'The crowding was standard, you'd find pretty much the same thing inside pens at any operation, it was all according to plan, but any responsible operation would place an upper limit on density. If chattels were confined at a ratio of at least three hundred to the half acre ... the operation could be financially viable and the animals would have sufficient space. ... The important thing at every stage was that the creatures bulk up at the maximum rate consistent with the stage of production."

Did you guess that this was a quote from The Omnivore's Dilemma or Fast Food Nation? That's a fair assumption. But those lines are taken from a compelling new novel, Animals, by Don LePan. You might also presume that the animals being discussed were, say, cows or a pigs, but in fact, in LePan's dystopic world, "chattels" are a subset of humans "harvested" for food.

It's the 22nd century. The horrors of factory farming — including filthy, overcrowded conditions and the widespread use of antibiotics — have led to "the great extinctions" of all common food animals. As a result of increased pollution, one out of five children born in North America has a birth defect. These offspring are known as "mongrels," and they live their short lives as pets or providing free labor for various industries.

In the wake of the extinctions, anxiety about a lack of protein in the human diet has led to the classification of unwanted or "surplus" mongrels as "chattels" and to viewing them as "part of a potential solution to that problem." Just as we refer to meat from cows and pigs as beef and pork, mongrel meat comes to be called "yurn" or "fland" and is considered a delicacy affordable only by the wealthy. That is, until processors discover that they can "harvest" meat more affordably by applying the principles used in 21st-century factory farming.

We learn this from a narrator named Broderick, who grew up with a mongrel brother, Sam. Broderick's mother, Tammy, struggles to hold a job, pay the rent, and put food on the table for her four kids. Sam looks and thinks like a human, but he can't speak. Desperate, Tammy decides to skip town; she takes her kids with her but deposits Sam on the doorstep of her well-to-do neighbors, Carrie and Zayne Stinson, who have a daughter named Naomi (portions of the novel are told from her point of view). The Stinsons take Sam in, and he becomes their family pet. Naomi and Sam quickly become very close, and pretty soon Naomi's suggesting the unthinkable: that Sam become an "official" part of the family. Carrie has prejudices against mongrels and will hear nothing of it, so as you might imagine, what happens next is terribly tragic.

I never suspected I'd talk about a work of fiction in this column. But Animals is a rare work of imagination that addresses a very real issue — it might remind you of Animal Farm, 1984 or The Jungle. The story is brief and compelling, and LePan's prose is, at times, lovely and lyrical. I recommend it not on these grounds but because of the "fodder for philosophical debate" it offers.

While you might easily dismiss the novel's premise by reassuring yourself that we would never let that happen, how do you know? The conditions LePan describes on chattel farms reflect those of modern-day industrial cattle farms, a fact that is widely documented but about which very little is being done. Sam is considered less than human, but his only flaw is that he is deaf and thus unable to speak. Where do we draw the line between human and animal, between pet and "food animal?" What if an IQ test determined whether you were considered a mongrel? Would being born with blond hair or brown eyes be enough to get you sent to a chattel farm?

Although LePan makes his personal preference for vegetarianism plain in these pages, he doesn't use his book as a platform for a militant vegan diatribe. He's realistic, accepting that every dedicated carnivore will not suddenly — or ever — decide to give up meat. He stresses that "the most urgent topic for debate and for action today is not that one; it is the issue of factory farming. ... In today's world more than 99 percent of farm animals ... lead ... lives of utter misery. ... On the desirability of bringing such misery to an end surely all readers can agree." And he addresses those who "argue that anything short of a totally vegan diet is an inadequate response" by asserting that "any improvement is a step in the right direction" and that "slow stages ... represent what is achievable. ... those slow stages are a good deal better than nothing."

So before you tuck in to your next steak dinner, consider putting down the steak knife and picking up this book. See what you think.

Laurel Gladden is a freelance writer in Santa Fe. Contact her at the.ethical.epicure@gmail.com.