A compelling investigation that will leave consumers reevaluating their food choices.
An investigation of the hidden costs of the salmon-farming industry.
Frantz is a former managing editor of the Los Angeles Times and chief investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Collins is a former private investigator. In this absorbing collaboration, the authors take us behind the scenes of the farm-raised salmon industry. According to their research, open-net salmon farms cause damage to the environment and threaten the wild salmon population. Farmed salmon frequently spend their lives in feces-ridden water, are more susceptible to parasites and viruses, and are often treated with dangerous pesticides. “When you eat salmon,” write the authors, “you are consuming all the pollutants and additives to which the fish has been exposed, which are stored in its fat.” In one study, researchers discovered that “farmed salmon contained up to ten times as much cancer-causing chemicals as their wild counterparts.” The authors also discuss the brutal treatment that salmon endure at hatcheries as well as the practice of killing predators that are attracted to the open nets of the salmon farms—sharks, seals, dolphins, and tuna. The authors convincingly demonstrate that the challenge for consumers is the lack of transparency and accountability in the industry. Akin to “Big Tobacco” or “Big Agribusiness,” they note, “Big Fish employs counter-science and public relations campaigns to undermine scientists and environmentalists who challenge its practices and products.” Although the outlook may sound bleak based on the extensive evidence that Frantz and Collins present, they also explore more sustainable commercial-scale salmon farming options, such as land farms and open-ocean farms. By exposing many of the unsavory elements of salmon farming, the authors hope to better educate consumers and encourage more responsible practices. In a closing call to action, the authors also warn that “the giants of the salmon-farming business will not abandon their profitable ways without pressure.”
A compelling investigation that will leave consumers reevaluating their food choices.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-80030-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
