The cultural imaginary of ethical meat: A study of producer perceptions
Because of concerns about human health, the environment, and animal welfare, meat is a highly contentious food. Accordingly, a broad range of alternative, small-scale practices for raising livestock and producing non-industrial meat are in the spotlight. While scholars have examined consumer perspec...
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| Published in: | Journal of rural studies 2022-01, Vol.89, p.186-198 |
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| Main Authors: | , , |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | eng |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Because of concerns about human health, the environment, and animal welfare, meat is a highly contentious food. Accordingly, a broad range of alternative, small-scale practices for raising livestock and producing non-industrial meat are in the spotlight. While scholars have examined consumer perspectives on “ethical” meat, less is known about producers' perceptions of how small-scale meat production fits into the broader food system, and how their perceptions relate to broader sustainability debates surrounding meat. We explore producer perspectives on small-scale “ethical” meat production and its role in a sustainable food system. We do so through interviews and site visits with 74 people working within alternative meat production in four Canadian provinces, a sample that includes farmers, ranchers, butchers, and meat-focussed chefs. We find that, in the face of practical challenges linked to small-scale production, producers are passionately committed to the project of small-scale animal rearing that they regard as humane and sustainable. Despite these similarities, producers have radically different ideas about the purpose and potential of ethical meat. We observed major differences among producers' cultural imagination of meat, exemplifying varied ideas for fitting meat into a sustainable food system. Our findings underscore the importance of charting not only producers’ practices, but also their cultural orientations.
•We interview producers and distributors of “ethical” meat to understand their perspectives about the role of their products in the broader food system.•Producing ethical meat was seen as meaningful work, but interviewees were also acutely aware of the limits of small-scale operations.•We investigate producers' cultural imagination: how do they imagine meat can fit into a sustainable food system?•We identify three producer positions on the role of ethical meat in the food system: 1) support for the status quo, 2) a vision for “less meat, better meat”, and 3) a challenge to the cultural centrality of meat. |
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| ISSN: | 0743-0167 1873-1392 |