On Meat, Cooking, and the Killing of Animals

Wyatt Williams wanted to write a thick book that would be published in hardcover on thick paper. Each chapter would be dedicated to a different animal, starting with small birds: partridges and pigeons, followed by chickens and ducks—and then, in... order of increasing size, deer, wild boar, and cattle, until the list was complete. The book could serve as a field guide to eating meat with stories about how animals grow and how they are killed; about how meat is prepared for sale and distributed around the world. Readers could see the intertwining of human and animal lives and draw complex conclusions about the structure of our society. He even chose a title—The Order of Animals. However, he never wrote that book. He wrote another one—the one you are holding in your hands. In it, Williams describes his long journey to find the answer to a simple question: Why do we eat meat?.