Year: 2010
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: Meat is a 'hot' policy issue for the food industry, governments and consumers.Half a century ago, to question unrestricted meat consumption would have been to stand in the way of what was deemed to be culinary progress and the expansion of personal choice.The Western world judged vegetarians rather weird or eccentric or worse, certainly not progress.Progress was not what ancient culinary cultures such as vegetarian India or carnivorous China had developed, namely low or no meat plant-based diets, but was firmly in the 'meat at the centre of the plate' school of thought, and the more meat the better!Policy-makers worldwide in post World War 2 reconstruction were generally committed to increasing meat production and servicing rising demand, and an intensification of modes of production was unleashed.(Brandt, 1945) (Nierenberg, 2005) Even in India, the cattle population was expanded for milk, if not meat.That policy support for meat (and dairy, the flipside of the policy coin) delivered the astonishing growth in meat production and consumption, evidenced in this book and elsewhere.(Steinfeld et al., 2006) This chapter addresses the challenge to policy-makers now that meat's policy status is so in doubt, indeed in some quarters is almost inverted.Far from being a good thing, data suggest the need to curtail and almost certainly either reverse or radically transform its production and consumption.Whichever route is followed, past policy is certainly looking increasingly ragged.The chapter concludes with an overview of the policy options.Although the battles over meat's role in public health and environment are ever more clear, I argue that the cultural battle over the place of meat in culinary and consumer culture is going to be critical.This is a battle for hearts and minds, not just mouths.This is about reconfiguring food progress.
Authors: Lang, T., Wu, M., Caraher, M.
Language: English
Subfield: Ecology
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7058187131