Bob Beale Doesn't Like Our Review

GOING NATIVE: Living in the Australian Environment By Michael Archer and Bob Beale
Read Margaret Setter's Review
Margaret Setter's Response Read Margaret Setter's Response to Bob Beale

Dear Claudette,

It has been four weeks since my e-mail to you, and you still have not responded to it. I note also that when I telephoned you two weeks ago, I requested such a response, if only out of courtesy. I certainly did not expect to be laughed at by you, because I certainly do not regard this to be a laughing matter. You said then only that “we’re publishing it”- by which I presume you mean my e-mail, in your e-zine. This has not occurred, despite the ease and speed with which this is possible on a website.

I remind you:

+ my book, my opinions and my personal convictions have been grossly misrepresented by your reviewer;

+ the review itself contains untruths, including a concocted and fabricated quotation;

+ I have been defamed;

+ I have politely requested that you take up this matter with your reviewer and asked that you remove or appropriately amend specific paragraphs.

I have not threatened you with legal action and have no wish to do so, although I do reserve my rights in this matter. Legalities aside, I see no reason why you yourself would wish – for your credibility and that of your publication - to let false and indefensible material stand once it has been exposed as such to you.

I now ask you additionally to indicate when and how you intend to publish my letter of complaint, and in what relation to the review? I advise you that it will not be satisfactory to me unless they are prominently and electronically linked on the same page, nor if the false material is allowed to stand unamended.

Once again, I look forward to your response and hope that this matter can be brought to a speedy resolution.

Bob Beale.

The First Original Email

Dear Claudette,

I’m all for diversity of opinion and have no problem when other people disagree with me. I often enjoy the dialogue and learn from it.

But I get annoyed when others twist what I say to support their own position; I get mad when they ignore what I say and project other views and opinions to me; and I get really mad when they resort to sly personal attack to score points, or simply make things up. Your flakey and deeply biased review http://www.abolitionist-online.com/reviews_going-native.shtml of my recent book with Mike Archer, “Going Native”, manages to do all of these things in spades.

I ask you, politely, to take up my complaint with the author of the review and to factually correct it, either by removing or appropriately amending the offending paragraphs specified below. I also advise you, as the publisher of the review, that I am very unhappy.

1. The review contains the following paragraph (my emphasis added):

“Archer and Beale shut their eyes to the cruelty involved in ‘harvesting’ kangaroos. The trade is not crucial to human survival. It is fueled by the drive for profit to be gained from the sale of their flesh and skins. They accord recognition to Peter Singer in passing, but in general, animal rights advocates are scornfully dismissed as 'emotional', 'fundamentalists' and 'creationists'. There is no mention of an animal's welfare, either in the text or the index, an omission that surely is indicative of their indifference to animal suffering, despite protestations of their ‘love’ for them.”

This not only grotesquely misrepresents both what the book states and my feelings on this issue, but the last sentence in particular is hurtful and defamatory. I don’t mind standing up for what I believe in but I detest having to battle against devious crap like this. Here’s what we actually say in the book, on Page 144/5 (my emphasis added):

“As anyone who has spent time in rural Australia will be aware, some individual hunters have been known to employ distasteful methods. Some use dog packs trained to be aggressive, while others simply have a reckless aim with guns and hunting bows. These people show no respect for their prey, themselves or others. We want to make it plain here that we are very mindful of animal welfare; that is, we believe the humane treatment of animals is a high ethical priority. But this is different to the zealotry of animal rights, which apparently includes the right to proselytise and manipulate the arguments of others. We acknowledge the deeply thoughtful approach taken by Peter Singer, advocate for the animal liberationist cause, to the issue of animal cruelty, and share his concern that we humans tend to crush any life we do not value. We share Singer’s well-reasoned arguments for people to adopt a new attitude of care for other forms of life. But for us that does not include, in an ecological world, killing and eating. It does demand that there be no cruelty involved, which society should use every means at its disposal to ensure, and that there is a concern for the species and for the land on which it depends. Our philosophy is based on a deep respect for life: it is an ecological ethic, but not an exploitative one, with no tolerance of inhumanity or cruelty.”

We go on to support the sustainable harvesting of free-range animals as “far less stressful to them than mustering, yarding and finally road transporting them to abattoirs”, and cite the RSPCA’s conclusion that kangaroo culling “if achieved correctly. . . is considered one of the most humane forms of animal slaughter”. We specifically point out (page 146) the difference between that desirable outcome and the “physical and social trauma imposed on animals raised intensively in cattle feedlots, piggeries and battery hen enclosures”.

Now, I would have thought that no one could have misunderstood our position: respect for all life, zero tolerance to cruelty. Your reviewer cannot have missed it. For her to lie about the discussion of animal welfare is one thing, but to wilfully ignore it and then use that premise to accuse us of being people who close our eyes to cruelty and are indifferent to animal suffering is staggeringly unethical and deeply offensive.

2. The next paragraph of Setter’s review states:

Environmentalists are just as bad in their eyes. They are referred to as a bunch of “mainly middle class, elitist city dwellers who know nothing about the practical difficulties of producing food and who are intent on depriving the world’s poor from sharing any of the practical advantages they enjoy”. Going in for this sort of disparagement should be considered personally demeaning to a scientist in Archer’s position.

You will notice that the quotation marks in the second sentence imply this is a literal quote from the book. It’s not: it’s bits of other quotes from different pages - one of them referring to someone else’s words - stitched together and embroidered. On Page 199, in a discussion on how food-producing countries like Australia can best play a role in helping to avoid mass starvation resulting from the population explosion, the text refers to the Noble laureate Norman Borlaug (an advocate of GM crops), and states that “we don’t agree with all of his ideas, but we share his fear that some ‘ridiculous’ and ‘elitist’ points of view held by many in the environment movement stand in the way”. On Page 202, the text refers again to the potential of GM technology and states: “As Borlaug sees it, the main opposition comes from affluent and secure urban dwellers who are divorced from the land, from the practicalities of food production and from the grim realities of life in the developing world”.

Never mind your reviewer’s gross and apparently deliberate oversight that we heap copious praise on the gains made by environmental activists in the past; never mind that we single out many active environmental projects and environmentalists for strong and positive comment; never mind that the promotion of environmental sustainability lies at the very core of this book; never mind that both Mike and I are environmentalists. Setter apparently believes also it is okay to invent what we said. I most definitely do not.

There is plenty more in Setter’s review that grossly misrepresents the book and its aims. Among the more bizarre criticisms is that we are male and that as such our “chief interest in food appears to rest on 'throwing' animal body parts on the barbie”. This is particularly perplexing, given the breadth and depth with which the book discusses native plant foods and spices and their potential.

And it is laughable to read Setter’s conclusion that: “This book contains much information of interest but it is based on a top-down view of society, hostile to democratic control by an informed public.” Perhaps she didn’t notice that we introduce the book – and reiterate as a theme - by calling for more environmental information to be made available to the public, that we call for the building of social partnerships to tackle our environmental woes, and that we advocate a grass-roots revolution in environmental thinking. Perhaps she didn’t notice that 13 pages of bibliography indicate that we hacked our ways through hundreds of obscure documents and reports, then put them into plain English, with the express purpose of getting this information out there to ordinary people.

Of all the many reviews this book has had – positive and negative - this is by far the shabbiest.

I look forward to your response.

Bob Beale

GOING NATIVE: Living in the Australian Environment By Michael Archer and Bob Beale
Read Margaret Setter's Review
Margaret Setter's Response Click Here to Read Margaret Setter's Response to Bob Beale