Bloomsbury buys chicken industry probe

Bloomsbury will publish Grilled, about the fight for better conditions for farmed chickens, from American campaigner Leah Garcés.

Jim Martin, publisher of Bloomsbury’s science imprint Sigma, bought world English language rights to Grilled: Turning Adversaries to Allies in the Fight to Change the Chicken Industry from Stacey Glick at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. The book will be published globally on 5th September 2019 in hardback, retailing at £16.99.

Garcés is currently executive director of compassion for charity World Farming US and is the forthcoming president of Mercy For Animals, an international profit. Throughout her career, she has campaigned against factory farming worldwide and in Grilled she tells “the unexpected and thought-provoking stories of the change-makers she’s encountered - whistleblowing rural American farmers, chicken tycoons, hardcore activists, venture capitalists and laboratory meat scientists - who together create the powerful formula that is starting to undo the ills of factory farming”, according to a Bloomsbury spokesperson. 

Martin said: “Leah’s story of how she is achieving demonstrable change not through conflict, anger and protest but via dialogue, friendship and persuasion, improving the lives of millions, perhaps billions of animals in the process, is simply irresistible, and I’m proud to have the opportunity to bring it to a wide audience. Grilled will give Leah’s tireless campaigning of both World Farming and Mercy For Animals the spotlight it deserves.”

Garcés, who has written and edited several reports and books on animals in agriculture previously, said: “Factory farming causes untold damage to the environment, to communities and, foremost, to the animals."

She added: "For years, we activists have gone head to head with the industry but only made marginal inroads. Then we took a different approach. In Grilled, I tell the story of the tremendous progress we made when we had the courage to go out of our comfort zone and engage with the so-called enemy.”