The Hall of Einar Sunday Recommendation #52

Hello and welcome to my Sunday Recommendation. Thanks for joining me. Every week I read great wildlife and nature books, stumble upon engrossing websites and hear wonderful new music. This is my chance to bring you carefully curated recommendations of all the best I’ve experienced – every Sunday. If it’s folk, or independent, or about wildlife, nature or Orkney, I may love it, and so may you.

Treated Like Animals – Alick Simmons

This week I’ve been reading Alick Simmons’s book Treated Like Animals and I loved it as soon as I started to read it. His introduction is so deeply comforting and authoritative, it’s as if your favourite geography teacher has decided to confide in you. The surprising thing about this book is that his style continues like that throughout. I found myself waiting for the histrionics, the emotional manipulation, the polemic; but it never came. It’s the mature, considered writing of someone who feels deeply conflicted about human-animal interactions and who has spent decades thinking through the ethical and practical issues. Reading it has developed my thinking in ways which would have taken years otherwise.

Treated Like Animals is a thoughtful and nuanced exploration of how humans treat – and mistreat – animals. It is so far from being a polemic because Simmons manages to navigate the emotionally-charged area of animal ethics with a mixture of balance, compassion, and intellectual rigour. Simmons was formerly UK Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer and brings his wealth of experience and a refreshingly clear perspective to an issue which is often reduced to polarised extremes.

What makes Treated Like Animals so entertaining is Simmons’ constant refusal to paint the world in black and white. He shows us the complexity of our relationships with animals, whether pets, livestock, research subjects, or wildlife, and considers the ethical tensions that arise in each case. Rather than demanding simple solutions, he asks us to reflect on context, intention, and consequences.

Simmons doesn’t dismiss animal research and its potential contribution to medical science, nor does he downplay the potential suffering it entails. Instead, he scrutinises the justifications commonly offered for it and asks whether we understand, or simply rationalise, our actions. His call for greater transparency and a shift toward non-animal methods is more persuasive because it is grounded in practical, not just moral, reasoning.

In agriculture Simmons navigates the moral minefield with similar skill. He is open and honest about the scale and cruelty of industrial farming, yet he avoids vilifying individual farmers. Instead, he probes the structural incentives that perpetuate harmful practices. His support for reducing meat consumption comes not from a place of moral absolutism, but from a reasoned concern for sustainability, public health, and, above all, animal welfare.

Perhaps the book’s most poignant area is Simmons’s exploration of the language we use to describe animals. He notes how euphemisms and bureaucratic detachment can obscure the violence embedded in routine practices. He delivers his call to “see animals as individuals with interests of their own” not as a demand, but as an invitation to us all – an appeal to both empathy and reason.

Treated Like Animals is an essential read for anyone who wants to consider animals, ethics, or the difficult decisions we face as stewards of other lives. It is challenging, enlightening, and above all, fair. In a world full of certainty, I’m grateful that Simmons doesn’t tell us what to think but gives us the tools to think better. It’s refreshing to find someone who doesn’t think they know all the answers, but gives us the tools to develop our own thinking on a subject.

After reading Treated Like Animals you won’t think about our multiple relationships with animals in the same way again. Highly recommended.

Treated Like Animals is now out in paperback. It’s available direct from the publisher, the excellent Pelagic Publishing.

That’s it for this week. I’ll be back with more recommendations of things you might adore next Sunday. In the meantime, I wish you a great week.