“We do this because the market demands it”: alternative meat production and the speciesist logic

Abstract

The past decades' substantial growth in globalized meat consumption continues to shape the international political economy of food and agriculture. This political economy of meat composes a site of contention; in Brazil, where livestock production is particularly thriving, large agri-food corporations are being challenged by alternative food networks. This article analyzes experiential and experimental accounts of such an actor-a collectivized pork cooperative tied to Brazil's Landless Movement-which seeks to navigate the political economy of meat. The ethnographic case study documents these livestock farmers' ambiguity towards complying with the capitalist commodification process, required by the intensifying meat market. Moreover, undertaking an intersectional approach, the article theorizes how animal-into-food commodification in turn depends on the speciesist logic, a normative human/non-human divide that endorses the meat commodity. Hence the article demonstrates how alternative food networks at once navigate confines of capitalist commodification and the speciesist logic that impels the political economy of meat.

Middle Class, Tradition and the Desi-Realm—Discourses of Alternative Food Networks in Bengaluru, India

“…The limited published literature on AFNs in the Global South shows that, like their Northern counterparts, Southern AFNs have been criticized for reproducing existing societal power relations as well as conventional market mechanisms [5,10]. However, research on AFNs in the Global South also deliver findings, which can clearly be delimited from findings in the Global North [11].…”

The Political Economy of Meat

“…From a political-economic perspective, then, consumption of meat-of food animals-is inherently contentious; it is a political affair (Neo and Emel 2017). Accordingly, the political economy of meat most notably entails conflict; it comprises resistance to dominant economic arrangements, counter movements that struggle for equality and autonomy across the food chain (Lundström 2018;Williams 1999). Such an array of resistance is commonly conceptualized as food sovereignty, a deliberate critique of the UN-derived concept of food security, aimed at political autonomy, and economic equality, within food commodity chains (Ayres and Bosia 2011;Patel 2006Patel , 2010Riches and Silvasti 2014).…”

“…Building on biopolitical theorization on the human-animal relation (Agamben 2004), scholars critically analyze the "biopolitics of food animals and a broader political economy of livestock which aim to modernize and extract greater economic capital out of food animals" (Neo and Emel 2017, 3, 44-49). Hence, by focusing on the social aspects of an "embodied political economy" (Youngs 1999, 2), intersectional approaches aim to uncover innate, discursive linkages between speciesism and parallel logics of domination (Adams 2016(Adams (1990Lundström 2018;Nibert 2002). Analysing these intersected operations of social differentiation, critical animal studies now document how the speciesist logic-recognized as the very motor of the political economy of meat-is mirrored in parallel, interlocked workings of sexism (Adams 2010; Allcorn and Ogletree 2018; McWeeny 2014; Rothgerber 2013), racism (Monteiro et al 2017;Morton 2017;Olivier and Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2017;Svärd 2014), and ableism (Schatz et al 2017).…”

Achieving food security through live animal imports in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries

“…With this expected rise in the world's population, Gouel and Guimbard (2019) projected that food demand would increase by 47% by 2050 and doubling of the need for animal-based calories. In a recent study, Lundstrom (2019) observed that annual average world meat consumption rose from 23 kilograms per capita in 1961 to 43 kilograms per capita in 2013.…”