
They applied the “Page 99 Test” to their new book, Happy Meat: The Sadness and Joy of a Paradoxical Idea, and shared the following:
Page 99 of our book falls in the chapter "Happy Meat Makes Me Feel Good," which explores the happy stories about ethical meat that some consumers focus on when thinking about their meat consumption choices. On page 99 specifically, there is an anecdote from two focus group interviewees about a pig slaughtering they witnessed. The interviewees explained that the event caused them to be especially attuned to the conditions under which animals are raised and killed and to consume mindfully. We argue that this anecdote illustrates psychologist Paul Rozin's idea that meat has become moralized, which is to say that meat consumption was previously morally neutral but has in recent decades come to be seen as having clear moral consequences. We argue also that this anecdote illustrates Sara Ahmed's argument that happiness can be ascribed to an object, which then has enhanced positive social valuation.Learn more about Happy Meat at the Stanford University Press website.
Readers turning to this page would learn something significant about our book, but it would be a limited window into what the whole book is about. The book covers many more concepts, arguments, and empirical findings. At the same time, the ideas of moralization and happy objects are two of the most important concepts in the book. In trying to understand why people eat meat, and why happy meat in particular, we find that happy meat helps to manage people's moral qualms about meat. Happy meat is morally acceptable because the animals are treated humanely. Animals raised ethically are objectified as highly valued and they can generate happiness via consumption. These are some of the core ideas underlying why happy meat works well for some consumers to continue to eat meat. It would seem that the Page 99 Test does not work quite as well for our book as might be hoped, but it's also not a total failure.
Our book is perhaps less well suited to the Page 99 Test than many others. It is less about advancing a single argument and is more about examining the multiple angles for understanding happy meat as a consumer phenomenon and in relation to meat eating in general. So it is not surprising that page 99 does not tell us about much of the book as a whole. While page 99 draws on a focus group transcript, the book also relies on survey data, interviews and site visits with farmers, and analysis of news stories. The other themes the book addresses include the emergence of a discursive and material "space" for happy meat aside from the industrial meat system; the meat consumption behaviours and beliefs of the average consumer; the perspectives and experiences of farmers and other workers who produce happy meat; and the social dynamics implicated in the choice to eat, or not eat, happy meat vs. industrial meat.
--Marshal Zeringue