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Abstract
The large-scale, intensive production of meat and other animal products, also known as the animal-industrial complex, is our largest food system in terms of global land use and contribution to environmental degradation. Despite the environmental impact of the meat industry, in much of the policy literature on climate and environmental change, sustainability and food security meat continues to be included as part of a sustainable food future. In this paper, I present outcomes of a discourse analysis undertaken on a selection of key major international and Australian reports. After highlighting common themes in the ways that meat and animals are discussed, I draw on the animal studies literature to critically analyse the assumptions underpinning such policy documents. My analysis illustrates that animals are effectively de-animated and rendered invisible in these bodies of literature by being either aggregated—as livestock, units of production and resources, or materialised—as meat and protein. These discursive frames reflect implicit understandings of meat as necessary to human survival and animals as a natural human resource. A critical examination of these understandings illustrates their dual capacity to normalise and encourage the continuation of activities known to be seriously harming the environment, climate and human health, while at the same time obstructing and even denigrating alternative, less harmful approaches to food. In response, I offer some conceptual and analytical modifications that can be easily adopted by researchers on climate change, sustainability and food security with the aim of challenging dominant discourses on meat and animals.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 69-86 |
Number of pages | 18 |
Journal | Agriculture and Human Values |
Volume | 34 |
Issue number | 1 |
Early online date | 11 Apr 2016 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Mar 2017 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Critical Animal Studies
- Discourse
- Emotion
- Ethics
- Language
- Meat production
- Nonhumans
- Animals
- Sustainability
- Climate change
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Dive into the research topics of 'Normalised, human-centric discourses of meat and animals in climate change, sustainability and food security literature'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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Making Sense of ‘Food’ Animals: A critical exploration of the persistence of meat
ARCARI, P. (PI)
5/03/15 → 4/04/18
Project: Research