This book was unrelenting. I found myself reading it during my meal breaks at work which is, decidedly, a mistake.

I'm well aware of, and at this point of nearly a decade as a vegan, sadly unphased by the horrors of factory farming and meat consumption. The fact that this book was focused on human agriculture had me wondering- will people who read this and are unaware of what really happens at a factory farm think twice about consuming animals? Is human pain insufferable to picture and difficult to read, but animal pain permissible? The fictional workers at these processing plants, and tanneries still exist in the real world, and will they still be deserving of empathy as well once the reader finishes this book? The trophy hunters, butchers, and laboratory techs still hunt, maim, and vivisect animals, are they not deserving of the same disgust?

These are all things I thought about while reading this book. I think it's an incredible work that's incredibly critical of where our empathy lies, capitalism, class differences, and mass factory farming & consumption. This book is hard to recommend because it's so graphic and grotesque but I really enjoyed the questions that Bazterrica left me with.