Strong animal instinct

Few philosophers have had to engage in such filthy work as Peter Singer, regarded as the father of animal liberation.

To understand how factory-farmed turkeys are reared in the US, he and a friend signed up several years ago for artificial-insemination work with agribusiness giant ConAgra in Missouri. 'It was the hardest, fastest, dirtiest, most disgusting, worst-paid work we've done,' Mr Singer said. The company needed their help because turkeys bred intensively cannot mate naturally.

'For 10 hours we grabbed and wrestled birds, jerking them upside down, facing their pushed-open a**holes, dodging their spurting s***, while breathing air filled with dust and feathers.'

Little wonder Mr Singer includes a 'May Be Disturbing to Some Readers' warning alongside the passage heading 'Enter the Chicken Shed' in The Ethics of What We Eat. Despite such frank descriptions of factory farming, the book - co-written by lawyer and journalist Jim Mason - has been described as 'Michael Moore without the antics'.

The book, which seeks to inform consumers rather than to clobber them into submission, peers at the food choices of three American families: meat-and-potato types, conscientious omnivores and vegans. It then attempts to trace the items in their shopping bags to their sources of production.

Ironically, the pair's efforts are bolstered by their mostly unsuccessful bids to persuade companies to reveal their food-production practices. 'If corporations won't allow the public to see how they produce food, we should not buy their food,' the Australian-born academic said from Melbourne, where he lives half the year. 'We should insist on transparency and, in its absence, we should look elsewhere.'