Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows
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| Author | Melanie Joy |
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| Country | United States |
| Subject | Food and drink |
| Publisher | Conari Press |
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Publication date
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2009 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) and audiobook |
| Pages | 204 pp. |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 316832932 |
| 641.36 | |
| LC Class | TX371.J69 2010 |
Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism (2009) is a book by American social psychologist Melanie Joy about the belief system and psychology of meat eating, or "carnism". Joy coined the term carnism in 2001 and developed it in her doctoral dissertation in 2003. Carnism is a subset of speciesism, and contrasts with ethical veganism, the moral commitment to abstain from consuming or using meat and other animal products.
Joy, an animal advocate, was concerned about linguistic bias inherent in terms like carnivore, which were inaccurate and failed to account for the "beliefs beneath the behavior". Carnivores require meat in their diet for survival, but carnists choose to eat meat based on their beliefs. There was no label, Joy discovered, for the beliefs of people who produce, consume, and promote meat eating. She created the term carnism (Latin carn, flesh or body) to name and describe this dominant cultural belief system. "We assume that it is not necessary to assign a term to ourselves when we adhere to the mainstream way of thinking, as though its prevalence makes it an intrinsic part of life rather than a widely held opinion. Meat eating, though culturally dominant, reflects a choice that is not espoused by everybody", Joy writes.
Carnism, according to Joy, is the dominant, yet invisible paradigm in modern culture supporting the choice to consume meat. Carnism is an invisible system of beliefs in both the social, psychological, and physical sense. For example, in the physical sense, an estimated 10 billion land animals are slaughtered for their meat every year in the U.S., yet most of the animals are never seen—they are kept in confined animal feeding operations, invisible to the public and off limits to the media. Joy maintains that the choice to eat meat is not natural or a given as proponents of meat claim, but influenced by social conditioning. The majority of people, Joy claims, care deeply about animals and do not want them to suffer.
Joy argues there is a neurological basis for empathy; most people care about nonhuman animals and want to prevent their suffering. Further, humans value compassion, reciprocity, and justice. However, human behavior does not match these values. To continue to eat animals, Joy argues, people engage in psychic numbing, which alters the perception of our behavior towards animals and uses defense mechanisms to block empathy.
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