By Sophie Morris

Jeffrey Masson's powerful new book, The Face On Your Plate reveals the truth about food. Be it for health, environmental or animal welfare reasons, the less animal products we consume, the better.

And the causal links are straightforward: nitrous oxide, along with methane and carbon dioxide, is a greenhouse gas which contributes to climate change; the waste products from irresponsible farming practices pollute water sources and damage ecosystems; rainforests act as carbon sinks - natural and vital temperature regulators to keep the planet healthy - we need them.

As a lapsed vegetarian I fear The Face on Your Plate will undermine my justifications for eating meat all over again. Masson's armaments are certainly plentiful and powerful. Early on he invokes the Holocaust, comparing its atrocities with those committed during meat production, an analogy repeated several times in the book. "The ability to imagine ourselves into the minds and bodies of "others" - whether humans we term different from us or the animals we use for our food - is of central importance because the failure to do so is precisely what led to the horrors of Auschwitz."

Academically speaking, The Face on Your Plate is not a difficult book to stomach, but the portrait of cattle, pigs and chicken bred in horrendous conditions for slaughter is harder to swallow. Even more disturbing, perhaps because it is less well known, is Masson's explanation of the animal cruelty involved in producing milk and eggs - the debeaking of chickens, the separation anxiety felt by dairy cows when their young are taken away. "It is much harder to cover up what animal flesh is," he says, "but if you were to ask the average person in England whether it is cruel to take milk or eggs, 90 percent or more would say no. If you explained it to them they still might not understand. I think if they saw it and perceived it with their own eyes, then it would be a different story."

Masson's own conversion to veganism indeed came through seeing dairy production facilities himself. Could we not just go organic? "Organic farming is definitely better for us, but it is not better for the animals. They get better food, but if you're on death row, do you really care what your last meal is?"

Masson, 68, was brought up a vegetarian in 1940s Hollywood. His Jewish parents studied Hinduism and followed the British mystic Paul Brunton. He went on to study Sanskrit at university, where he became a carnivore through "laziness", only reverting in the early 1990s while researching When Elephants Weep, the first of a string of works about the emotional lives of animals.

Masson calls this a "face on the plate" moment. His editor had one with tongue, as soon as she realised the clue was in the name. By the time we reach our teens, most people know that meat is meat, but we can still eat it by engaging in fleeting denial while choosing and eating food - and by not considering animals our equals. "If we have the capacity to imagine the suffering of an animal, we also have the power to refuse to allow ourselves to think about that suffering...We refuse to acknowledge, in a complete breakdown of our capacity for empathy, that they are entitled to the full happiness of which they are capable."

Masson is well acquainted with denial: he will eat cheese if someone has cooked it for him and doesn't want to cause a fuss. Unsurprisingly, he has received a lot of criticism for this admission, but says he doesn't have the same "visceral reaction" to a piece of cheese that he does to a piece of meat. "I think mozzarella is a glorious thing from the point of view of taste. The only thing that stops me eating it is my intellectual recognition that it causes suffering, and that doesn't always trump my taste buds."

After animal welfare and environmental concerns, the third reason for going vegan is health. Masson his confident his vegan diet is what keeps him healthy, but he avoids all vices. In health terms, there are as many anti-vegan arguments as there are pro, and you cannot be a healthy vegan without taking supplements.

Our appetite for fish is so great it is possible our exploitation of the oceans has already reached the point of no return. 

All readers will be moved by this sensitive illustration of the emotional capacities of animals. Overcoming our daily denial of this is a trickier prospect.

The Face on Your Plate: The Truth about Food is published by Norton, £15.99

Dragon Hall, Covent Garden, London, WC2B 5LT.
Refreshments will be served and there will be a book signing following the talk. All welcome.

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