The Tiger Next Door

Directed by Camilla Calamandrei
First Run Features



Experts estimate that there are now more tigers in private captivity in the USA than there are roaming wild in the world.

This is the opening line from The Tiger Next Door, a compelling documentary about the surprisingly widespread practice of breeding, selling, and owning exotic animals in the United States. The film focuses on Dennis Hill, a big cat owner who resides in Indiana. Hill has been keeping tigers and other exotic animals since the early 1990s. The film follows his fight to keep his tigers, cougars, and bears after a government inspection put his facility in question.

The Tiger Next Door is a fascinating, thought-provoking documentary that presents a well-rounded look at the issue of owning exotic animals, raising many complex ethical questions that don't necessarily have a cut-and-dried answer. Should individuals be allowed to own big cats as pets? Just how much should the government regulate this?

Director & producer Camilla Calamandrei makes her stance clear on TheTigerNextDoor.com, with a “Take Action” page urging viewers to call for the ban of exotic animals as pets. Honestly, I'm not sure how to feel. On one hand, I am uncomfortable with the idea of keeping any animal—bird or lion—in a cage; on the other hand, doting pet owners often take exceptional care of their animals, with vet check-ups, treats, affection, and so forth. Is that a better life than living in the harsh wild? Or are we just indulging the humans that own them? What about keeping endangered animals in captivity to help restore their numbers?

Of course, it's a lot easier to care for a bird than a tiger. Questions were raised about the care Hill provided for his tigers, coming to a head in one explosive scene when Joe Taft of The Exotic Feline Rescue Center—who has taken in many of Hill's animals—argued that many of the cats were in poor health when they arrived at the rescue facility. Watching this film, I got the impression that Hill is extraordinarily devoted to his animals, although his own facility certainly had its flaws. I think if Hill is guilty of anything, it might be denial. It seemed that he couldn't bear to admit when he was overwhelmed with too many animals, which I suspect could have contributed to the alleged health issues. I think his downsized facility will make it easier for him to better care for his beloved cats, although he seems determined to add more tigers to his menagerie.

Personally, I feel that individuals should have the right live their lives as they see fit, so long as they are not causing harm. This is where the issue of animal rights comes in–if an animal is being abused or neglected, then obviously their owner is causing harm. Likewise, it is of grave importance that we safeguard humans from the threat that exotic animals pose—precautions must be taken to ensure that they cannot cause people any harm. Hill says in the documentary that he doesn't care if one of his beloved pets kills him—“What better way to die?”—and it's his right to make that choice. But it's critical that we have fair laws in place to regulate the conditions in which dangerous animals are kept to avoid unnecessary tragedies.

Regardless of your stance on keeping big cats as pets, I think The Tiger Next Door makes it clear that further action must be taken to ensure the health and safety of humans and felines alike.

Review by Beeb Ashcroft

The Butcher and the Vegetarian: One Woman's Romp through a World of Men, Meat, and Moral Crisis

By Tara Austen Weaver
Rodale

Food writer Tara Austen Weaver was raised in a vegetarian home since her birth. As an adult, she unexpectedly gets diagnosed with thyroid disease. What’s she to do? Fast for forty days? No. Go macrobiotic? Nope, not that either. Instead, Weaver must eat meat—by doctor’s order. So she turns to a carnivorous diet. What unfolds is part chick lit-cookbook and part treatise on farm animal rights.

Weaver’s introduction to the world of animal flesh brings her into contact with many meat-industry types. Some she casts in an ethical light. These include kind butchers and organic cattle ranchers. She also comes to know a charming meat blogger. Readers may object to the notion of ethical, caring cattle ranchers and butchers, but I can assure you these characters would cause anyone to re-examine their assumptions.

Throughout the The Butcher and the Vegetarian, Weaver’s writing is lively and clever. Readers will enjoy her wit and keen use of hyperbole. At one point she describes a Holy Grail-like experience wherein she smothers her steak in a rapturous chimichurri sauce.

The Butcher and the Vegetarian’s cover art depicts tiny hearts and cute cartoon characters, but the book offers up several dark and unexpected twists. One minute I was reading about pork tenderloin; the next thing I know, Weaver is describing how her mother's boyfriend molested her when she was thirteen and her two subsequent suicide attempts. Woah! Hold it right there, meat lady. I need a minute to digest!

Although surprised by the confession, I appreciate Weaver's honesty and think the topic of abuse deserves a place in the book. Weaver's relationship with meat mirrors her relationship with men. To her, meat is a very masculine experience.

In passing, Weaver mentions that she doesn't consider fish to be meat. And as for chickens, I was equally shocked to find out she puts them in the category of "almost not a meat." Still, The Butcher and the Vegetarian shares some good information about the treatment of farm animals and the truth about our (and their) sources of food. These facts are of great value to readers.

Although once a vegetarian, Weaver is no activist, and she also makes her preference for food over animal welfare transparent from the beginning. It does strike me as suspicious, however, that someone so horrified at eating a steak and so knowledgeable about the farming industry would be okay with consuming eggs and dairy. I wonder if she doesn't recognize the incongruity.

Personally, I could care less about how to prepare meat; it’s simply not part of my life. Though The Butcher and the Vegetarian is well written, Weaver lost me at each mention of fine cuts of X or a special preparation of Y. What I did find fascinating (and thoroughly graphic) was Weaver’s research visit to the farm where she witnesses the process of slaughter. She writes that seeing this occur repeatedly has a desensitizing effect, that it becomes ordinary, or even "normalized."

In my experience, there was nothing normal about it. When I was in veterinary school, I witnessed the slaughtering process several times, and the blood of those poor cows still floods my nightmares. Maybe that makes me overly critical. But it’s the truth.

Review by Laura Koffler

Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism

By Melanie Joy
Conari Press

I will say it, here and now: I eat meat. Now that I have announced that, I fear that Melanie Joy will fly through my window to tell me how the meat industry recapitulates Nazism. Okay, I don’t really. But you catch my drift: this woman is serious.

As a person with very close vegetarian friends, and who has also purchased, prepared, eaten, and enjoyed seitan, quorn, and tofu, I would say that I have a decent understanding of vegetarianism without actually practicing it. I am not convinced, however, that Joy’s book offers much that is new to the vegetarian rhetoric.

The title led me to expect a book that delved into humankind’s history with animal relationships, that would try to scratch the surface of when and why certain animals took on specific functions in our lives and others didn’t. But rather than that, this book is focused on the psychology that “allows” humans to be comfortable with meat eating. To talk about this topic, Joy has made up a word for meat-eaters: carnists. She defines carnism as “the belief system that enables us to eat some animals and not others.” Throughout the work, Joy examines how the carnist mindset and the meat industry work together to keep animals as a dinner item despite various displeasing realities connected with the practice. While doing this, Joy describes the inhumane conditions at slaughterhouses and factory farms, and the effect that the meat industry has on the Earth.

And I don’t dispute any of that. I believed it the first time I read it, in books such as Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma, which Joy quotes and references an obscene number of times in her 150-page book. So much of the book is gleaned from other works that it reads very much like a college thesis paper; I suspect it once was.

Despite her legitimate arguments regarding the disgusting and hidden reality of factory farms, Joy doesn’t take into account people who raise their own animals in perfectly humane conditions or who hunt legally, or people who have any number of health issues that make a vegetarian diet anywhere from impractical to dangerous. The meat debate is a huge topic that goes far beyond the dualism of carnism and vegetarianism, and Joy doesn’t come close to covering all the bases here.

As I implied before, this book also has an irritating tendency to mention Nazis a lot. While I understand the connection Joy’s trying to make on a cerebral level, something about describing meat eating—not cruel factory farm conditions or inhumane slaughterhouses, but just eating meat—as being akin to being a member or supporter of the Gestapo is just distasteful to me.

I do applaud Joy on her willingness to acknowledge the suffering of slaughterhouse workers and others whose employment in the meat industry is dangerous and taxing. Many times, when it comes to arguments against the meat industry, I feel as if workers are under attack for earning a paycheck and given no sympathy whatsoever for the dangerous work they do. This author doesn’t suggest that the fate of the human animal is less important than other animals, and I appreciate that.

Review by Kelly Palka Gallagher

That's Why We Don't Eat Animals: A Book About Vegans, Vegetarians, and All Living Things

Written and Illustrated by Ruby Roth
North Atlantic Books

If you are planning on raising a vegetarian child who will be well-prepared to explain his or her beliefs to inquiring peers, teachers, and friends’ parents, That's Why We Don't Eat Animals is a great start.

Did you know that turkeys blush? Or that newborn quail start walking the moment they are hatched from their eggs? I didn’t, but any child who reads That's Why We Don't Eat Animals will know. Facts like these work to emphasize the connections between living things in a way that small children in the book's targeted audience (about age 4 and up, in my estimation) will understand and appreciate.

The book shows animals in their natural habitats, and explains the difference in the quality of life an animal will experience if it is running free versus living in cramped quarters on factory farms. The book also illustrates the effect that factory farming has on various biomes and the health of the Earth overall. The animals are charmingly drawn in a caricaturist, almost geometric style, and their environments are depicted with bright or dark colors, depending on their living conditions. The vocabulary is simple and straightforward, doesn’t get too dark or complicated for children, and avoids a preachy, overbearing tone in favor of a sensitive, informative one.

In another review I’ve written this month on a book promoting the vegetarian lifestyle, I’m not nearly as praiseful. The books share primarily the same messages—that eating animals is morally shady and bad for the environment—but the book for adults tends to alienate and divide, as if putting meat-eaters and vegetarians on opposing sides of a war, while the children’s book emphasizes the connectedness of living things. Whether or not the children ingest the other moral and environmental messages of the book, that one message trumps all.

Review by Kelly Palka Gallagher