AR-News: The Pig Who Sang To the Moon Gets a Great Review in The Atlantic Monthly

[UPC News]

United Poultry Concerns PO Box 150 Machipongo, VA 23405
Phone: 757-678-7875 Fax: 757-678-5070 www.UPC-online.org
March 15, 2004

The Pig Who Sang To the Moon Gets a Great Review in The Atlantic Monthly
(pp. 115-118)

Letters to the Editor: Letters at theatlantic.com (Phone: 617-854-7700)
The Atlantic Monthly, 77 North Washington Street, Boston, MA 02114

Jeffrey Masson’s new book, The Pig Who Sang To the Moon: The Emotional World
of Farm Animals, is the subject of a stirring review, “Nasty, Brutish, and
Short,” by B.R. Myers, in the April 2004 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, now
on the newsstands.

Excerpt: “If Masson’s goal is to rescue animals from our hands, then it’s
easy to understand why his approach is as inconsistent as a police
negotiator’s in a hostage standoff: why he appeals now to our hearts, now to
our minds; why he passes the megaphone to scientists when it suits him and
yanks it away when it doesn’t; why he urges the release of all the animals
and then voices hope for even a small improvement in their situation; why he
is ready to try anything he can to reach our souls through the walls of our
selfishness – walls that in this case are reinforced by social convention
and the law.”

And “[Masson] seems genuinely excited about being able to tell us that pigs
prefer to be clean, and that a mother hen is as protective of her young as,
well, a mother hen. The familiarity of these revelations is both soothing
and humbling, as is Masson’s belief that ‘in general, the more we know about
something, the more we care.’ Who’s to say that this simple faith in human
understanding and compassion won’t induce some readers to justify it?”

UPC’s review of The Pig Who Sang To the Moon (highly recommended) appears in
the Winter-Spring 2003-2004 issue of PoultryPress and can also be read at:
http://upc-online.org/whatsnew/122003pigmoon.htm


United Poultry Concerns is a nonprofit organization that promotes the
compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl: www.upc-online.org