Rating: 
Summary: WOW
Review: A must read. Great for vegetarians and those trying to understand vegetarian loved ones. Great also for environmetally concerned people or those that think we're fanatics. It takes more grain to feed cows than it does to feed people. Eating beef makes no sense. Rain forest is being cut down for grazing land. Indiginous people are being pushed off their land by fast food chains who need cheap cattle grazing land. It's bad for you and full of compressed chemicals. EEEwwwwwww!
Rating:
Summary: A must read for anyone interested in the subject
Review: Factory farmers and racists beware...one of you own has "spilled the beans" on your industry. This book gives excellent anthropological evidence of how the "west was won"...and why we as a nation are suffering from the drive to conquer any being living in the path of the move to said west.
Rating:
Summary: A must read for anyone interested in the subject
Review: Factory farmers and racists beware...one of you own has "spilled the beans" on your industry. This book gives excellent anthropological evidence of how the "west was won"...and why we as a nation are suffering from the drive to conquer any being living in the path of the move to said west.
Rating: 
Summary: I think it's Bull!
Review: I read Rifkin's book and found it ridictulous. As a rancher i found it offensive as well. The man is a typical, big city, liberal, blow hard talking/writing about something he has no clue about...no matter what he say's his creditials are. No wonder amazon discounted it to $2.99
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Summary: Beef facts you should know
Review: It was in reading Beyond Beef : The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture by Jeremy Rifkin years ago that I had a better idea of what I was seeing around San Joaquin County in Northern California as I drove around the dairies that stood close to the San Joaquin River and reeked of ammonia and manure dust in the air on windy days that left ones car and lungs dusted with a fine film. The cattle and their massive manure piles , are less than 30 yards from the San Joaquin River. Now consider some basic facts. Cattle produce a large amount of urine as it is. Now take one cow and multiply it by 100, 200 even 500. Now visualize all that urine going into the ground, where when it rains it soaks deeper and in dispensed into the small leech veins in the ground that in turn hook up with larger areas that feed into ground water and the river. Then look at the massive manure piles that dots the area and hang a clean white piece of clothe on your car antenna as well as a tree branch or whatever in the back yard. Then after you have driven around check the antenna clothe. After its been breezy check the clothe in the back yard. Then if you have the micro filters on you home air conditioner recheck them as well. What you will discover is pollution that has literally changed the white clothe-filter to either a light brown or a dark brown. Now consider what this manure dust does to your lungs. If you are reading this review then you have access to a computer. Take the time to do some honest unbiased research online and see how much water and grain it takes to produce one pound of meat. Then see how much better it would be if the land was used to produce better food for humans. Find out what pollution factory farms that raise cattle, chickens, pork, lamb etc produce as well as how inhumane the animals are treated. Also find out what drugs they use on the animals, that are then killed for food on your table. Be honest and ask yourself the hard questions. And if you must for whatever reason eat beef, chickens etc please buy organically grown ones that are not fed drugs and even byproducts of other animals. I am a realist and realize that we live in a meat eating society. So all I can do is ask that you know what you are buying and how it was raised and what the product has done to the earths ecosystem.
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Summary: Ranchers can't read
Review: Maybe if the rancher wasn't looking through clogged visual arteries of lard and could get their eyes closer to the table than their beef-bucket-belly they could properly read the screen. The book has changed and added years to many lives. I have given away the book as a gift to many of my un-healthy friends who have thanked me for lifting their shroud of 1950's nutritional folklore that meat is at the top of the food pyramid (like cigarettes weren't dangerous). It takes books like "Beyond Beef" to cite facts to the leary and to provide education through history and statistics to the lemmings of dietary unconciousness.
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad - good history
Review: Rifkin has done a good job tracing the history, but his shallow knowledge of the Great Plains leaves him adrift for a solution. On the contrary, only by grazing native perennial grassland can we preserve both the environment and eat healthily. It is the feedlot agriculture that is eroding our soil, and militant vegetarians who are promoting it. Chickens who give us eggs and hogs and most dairies must use grain, but not beef. It is grain which allows the concentration of power, that leads to concentrated agriculture, that leads to the poisoning of the environment, that has given us soil erosion, that has given us pesticides and herbicides and extinction. In fact, more grain goes to hogs and chicken producers than to cattle feedlots. It is the plow, and all that follows it - especially the ideas, that are the problem. The only sustainable future for most agricultural areas is to replant the grass and to graze beef, bison, and sheep. Grass fed red meat tastes great and is the *ONLY* ethically and environmentally conscious meat on the market today.
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Summary: Excellent Buildup Of the History of Beef Culture
Review: The first portion of Beyond Beef is a great description of the history of beef consumption and beef culture. Some of the more interesting parts to me were the sections dealing with the Brahmans in India as well as the near extinction of the American buffalo as a result of clearing the plains for bovine grazing. After building the historical place of beef and cattle, Rifkin moves the story to present day and how beef is produced, butchered, packaged and shipped. Some of this section was particularly difficult to read during lunch, the descriptions of the slaughtering process are graphic and very detailed. Rifkin also explains the decreasing involvement of the USDA in the inspection of beef and the potential implications of this fact. Other parts of the book which were informative to me were the chapters dealing with the destruction of the Brazilian rainforests. I, like most young Americans, have heard for years about the clear cutting and burning of the South American rainforests but never knew the details of this activity or exactly why the forests were being leveled. Rifkin explains this practice clearly and I am much more informed because of it. Overall, Beyond Beef is an excellent read and if nothing else, will give you a great deal to ponder. It is clearly written with a slant against beef production and consumption and can come off a bit preachy at times. That being said, after you read this book, you will definitely want to pass it along to your friends and family, if for no other reason than to let them be informed when they bite into that burger.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Buildup Of the History of Beef Culture
Review: The first portion of Beyond Beef is a great description of the history of beef consumption and beef culture. Some of the more interesting parts to me were the sections dealing with the Brahmans in India as well as the near extinction of the American buffalo as a result of clearing the plains for bovine grazing. After building the historical place of beef and cattle, Rifkin moves the story to present day and how beef is produced, butchered, packaged and shipped. Some of this section was particularly difficult to read during lunch, the descriptions of the slaughtering process are graphic and very detailed. Rifkin also explains the decreasing involvement of the USDA in the inspection of beef and the potential implications of this fact. Other parts of the book which were informative to me were the chapters dealing with the destruction of the Brazilian rainforests. I, like most young Americans, have heard for years about the clear cutting and burning of the South American rainforests but never knew the details of this activity or exactly why the forests were being leveled. Rifkin explains this practice clearly and I am much more informed because of it. Overall, Beyond Beef is an excellent read and if nothing else, will give you a great deal to ponder. It is clearly written with a slant against beef production and consumption and can come off a bit preachy at times. That being said, after you read this book, you will definitely want to pass it along to your friends and family, if for no other reason than to let them be informed when they bite into that burger.
Rating:
Summary: Oh Holy Cow!
Review: There are more than 1.28 million cattle all over the planet, taking 24% of the land mass, consuming enough grain to feed 100s of millions of people & their combined weight exceeds that of humans. This excellent volume was evidently composed to inform, enlighten, and alert us of the danger the cattle industry presents to humans and the environment. The ideas exposed here on this book help open our eyes to better understand what is really going on around this complex subject: the cattle and beef industry, and its destructive, impact on our Earth and its human inhabitants. Beyond Beef is a well researched, and excellently written treatise written especially for those who are interested in protecting the environment, that have deep respect and appreciation for our fauna and flora, and a natural inclination toward vegetarianism. This extraordinary publication of Jeremy Rifkin is worth its price
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