What was the goal here?
That's the question I'm left with after having just finished this book. 

Personal note: I'm very much ranting here because I'm a bit annoyed that there was so much potential here and it was basically just wasted.

This book started out so well. The setup was very out there and super captivating. What if we can't eat, own, etc. animals anymore because of a deadly virus and humans after some time start eating other humans? You get these very graphic descriptions of a slaughterhouse but instead of animals you have humans, or as the author writes "head".  You get these descriptions of how humans do everything in their power to reduce the cognitive dissonance that they would ultimately get from eating other humans by doing everything they can to adapt their language and at least remove as much of that brutality and especially the humanity of the "special meat" that they can. 

Unfortunately, that's where the good things about this book end. 
What you catch on fast when you read this book is that the author just made a list of things that are done to animals and decided to describe them in a somewhat gory fashion and write some flimsy attempt of a story around it. Every time there was any kind of plot happening, that did not directly describe what happens to the "head", I was left wondering "When will we read about x? When will we read about y?" and without fail not soon after you get that. You get the slaughterhouse, you get the laboratory and the list goes on. 
Considering the book has 200 pages I'm pretty sure you can see how this is bad. There is not enough time to sit with any of the topics, digest them, or have some in-the-book examination of any of the topics. You have Markos, the main protagonist and moral anchorpoint (who is actually freaking terrible himself), and then a bunch of people, usually the boss of company x, who is a caricature of some evil whatever, rinse and repeat. This gets boring so fast and there is so much wasted potential here of showing the diversity of humanity, of showcasing moral dilemma and cognitive dissonance. But no, everyone is either evil or stupid. Except for Markos who is a better than others amazing person because he doesn't just believe the government and stops eating meat. We just very expertly ignore that he rapes and impregnates a female head. Which could have been a cool plot to explore if it was so terribly handled. 

In the end, I was so confused about what the goal of this book was. Because in the beginning, it seems so clear. But because the author tries to start like 20 discussions with this book and is basically looking at this terrible thing, and this terrible thing and this - I was just left confused. 
Are we having a discussion about eating meat? About how terrible animals are treated? What was that ending - why add it, what's the point? 
Why are dragging experimenting into this? We get a super short chapter on how in a laboratory there are experiments done on the "head" but it's okay because reasons. Why put it in this book? This is an important issue but it would a) need much more space and time to do it justice and b) the literal point of the first half of the book (actually even more) was that we have these humans that we don't call humans but they are and do to them what we otherwise only do to animals. Adding laboratory experiments to this - why? Until very recently (& maybe/probably still) we have done atrocious things to humans in the name of science. The author even mentions Mengele and describes experiments that have even been done on human subjects in real life. This part made me question if the author knew enough about human experimentation because it didn't seem that way??? Why do you weaken this world you set up like this? Did you really need more shock value in your already super gory book that bad? I don't understand.

One last point that I need to get out - can authors please be more cautious of how they write about topics that can be straight up transferred to disabled people? There were multiple moments in this book that I found straight-up ableist. And I'm not saying you cannot discuss and bring up such things. But they need to be handled with care and the author just absolutely did not do that. Statements were made, including from the main character, that really should not have been made or should have been very critically evaluated. Do better.