where it’s from and they shouldn’t be palmed off with ‘oh, it’s cheap, you don’t care about it’, when they do. A lot of nutritionists and chefs who are better versed than me, people like Jamie Oliver, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Jack Monroe, would say you can cook on a budget using ethical products. And it’s not just meat that we’re concerned about—it’s all sorts of things, like clothes. I guess it’s a bit of a twenty-first century thing to be worrying about where all the stuff we consume comes from.

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  Finally, you’ve chosen Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals (2009), which was a huge bestseller in the US, it’s all framed around Safran Foer deciding whether or not he would like his new-born child to eat meat.
  I read it before I started the book and it really influenced me. It’s a really powerful book and I know many people who it has made vegetarian. There’s a passage in it that says only eating animals you kill yourself is ridiculous [what Gray does for a year, in The Ethical Carnivore], that it’s a stupid argument. He’s actually got a line: ‘It’s a way to forget the problem while pretending to remember.’ But I was a fan of this book and it was quite interesting to feel like I had to move beyond someone else’s opinion to do it on my own terms. I wasn’t living in the city, like Safran Foer, at the time, with lots of vegan restaurants about the place. I was living in the countryside, in a place where I was being offered venison quite regularly from animals that were being harvested as part of reforestation. I didn’t have a problem with this meat and I wanted to to explore that. Later in the book Safran Foer goes to see farmers who raise animals in a particular way and says ‘I would eat meat if I could do this realistically’—I would argue we could do that.

  “A lot of books about meat are lobbying but this isn’t a lobbying book, it’s just the author’s story”

  The book was also a big influence stylistically. There are a lot of books that I considered to put on this list which are about the facts and figures of eating meat, and are really interesting, but I feel like this is such an interesting book because it’s looking at the facts and figures in an emotional way. It’s about his personal history and about the people he meets. Just like Upton Sinclair’s book, it’s about the people. I just thought it was very interesting to explore our emotions, and a way of having some influence on an environmental issue but through storytelling not lecturing. A lot of books about meat are lobbying but this isn’t a lobbying book, it’s just his story. It’s an example of a way of exploring issues through telling a story, which I would argue is the only way to explore it honestly.

  To someone who would like to live a more moral or ethical life, and is considering whether or not they should become a vegetarian or continue to eat meat, what would you recommend?
  I hesitate, when you ask that question, as I hate to to feel like I’m moralising. I would try not to be negative and say you can’t eat this or that. But I think there are so many positive messages in being an ethical carnivore. I feel like what you eat gives you control. Michael Pollan, a US author who writes a lot about food, says: ‘You vote with your fork three times a day.’ So I would say it is a good thing to discuss, because it gives people power and we don’t have much of that.

  “You vote with your fork three times a day”

  How you eat meat is especially powerful because of the environmental impact and climate change—it produces more emissions than all of the transport in the world put together, so reducing the amount we eat can make a difference. To understand where your meat comes from not only enables you to have an impact on the environment, but gives you a link to the land and the farmers and where the meat is from, and that’s empowering to you as an individual and to the small farmers getting your money.

  So I think eating less meat and understanding where it’s from can be a great thing for people, as can exploring the alternatives. We have got ourselves into this situation where the environment is under threat but we can find new ways which would really help the environment—like by reintroducing oysters to help waterways, or enabling smaller farmers to have an income. You can have a positive affect through eating meat. Also, there is all this amazing vegetarian food, vegan food, meat alternatives, as well as the meat. You can engage with and enjoy all of it, so less and better—or different—can work for you on a lot of levels.

  Interview by Cal Flyn

• Standard Issue - http://standardissuemagazine.com/

  QUOTE:
  It is a difficult and dark fact to swallow, that for me is at the heart of the book. When you eat an animal, you take some part of the responsibility for its death. But in the age we live in, where you can pick a pretty package off a supermarket shelf, it is easy to forget that. I set out to show what it is really like. I am not saying everyone needs to kill an animal in order to eat meat, but you should understand where it came from.
  Written by Louise Gray
  FOOD
  Hands off the barbecue tongs – meat’s not just a ‘man thing’
  Louise Gray spent a year only eating animals she’d killed herself, and in the process learned a lot about compassion and the environment.

  Posted on 15/11/2016
  wild rabbit in a field
  “The first animal I killed was a beautiful little rabbit with a white blaze. I was traumatised.”
  Meat has always been in the man cave. In traditional societies men are more likely to hunt and bring meat to the table. In modern life, sparking up a barbecue, or even just eating steak, apparently makes you more macho.

  But people, it’s 2016.

  I spent a year only eating animals I killed myself as part of the research for my book, The Ethical Carnivore. I learned to fish, shoot and stalk. I learned to gut, butcher and barbecue meat. And I learned that as a woman I was capable of all these things. Most importantly, I learned that compassion for the animals we eat does not have to depend on your sex.

  The reason I wanted to write about meat was because I was aware of its role in driving climate change. I knew that livestock pumps out more greenhouse gases (yes, that’s cow burps) than all the world’s planes, trains and automobiles put together.

  Yet as a farmer’s daughter I wasn’t quite ready to give up meat. I could see in the British countryside around me cattle and sheep maintaining the landscape we know and love, providing jobs and living free range. But I didn’t want to be one of those smug, ungracious people who goes to a dinner party and demands to know the name of the farmer before I will tuck into a pork chop. Saying that I only ate animals I killed myself seemed like a much sexier line.

  “When you eat an animal, you take some part of the responsibility for its death. But in the age we live in, where you can pick a pretty package off a supermarket shelf, it is easy to forget that.”

  When I started out on my journey, I was determined to keep gender out of it. But very early on it became an issue. The first animal I killed was a beautiful little rabbit with a white blaze. I was traumatised.

  I cried, the gamekeeper I was with cried and I doubted that I would be able to continue with my investigations. The one thing that kept me going was meeting the country men and women who do this every day. I could see they were good people in tune with nature. I was determined to learn their skills and do it properly.

  But I had to ask myself, why I had not been taught before? My brothers were all taught how to shoot a gun as a matter of course – even if they showed no interest. The fact is that, even in the modern age, women are not expected to have these skills, so fewer do.

  As I built up my skills, I realised there was no good reason for this. Shooting requires good physical fitness, accuracy and, most importantly, self-control – all things women can master as well as men. I cannot pretend I showed any particular talent, but I did manage to get good enough to shoot more rabbits, a squirrel, pigeons, pheasants, a wild sheep and a red deer stag – all without crying.

  stag
  The question of how I felt psychologically is more complex. It sounds ridiculous to say I felt sad about it – if I felt that bad, I would not have done it – but I did, and that’s the point. I understood and accepted I was killing an animal and I had to take responsibility for that.

  It is a difficult and dark fact to swallow, that for me is at the heart of the book. When you eat an animal, you take some part of the responsibility for its death. But in the age we live in, where you can pick a pretty package off a supermarket shelf, it is easy to forget that. I set out to show what it is really like. I am not saying everyone needs to kill an animal in order to eat meat, but you should understand where it came from.

  Obviously it’s not realistic for everyone to eat game and so I also investigated how animals are raised and slaughtered on our behalf. This meant visiting farms and slaughterhouses. Most of the people who work there are men. It is a hard, physical job and it often runs in families from fathers to sons. But you’d be surprised at how many women also work in the industry, especially in the top tiers advising on animal behaviour as vets or as master butchers. Traditionally these jobs have been looked down upon, but I think if you want to eat meat you owe these men – and women – respect.

  Meat has often been hijacked by a ridiculous macho image. In The Sexual Politics of Meat, Carol J Adams likens the farming of animals to the repression of women. She points to turkey breasts sold in ‘Double D’ size and the sexualised image of women’s bodies as ‘tasty rump’. She has a point but I think her overall theory goes too far; both men and women can enjoy eating meat and take responsibility for it. The sexualised image of meat is changing.

  Today there are vegan cage fighters and vegan boxers. Mr Universe 2014 was a vegan, for heaven’s sake. Masculinity is no longer defined by eating steak. The average hipster is proud to be almost vegan, except for the occasional organic bacon and smashed avo on toast. Both men and women are cutting down on meat.

  So, what do I call this new gender-neutral trend? Part-time vegetarian? Flexitarian? Meat reductionist? And then it struck me: we are the only species able to make choices about what we eat based on ethics. Choosing to only eat animals that have been raised and slaughtered humanely is neither male nor female, it is simply being a human.

  Louise Gray’s first book, The Ethical Carnivore is out now. She blogs at www.louisebgray.com, and is on Instagram as loubgray.

  @loubgray

QUOTE:
I kept wondering who this book was aimed at. Who does she think is going to be moved by it? Is it just a mutual confirmation for vegetarians, or are carnivores supposed to slap their heads and say, I never knew that's where my chops came from? For all its hand-wringing and breathless sadness at the extermination of natural wonder, this lifeless little book suffers from the endemic plague of new age fundamental food faddism.
Meaty matters
A.A. Gill
Spectator. 332.9818 (Oct. 29, 2016): p42.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
http://www.spectator.co.uk
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Full Text:
The Ethical Carnivore: My Year Killing to Eat

by Louise Gray

Bloomsbury, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 320

I'm writing this in the Highlands. Through the window I can see Loch Maree, being ruffled into white-tipped skirls by the westerly wind and a squall of cloud that's shrouding Slioch, the Place of the Spears. The Munroes are steeples at the end of the water, a bastion reminder of Scotland's eternal war between the fastness and the wetness.

I'm up here for the stalking. I come every year. I haven't taken a shot for some time. I love the stalk: stalking is to walking what opera is to whistling. And I also love going out with people who have never done it before, or for whom pulling the trigger is still the pinch-point of life, death and everything. Watching a stag through a sight, an animal bigger and heavier than you are, that embodies so much yearning and lust, roars so fundamentally about our temporal mythologised lives, is always a big thing, a big ask.

I've taken the day off in the lodge, with a fire and an Arbroath Smokie tart, a cold grouse and a square of tablet, to pick some rowans and sharp apples for jelly and to write this. I am more sympathetic to Louise Gray's book in the north than I would be in Chelsea.

The best chapter is about stalking with her father, and is less to do with killing than with the warm, vegetative relationship that daughters have with their dads. It has a different tone and digs deeper than the rest--but this is not a good book. It is a well-meaning one, and it is written by an evidently decent and empathetic woman; but niceness and goodwill don't, by simply wishing it, conjure up interest or a compelling argument. Altogether, it sounds like Prince Charles screaming Bridget Jones.

Let's start with a nit-pick. The title: The Ethical Carnivore. Does she really mean ethical--or is it moral? I understand that untangling the specific definition is a pedant's errand, but ethics are generally the application of morality. Ethics are what lawyers, bankers and plastic surgeons have. Whether or not to eat an ingredient that has died for your dinner is surely moral. Buddhists, Jains and Hindus are directed by morality, not ethics. Ethics you learn; morality you believe.

The distinction is not inconsequential. Louise Gray wants to make up an empirical argument against eating meat. She's not a missionary, she's an advocate and that's the first of the book's numerous shortcomings. The argument against eating meat rests on it being cruel and environmentally unsound; but also on the claim that it is unkind and wrong and fundamentally inhuman. So the discussion about relieving pain, misdirecting the attention and calming the fears of animals that are about to be killed and the husbandry practices that do the least environmental damage are beside the point--as are the discussions about whether or not fish feel pain. She cites a study that got bees to sting trout mouths to see if they reacted to pain, and apparently they rubbed their faces in the sand. As a piece of scientific inquiry, that must be one of the most weirdly bizarre and pointless. There is a paragraph explaining that it is OK to eat bivalves because they don't have a central nervous system, as if an ability to feel pain is the threshold for membership to the right-to-life club.

There are also long, hand-wringing discussions on how much pain a pig feels and for how long, and then there is the patronising, head-patting respect for old-fashioned farmers, peasants, natives and time-honoured rituals, as opposed to the obvious hellishness of supermarkets, factory farms and fast food.

Gray suffers from a constant squeamishness about offal, blood and messy bits, and an equally sentimental gooiness for the beauty of fur, feathers and ickle baby animals. She seems to condone eating roadkill because, well, it's dead anyway, and insects because, well, they're creepy-crawlies. There is no attempt to explain the obvious dichotomy: that if killing things is wrong then whether you do it with a captive bolt or a bus makes no difference. If all life is intrinsically equally valuable, then there is fundamentally no difference between eating a run-over pheasant or a hit-and-run cyclist. If you are simply worried by the type of suffering, then it is not a profound question of ethics or morality: it's about quality control.

And I kept wondering who this book was aimed at. Who does she think is going to be moved by it? Is it just a mutual confirmation for vegetarians, or are carnivores supposed to slap their heads and say, I never knew that's where my chops came from? For all its hand-wringing and breathless sadness at the extermination of natural wonder, this lifeless little book suffers from the endemic plague of new age fundamental food faddism. It has an overwhelming vanity: not how did the dead bunny feel, but how did I feel having deaded the bunny? Everything is filtered through the damp, springy softness of the author's sensitivity--and having argued about the ethical bit of the title, I should grinch by questioning the carnivore bit. There is a barely any passing pleasure in eating, no sense of the one thing that does connect us all to every other meat-eating animal: the daily satisfaction of consuming each other.

I suspect that this book was written as self-help therapy and to impress her dad.

QUOTE:
A courageous and important narrative offering an enlightened perspective on making informed choices about eating meat.
Louise Gray: THE ETHICAL CARNIVORE
Kirkus Reviews. (Oct. 1, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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Louise Gray THE ETHICAL CARNIVORE Bloomsbury (Adult Nonfiction) 28.00 ISBN: 978-1-4729-3839-8

Knowing where your food comes from is an important aspect of food culture for a growing segment of the American population. British environmental journalist Gray moves the idea into deeper territory.In this riveting memoir, the author chronicles her year of eating mainly vegetables and only meat she caught, killed, and butchered herself. As an environmental journalistamong other positions, she was the environment correspondent for the Daily Telegraph from 2008 to 2013the author had reported on climate change and how the farming of animals contributed to the problem, and she understands the issues regarding antibiotics in meat, water pollution, and animal welfare. As a farmers daughter, however, Gray was not convinced that the answer was to give up meat entirely. She begins with a conversation on the ethics of eating meat. Ethics is the effort to live a moral life, writes the author. To me that meant understanding fully the consequences of my actions. Gray devotes a chapter to each animal she killed and ate, a list that includes oysters, lobster, a variety of fish, rabbits, squirrel, sheep, a Berkshire pig, and a red deer. The author engagingly incorporates the viewpoints of chefs, slaughterhouse employees, animal welfare workers, gamekeepers, fishermen, and a woman who cooks roadkill, and she weaves in enticing descriptions of the landscapes she traveled while hunting. She also deftly deconstructs the romanticism of stories of meat eaters and reveals the realities of what it means to be a carnivore for us, the animals, and our environment. Of all the animals Gray consumed, the most numerous were fish, and her story about the state of the oceans is devastating. After reading one book reporting on the condition of the oceans, she writes, reading it, you gasp in surprise at our stupidity. A courageous and important narrative offering an enlightened perspective on making informed choices about eating meat.

• Caught by the River
  http://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2016/09/22/the-ethical-carnivore-vegan-vegetarian-agriculture/
  Word count: 1345

  QUOTE:
  The Ethical Carnivore, published this month, is a thorough, engaging, sometimes shocking account of where our meat comes from. It is also, most importantly, a book about caring.
  This book is never going to convince anyone who believes that ‘all meat is murder’ to follow her lead. Such beliefs are a matter of faith, not of facts, and there is little to be gained in trying to preach to the unconvertible. Ultimately, the ethical choices we make about food are personal, they are individual. But Gray’s argument is that they must be choices, not just blind acceptance of the status quo. The central lesson of this book is that, today, caring can be a radical act.

  The Ethical Carnivore
  22 September 2016 // Books

  9781472938398-1

  The Ethical Carnivore: My Year Killing to Eat by Louise Gray
  (Bloomsbury, hardback, 320 pages. Out now and available here in the Caught by the River shop.)

  Review by Malachy Tallack

  In the summer of 2013, Kate Middleton was lying in hospital in central London with a baby on the way. At the same time, the Daily Telegraph’s environment correspondent, Louise Gray, was touring a slaughterhouse near Pontefract with Prince Charles. Her editors had sent her to the plant in case the prince happened to mention anything about his imminent grandchild. He didn’t, of course. But Louise did think she could see a story.

  What was happening there in the abattoir fascinated her. It was a part of modern Britain that few people ever got to see, or even to hear about, and she wanted to correct that. But her editors were not convinced. ‘“It’s the birth of the future King or Queen of England”’, they told her. When it comes to the animals we eat, ‘“no one fucking cares”’.
  Three years later, Louise Gray is hoping to prove her former bosses wrong. Her book, The Ethical Carnivore, published this month, is a thorough, engaging, sometimes shocking account of where our meat comes from. It is also, most importantly, a book about caring.

  The premise is simple: Gray commits to eating only meat she has killed herself for a full year (and more), and along the way she learns about the industries that produce our food, and the conditions in which those creatures destined for our plates are kept and slaughtered.

  The book is written in a chatty, informal style that somehow makes the facts of the modern human diet all the more terrifying. She writes, for instance, that ‘one per cent of the global population’ eats at McDonald’s every day, which struck me as incredible. As did the fact that 15 million chickens a week are eaten in this country alone.

  Throughout the book she tells a series of fascinating stories – the history of the RSPCA, which began as a livestock welfare organisation; the rise of salmon farming; the growth in halal slaughter; the changes in our agricultural landscape. Gray’s interests are wide-ranging, and though her opinions are never hidden, she is always careful to offer both sides of each tale. She recounts the facts; she gives representatives of the industries space to defend themselves, where necessary; she asks questions.

  The book is not polemical. Gray repeatedly and rightly emphasises the environmental damage caused by livestock farming and fishing, and her central message is that we should all eat less meat. But her purpose, I think, is not to change opinions, exactly, but rather to encourage readers to have opinions. She recognises that ours is a culture of avoidance: most meat eaters avoid thinking about the source of their food; they avoid thinking about the fact that, to produce it, something had to be killed. This is not just morally irresponsible, it is unsustainable – the planet cannot afford for us to live this way. The key to changing our diets then, Gray hopes, is for us to start thinking, to open our eyes and to be informed: ‘you don’t have to kill animals yourself’, she says, ‘but you should go to the effort to find out where they come from’. The right choices will surely follow.

  The danger with a book like this, then, is that it will be read only by middle class foodies who already agree with its basic premise, and who can afford to be choosy about the meat they buy. The industrialisation of animal agriculture in the post-war years was a way of bringing affordable protein to every table, and while Gray is absolutely correct to point out that there are cheaper, tastier and more efficient ways of consuming protein than turbo-grown hens, there are still tricky questions to be answered by proponents of the meat-as-luxury movement. At one point in the book she speaks to a young volunteer at Edinburgh’s Gorgie City Farm, where pigs live happy lives before being turned into food. Gray asks the volunteer if she eats the meat from the farm herself. No, she replies. ‘“I buy bacon from Aldi, cos it’s all I can afford.”’.

  One of the highlights of this book, for me, is Gray’s willingness to explore the complicated tangle of emotions that surround the actual killing of animals. She is not above exposing her sentimentality, particularly when it comes to mammals. The prologue describes her first attempt to shoot a rabbit, when she is plagued by memories of watching Watership Down. She feels guilty for her actions, for causing the death of a beautiful creature.

  But then there is the other side of it, the almost spiritual feeling one can experience when eating an animal. ‘Wholeness’ is the word used by one of her interviewees, Jade Barlett, to describe how she felt eating home-killed meat for the first time, after 15 years as a vegetarian. And Gray herself describes the intense ‘hunter’s pride’ she feels – not at the moment of a kill, but when she shares her food with friends. ‘It’s hunter’s pride from providing for others,’ she writes; ‘this tastes real, smells real, is real.’

  These deeply complicated feelings are, for me at least, utterly fascinating. They go to the heart of our confusion about what it is to be a human being in the modern world. Our instincts, our empathy and our logic all crash up against each other in this primal act of killing another creature. It can be a hugely disorientating experience. More than once, Gray feels the desire for some kind of secular prayer in that moment – a common response, familiar to many who hunt, fish or farm.

  Louise Gray is very far from a meat evangelist. The most valuable part of writing this book, she claims, was learning how to enjoy a diet that is almost entirely vegan. ‘I now see meat as a treat to be eaten with the reverence and respect it deserves’, she says. Towards the end of the book she spends time discussing various meat alternatives, including eating insects, ‘plant-based meat protein’ and ‘biofabrication’. But ultimately she cannot escape from ‘all the messy, complex reasons I would rather be an ethical carnivore than a vegan’.

  This book is never going to convince anyone who believes that ‘all meat is murder’ to follow her lead. Such beliefs are a matter of faith, not of facts, and there is little to be gained in trying to preach to the unconvertible. Ultimately, the ethical choices we make about food are personal, they are individual. But Gray’s argument is that they must be choices, not just blind acceptance of the status quo. The central lesson of this book is that, today, caring can be a radical act.

  *

  Malachy Tallack is a writer and singer-songwriter from Shetland, now living in Glasgow. His first book, Sixty Degrees North, was published last year. His second, The Un-Discovered Islands, is due in October 2016.

• Guardian
  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/23/ethical-carnivore-year-killing-eat-louise-gray-review
  Word count: 963

  QUOTE:
  very likable and often eye-opening book
  the book has charm and style as well
  The Ethical Carnivore by Louise Gray review – one way to stop us eating so much meat
  Gray has written a charming and eye-opening book about her year spent eating creatures only she had killed. She points the way to a reduced-meat future

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  Steven Poole
  Friday 23 September 2016 03.00 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 2 May 2017 13.38 EDT

  If I ate only animals I killed myself, I would live on a rather uninspiring diet of clothes moths and the occasional mosquito. But then I haven’t learned to stalk and shoot and fish, unlike Louise Gray, an environmental reporter who followed the example of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and decided to eat only what she had personally murdered for a year.

  In her very likable and often eye-opening book, Gray, “a farmer’s daughter”, spends a surprising amount of time describing visits to various abattoirs, in order to depict exactly what happens when you don’t kill your own food. Dressing for her first visit, she reports wryly, “I wore a new blouse from Topshop with startled fawns on it.”

  It turns out that even the highest humane standards in such places do not exactly make them pleasant environments, and Gray evokes them with a calm precision. “You always go backwards in an abattoir, from the packing plant, to the boning hall, to the killing hall, to the lairage. It is to avoid contamination.”

  Outside the slaughterhouse, author and reader can both breathe more easily as she meets someone who is into collecting and cooking roadkill, and Gray herself kills a variety of wildlife, including a lobster, various fish and game birds, some rabbits, a sheep, a pig and a deer. It is bloody work, carefully described. And what Gray then makes of them in the kitchen does sound mouthwatering.

  As usual when people talk at any length about food, however, a fair amount of rhetorical bad faith is also going on here. Everyone, including the author, is keen to assert their tremendous “respect” for an animal once it is dead, even though this respect mysteriously didn’t stretch as far as deciding not to kill it when it was still alive. Killing your own animals, Gray says, is “beyond intimate. It is primal.” Well, yes: so is caving another human being’s skull in with a rock, but that doesn’t mean we should all go around doing it. Most wince-inducing, Gray writes repeatedly of her “gratitude” to birds or mammals she has just slaughtered by firearm or knife (without stunning them first, as abattoirs do) – as though the beasts had generously volunteered to lay down their lives in order to grace her dinner plate.

  Luckily the book has charm and style as well. “Vegan cheese destroys the soul,” Gray asserts quite persuasively at one point; while after a shooting party she reports, with an interesting mixture of emotions: “My hands smell of expensive soap and gunpowder.” The accounts of hunting trips with her father contain some vivid and quite moving nature writing and she makes some good points about the blandness of industrialised meat. Scoffing her own pig, she reports: “It tastes of pig, it smells of pig, it is a pig … I feel like we have been tricked into eating more pork than we need to in modern life by making it taste like nothing.” If you want a book that wallows in its own sentimentality, moral superiority and superficiality of thinking, you’d better read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals instead. (But really, don’t bother.)

  The Ethical Carnivore: 'I no longer feel we should all visit a slaughterhouse'
  Read more
  “I realise I have a message,” Gray announces at the end of the book. “It is this: you don’t have to kill animals yourself, but you should go to the effort to find out where they come from.” Fair enough. Doing so, she believes, will “naturally encourage” us to eat less meat. So what do you call this sort of diet? The word “flexitarian” sounds to me like a commitment to eat only animals that practised yoga while alive. Gray just calls it “the human way to eat”, but this does unfortunately imply that the great unwashed masses who like to scoff a dodgily sourced kebab after midnight are somehow less than human.

  She ends hopefully with the conviction that we are going into a reduced-meat future, but the problem she doesn’t address is what philosophers call moral incontinence: the fact that, as flawed human beings, we can know what’s right without actually doing it. Gray offers many strong ethical and ecological arguments for eating less meat, and then wonders why people still eat such a lot of it, even though the “facts and figures are all there”. But a person can be intellectually convinced of facts and figures and still gobble steak or pork in the evening. To change this phenomenon globally is probably going to require more than a few friendly chats with one’s Islington butcher. In the meantime, being told in this book that chickens “have better numeracy skills than toddlers” is not going to deter me from giving the conveniently ready-killed free-range bird in my fridge a damn good roasting.

  • The Ethical Carnivore: My Year Killing to Eat is published by Bloomsbury. To order a copy for £13.93 (RRP £16.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

• Sydney Morning Herald
  http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-ethical-carnivore-review-louise-gray-tackles-the-reality-of-eating-meat-20161028-gscvyk.html
  Word count: 268

  QUOTE:
  While most of us prefer not to think about where our meat comes from, Gray tackles the issue head on to show what ethical eating might mean.
  NOVEMBER 4 2016
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  The Ethical Carnivore review: Louise Gray tackles the reality of eating meat

  Fiona Capp
  The Ethical Carnivore: My Year Killing to Eat

  LOUISE GRAY

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  The Ethical Carnivore, by Louise Gray, looks at the reality of eating meat.
  The Ethical Carnivore, by Louise Gray, looks at the reality of eating meat. Photo: Supplied
  BLOOMSBURY, $27.99

  When Louise Gray shot her first rabbit, she felt she had done something horribly wrong. She wanted to spend a year eating only food she had killed in order to confront the bloody reality of being a carnivore. Like most Britons, she had been brought up on "a literary diet of talking woodland animals". And while killing a lobster might not seem confronting, it's a different story when you have observed them in their underwater world. Most disturbing of all was her visit to a slaughterhouse. "It's not the killing that is the most violent thing. It is what happens next: it is the skinning, the burning, the boiling … the evisceration." While most of us prefer not to think about where our meat comes from, Gray tackles the issue head on to show what ethical eating might mean.

• Daily Mail
  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4054022/Louise-Gray-eats-meat-animals-kills-Ethical-Carnivore-Year-Killing-Eat.html
  Word count: 1926

  QUOTE:
  I am a farmer’s daughter and I could see for myself that animals kept free-range were not only part of the landscape but sustaining the rural economy and way of life. Also, I saw nothing wrong with eating animals killed as part of managing the wider environment, for example killing deer to allow over-grazed land to recover.

  Would YOU kill to eat? Writer commits to eating meat only from animals she's hunted herself in bid to become an 'ethical carnivore'- and it all began with a botched rabbit killing
  British environmental reporter Louise Gray ate only meat she had killed herself
  Farmer's daughter spent two years learning hunting and shooting techniques
  Gray doesn't advocate that everyone do as she did but believes people would benefit from learning more about the meat they eat
  Started with small species, such as rabbits and oysters, and eventually killed a stag with her father
  Eating only meat she killed means she keeps a vegetarian diet most of the time
  By Clemence Michallon For Dailymail.com
  PUBLISHED: 14:10 EDT, 25 December 2016 | UPDATED: 13:50 EDT, 26 December 2016
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  If you could only eat meat you killed yourself, what would your diet look like?

  Environmental reporter Louise Gray was so tickled by the question she decided to try it for two years. Gray, a farmer's daughter, had never hunted before - yet in 730 days, she killed and dined on 21 different species from the land and the sea.

  Her experience as an 'ethical carnivore', which she has chronicled in a book, 'The Ethical Carnivore: My Year Killing to Eat', began with the botched killing of a rabbit - a traumatizing experience that almost caused her to quit.

  The rabbit was injured and fled far into the Essex countryside before she had a chance to kill it completely. Gray soon admonished herself, thinking she was a bad person who had 'caused terrible suffering just to try and make a point at a dinner party'.

  Her hunting coach for the day, a gamekeeper, told her mistakes were par for the course when hunting or fishing. Gray continued her quest, hungry for a closer connection to the meat she ate.

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  British reporter Louise Gray (pictured hunting) committed to eating meat only from animals she had killed for two years, so as to get a better understanding of where meat comes from +4
  British reporter Louise Gray (pictured hunting) committed to eating meat only from animals she had killed for two years, so as to get a better understanding of where meat comes from

  Meat eaters, she believes, need to become more aware of exactly how animals reach their plates.

  Gray herself was once what she calls a 'blind omnivore', who ate meat and didn't think twice about it.

  'Like most people I followed fashions, health fads and my appetite. I was never a passionate meat eater but despite being an animal lover I never really made an effort to properly question where my protein came from,' she told the DailyMail.com.

  Gray, an environmental reporter, gradually became more aware of issues surrounding meat consumption.

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  'I learned that livestock like cattle produce more greenhouse gases than all the world’s transport put together. So, I knew the easiest thing I could do to tackle climate change was to give up meat. Yet I struggled to become a full time vegetarian,' she said.

  'I am a farmer’s daughter and I could see for myself that animals kept free-range were not only part of the landscape but sustaining the rural economy and way of life. Also, I saw nothing wrong with eating animals killed as part of managing the wider environment, for example killing deer to allow over-grazed land to recover.'

  Gray (pictured) began her experience by hunting small species, such as rabbits and oysters, and eventually killed a stag with her father. She tried 21 species in total +4
  Gray (pictured) began her experience by hunting small species, such as rabbits and oysters, and eventually killed a stag with her father. She tried 21 species in total

  Gray eventually realized that by eating only animals she had killed herself, she would be able to male sure that all the meat she consumed came from a sustainable source.

  'I guess my "ha-ha" moment was when I told people my idea and saw their reaction. I realized that it was not just me. Society as a whole felt uncomfortable with eating meat with no idea where it comes from. They wanted to find out. My job as a writer is to answer these kind of questions, so I decided to write a book about the project,' she said.

  But that narrative needn't be guilt-inducing or negative. Instead of frightening facts about factory farming, Gray says, she wants to give people positive examples of ethical farmers and meat providers they can support, and how they can consume meat in a more conscious way.

  Gray began with oysters and fish, then learned to shoot small species such as pigeons and the infamous rabbits. She eventually graduated to a stag, which she killed with her father - an opportunity for her to reflect on their relationship.

  Her first killing, albeit traumatic, taught her a lot about responsibility.

  'I felt guilty the first time. That feeling never went away but I accepted it. Whenever you eat meat an animal has died and I would argue you have to take responsibility for that. Guilt I think is a negative emotion. Responsibility suggests you are going to take that feeling on and examine it, then decide whether you are willing to do it again. I decided I was willing to do it again,' Gray said.

  'But I never took killing an animal for granted. I always feel the responsibility of what I am doing. I tried to be as humane as possible and used every cut of the meat. I think if more people understood where meat is from, they might appreciate animals more and see meat as more of a treat, rather than as a staple. '

  Even though she publicizes her meat-based meals (such as the pheasant meat above, which came from roadkill), Gray keeps a vegetarian diet most of the time - a natural consequence of eating only the meat she killed +4
  Even though she publicizes her meat-based meals (such as the pheasant meat above, which came from roadkill), Gray keeps a vegetarian diet most of the time - a natural consequence of eating only the meat she killed

  Gray visited a slaughterhouse and came out traumatized. Her depiction of the place reads like a nightmare.

  'The sows hang upside down, their heads soaking in blood dripping off their ears, their eyelashes,' she wrote. 'The hair is burned off with a naked flame and the flesh is branded, adding the smell of burning flesh to sh*t and blood.'

  The experience lead her to vow to never again to eat meat that had come from a slaughterhouse. But she doesn't demonize those who work at slaughterhouses and believes meat eaters should instead understand those workers.

  One of them showed her pictures of her own pet dogs.

  Gray doesn't incite her readers to do the same thing she did. She doesn't think it would be realistic.

  Her experiment, however, has changed her own habits for good.

  'I never wanted to do this as a one off or a gimmick. It takes a lifetime to learn to do something properly so I continue to learn. I have been rabbit shooting and fishing a few times since finishing the book,' she said.

  'I intend to go stalking again to fill my venison with freezer. If I am going to eat meat, I would much rather continue to source it myself, even if only occasionally.

  'I am also buying meat direct from butchers and farmers as I want to support the farmers I believe are raising animals free range and sustaining the countryside – often in very difficult financial circumstances. They deserve our respect too!'

  Mark Zuckerberg had embarked on a similar experience in 2011 and seems to have ended it since.

  Gray's first hunting experience left her traumatized because she failed to completely kill a rabbit with one shot. She gradually became a more skilled hunter (as seen in the picture above) +4
  Gray's first hunting experience left her traumatized because she failed to completely kill a rabbit with one shot. She gradually became a more skilled hunter (as seen in the picture above)

  Despite labeling herself an ethical carnivore in the title of her book, Gray keeps a vegetarian most of the time - a natural consequence of eating only the meat she kills.

  'I am continuing to learn to cook delicious vegetarian food and find alternatives to meat. One of my key arguments is we should be eating less meat, so if I want a balanced and satisfying diet I have to find interesting ways to eat vegetables,' she said.

  The tastiest meal she had during her two years of killing to eat was fresh cod’s roe.

  'The egg sacs from a female cod caught that morning spread on toast was better than any caviar,' she said. 'Also slow-cooked stag heart, lamb’s liver, roast roadkill pheasant, squirrel stir-fry, rabbit curry, I could go on... Every meal was appreciated and shared with friends.'

  Gray's time as an ethical carnivore has taught her a lot.

  'I learned a lot from the men and women who taught me to fish, shoot and stalk. I was forced to pay greater attention to the wildlife because I had to understand what was going on in order to catch an animal,' she said.

  'For example, you have to understand what fish are doing under the water before you cast the fly, you have to understand which way the wind is blowing before you stalk a deer, you have to be able to identify the droppings of an animal if you are going to track it.

  'Having a greater understanding of nature made me love and appreciate it even more. It forced me to go deeper. I could not just observe, I had to get down on my belly and crawl around in the undergrowth, to smell, see and hear what was going on. I became part of nature.'

  'The Ethical Carnivore: My Year Killing to Eat' is published by Bloomsbury in the US and in the UK.

  Find Louise Gray on Twitter and Instagram.

  Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4054022/Louise-Gray-eats-meat-animals-kills-Ethical-Carnivore-Year-Killing-Eat.html#ixzz4mN0DO7xs
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• Press and Journal
  https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/lifestyle/books-reviews/1047305/book-review-ethical-carnivore-year-killing-eat-louise-gray/
  Word count: 200

  QUOTE:
  must-read for anyone who wants to know more about where the meat and fish they eat comes from,
  Book Review: The Ethical Carnivore: My Year Killing To Eat by Louise Gray
  by MARGARET DAVIS
  October 14, 2016, 8:00 am

  SIGN UP TO OUR LIFESTYLE NEWSLETTER
  Could you spend a year eating only animals that you had killed yourself? This was the brave project undertaken by Louise Gray and detailed in her fascinating new book The Ethical Carnivore.

  BOOK Reviews 100253

  Told in beautiful, descriptive prose that shows her love and knowledge of nature, we are taken on a journey as Gray grows from a shaky novice taking a bad shot at a wild rabbit, to proudly feeding her friends animals she has hunted or foraged.

  She even ventures into eating roadkill, as well as serving up satay squirrel.

  This is a must-read for anyone who wants to know more about where the meat and fish they eat comes from, exploring in depth how the animals live and how they die, and the environmental and social impact along the way.

  Published by Bloomsbury Natural History

• Evening Standard
  http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/books/the-ethical-carnivore-my-year-killing-to-eat-by-louise-gray-review-a3363061.html
  Word count: 471

  QUOTE:
  The Ethical Carnivore might be a gory eye-opening traipse through the human race’s habit of killing for culinary purposes but at no point is it well-meaning, vegan-promoting fluff.
  The Ethical Carnivore: My Year Killing To Eat by Louise Gray- review
  JAMES ANTHONY Thursday 6 October 2016 15:49 BST0 comments

  1

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  ES Lifestyle
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  Despite the Bear Grylls-esque title, this is not exclusively an account of 12 months scavenging Britain’s fauna to put in the pot. It is, however, a sensible read for meat-eaters who have ever wondered — as any intelligent carnivore should — what it might be like to stand in the business end of an abattoir as the condemned animal is readied for death. Or how it feels to breathe slowly to calm an escalating heart rate while staring through a rifle scope moments before pulling the trigger on an animal for the plate.

  Gray’s opening account of trying to locate a rabbit she’s shot in the Essex countryside is in equal measure amusing and moving. Shot bunnies have a nasty habit of rolling into nettles/down burrows before drawing their last breath and Gray is determined not to be defeated on her first foray into self-sufficiency. Cue tears from a gnarly, thought-he’d-seen-everything gamekeeper of all people.

  Meat eating is like religion, republicanism, fox-hunting, football — an individual’s initial position is not going to change, not ever, not in a million years. So Gray’s discovery that halal slaughter in this country, in the main, actually involves stunning the animals before killing them or that McDonald’s, yes McDonald’s, has one of the best systems in the UK for tracing meat from field to carton, is unlikely to sway anyone who has already decided their stance on either.

  But that doesn’t make her attempts to educate the reader a waste of time. The Ethical Carnivore might be a gory eye-opening traipse through the human race’s habit of killing for culinary purposes but at no point is it well-meaning, vegan-promoting fluff.

  READ MORE

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  The author more than earns her stripes standing in an abattoir (it comes from the French word abattre, meaning to fell), seeing the killing, “the skinning, the burning, the boiling” that leaves her physically shaking, pledging to herself: “I am NOT eating something that has been through a slaughterhouse ever again.” It’s impossible also not to admire her as she stands ready to shoot a pig reared by a family friend.