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Normalised, human-centric discourses of meat and animals in climate change, sustainability and food security literature

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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.

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Notes

  1. Estimated emissions attributed to livestock typically range between 10 and 35 % depending largely on the exclusion or inclusion of deforestation and land use change (Schwarzer et al. 2012). Goodland and Anhang (2009) identify several sources of emissions that they claim have been underestimated, overlooked or misallocated in past studies. While some of their claims have been accepted by the authors of previous studies, there remains controversy around others, especially livestock respiration which comprises 13.7 % of their total figure of 51 %.

  2. Pachauri resigned from his position with the IPCC in February 2015.

  3. This ‘vacuum’ is noted in the recent Chatham House report “Livestock: Climate Change’s Forgotten Sector’, and has been the subject of much criticism directed at the December 2015 Paris Climate Talks (COP21) where the agricultural sector was excluded from most discussions and from the final agreement.

  4. Although they in turn have been critiqued for their claims and practices (Briske et al. 2008; Stanescu 2010).

  5. Notwithstanding circumstances where access to and availability of alternatives is limited which is a matter of distribution rather than necessity.

  6. Which include the material infrastructures, competencies and shared understandings that constitute these practices (Shove and Walker 2010). These will vary geographically and over time, and are in turn shaped by other practices, associated for example with local and global economies, trade and aid.

  7. Google scholar’s citation count indicates this is likely to be the case.

  8. A later report by Gerber et al. (2013) ‘Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock’ builds on the findings of LLS to focus specifically on mitigation options in dairy cattle, ruminants and monogastrics. Options on the consumption side are excluded and therefore the scope of options, and perspective on animals that this report could be expected to take, are already pre-limited by its analysis of production efficiencies. I am primarily interested here in reviewing reports that, given their stated scope and aims, purport to provide a ‘balanced’ and ‘objective’ assessment of issues and options relating to environmental and climate change, sustainability and/or food security. This, and other similar reports, such as FAO’s ‘World Livestock 2011: Livestock in Food Security’, are not included in the selection for this reason.

  9. According to Google Scholar, LLS has been cited over 1811 times. The IPCC’s 2007 impacts, adaptation and vulnerability contribution of working group II has been cited 1863 times, while the 2014 Synthesis Report has been cited 937 times. While I acknowledge this is not a rigorous measure, it does give some indication of the relative reach of LLS.

  10. See http://www.mla.com.au/Research-and-development/Environment-sustainability/Biodiversity-vegetation.

  11. See http://www.target100.com.au/Home.

  12. These qualitatively derived categories are not necessarily entirely distinct as some conceptual overlap is unavoidable.

  13. In this paper, ‘concealment’, ‘obfuscation’ and ‘obscured’ describe the effects of the discourse reflected in the reports and not the deliberate intents of individual authors. To clarify, I see this concealment and obfuscation as the outcomes of broader social practices where common understandings of meat and animals are circulated.

  14. Referring to Adams’ notion that “[l]ive animals are the absent referents in the concept of meat.” As she says, “[t]he absent referent permits us to forget about the animals as an independent entity; it also enables us to resist efforts to make animals present” (2010, p. 66).

  15. Machin and Mayr are referring to the ways in which dominant ideologies may have unequal consequences for different individuals, groups, societies, cultures etc. and these inequalities become normalized and naturalized. I argue that a similar inequality is enacted, and normalized, to the exclusion of alternatives, by the ideology that insists on human’s unlimited access and entitlement to animals and nature.

  16. Intersectional studies recognize that the systems of power on which all forms of oppression, domination, inequality and social difference rely are relational and “continue to fundamentally shape questions of in/justice across human and nonhuman cultural terrains” (Deckha 2008, p. 267).

  17. Although there have been changes in the types of meat being consumed.

  18. Chickens are not included in the ABS figures for meat production and slaughtered ‘livestock’—they are effectively absented twice being neither meat nor livestock.

  19. Meaning that they shape one another in an ongoing sharing and co-evolution of meanings, content and physical competence.

  20. In addition to concerns regarding the nutritional value or adverse health impacts of meat.

  21. Where access to adequate nutrition may be geographically and not just economically limited.

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Acknowledgments

This research was conducted as part of a broader Ph.D. study funded by the Australian Government’s Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) scheme, and located within RMIT University’s Centre for Urban Research. The author thanks her supervisors Dr Cecily Maller, A/Professor Tania Lewis, and Dr Yolande Strengers for their valuable feedback on earlier versions of this paper. The author also thanks Jane Daly for providing feedback on the final draft, as well as the three anonymous reviewers who provided constructive comments and suggestions during the review process.

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  1. Centre for Urban Research, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, 124 La Trobe Street, Melbourne, VIC, 3011, Australia

    Paula Arcari

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Arcari, P. Normalised, human-centric discourses of meat and animals in climate change, sustainability and food security literature. Agric Hum Values 34, 69–86 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-016-9697-0

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