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<p>This review examines John Sanbonmatsu’s <i>The Omnivore’s Deception</i> as a critical intervention in contemporary debates on agrifood systems, sustainability, and environmental ethics. Sanbonmatsu challenges dominant assumptions that animal agriculture can be reconciled with ecological sustainability and moral responsibility, arguing instead that the continued exploitation of animals for food is sustained through cultural, economic, and political narratives that obscure its environmental and social consequences. Situating the book within broader agrifood scholarship, this review evaluates its critique of industrial livestock production as well as reformist approaches centered on humane, ethical, or localized meat systems. The analysis highlights the book’s contribution to understanding animal agriculture as an integrated system linking land use, resource extraction, labor relations, and environmental governance, while also considering tensions between abolitionist ethical critique and the practical constraints faced by food system practitioners and policymakers. By reframing animal agriculture as a foundational driver of ecological degradation rather than a peripheral sustainability concern, <i>The Omnivore’s Deception</i> pushes agrifood research beyond technocratic solutions toward deeper questions of responsibility, institutional change, and sustainability transitions. The review argues that the book offers an important provocation for scholars and practitioners concerned with the future of food systems, environmental governance, and human relationships with nonhuman life.</p>

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John Sanbonmatsu: The omnivore’s deception: what we get wrong about meat, animals, and ourselves

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年5月21日

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  • Robert Lee Cavazos

摘要

This review examines John Sanbonmatsu’s The Omnivore’s Deception as a critical intervention in contemporary debates on agrifood systems, sustainability, and environmental ethics. Sanbonmatsu challenges dominant assumptions that animal agriculture can be reconciled with ecological sustainability and moral responsibility, arguing instead that the continued exploitation of animals for food is sustained through cultural, economic, and political narratives that obscure its environmental and social consequences. Situating the book within broader agrifood scholarship, this review evaluates its critique of industrial livestock production as well as reformist approaches centered on humane, ethical, or localized meat systems. The analysis highlights the book’s contribution to understanding animal agriculture as an integrated system linking land use, resource extraction, labor relations, and environmental governance, while also considering tensions between abolitionist ethical critique and the practical constraints faced by food system practitioners and policymakers. By reframing animal agriculture as a foundational driver of ecological degradation rather than a peripheral sustainability concern, The Omnivore’s Deception pushes agrifood research beyond technocratic solutions toward deeper questions of responsibility, institutional change, and sustainability transitions. The review argues that the book offers an important provocation for scholars and practitioners concerned with the future of food systems, environmental governance, and human relationships with nonhuman life.