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- Convenors:
-
Felipe Roa-Clavijo
(Universidad de los Andes)
Tara Garnett (TABLE, University of Oxford)
Elena Lazos Chavero (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México)
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- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Embedding justice in development
- Location:
- S311
- Sessions:
- Friday 28 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel session will focus on the debate of meat from a power perspective in the contexts of Europe and Latin America. Exploring points of commonality as well as differences, we will ask what transformation pathways that centre social justice might look like in different parts of the world.
Long Abstract:
The food system sits at the heart of many interconnected challenges, spanning climate change, deforestation, hunger, overconsumption and malnutrition among others. It is often said that a ‘food system transformation’ is needed, but transformation to what, by whom and for whom? The food system, its actors, and the argued transformation pathways are being looked at through a power lens. Whose narrative for change dominates and why? Who stands to win or to lose in the different futures for the food system that are being articulated?
These questions are particularly acute in discussions about livestock and meat eating given the high environmental burden of livestock production, the centrality of livestock in both keeping the livelihoods of many smallholders, as well as the economic power of large landowners, the cultural resonance and nutritional importance of these foods, the moral implications of animal rearing and slaughter, and the political and economic influence of corporate actors in many aspects of the meat supply chain.
These are global concerns, but at the same time there are also strong geographical and contextual variations both in the role and impacts of livestock and in stakeholder debates about them. This panel session will bring together researchers from the UK, mainland Europe, Mexico and Colombia to explore the meat debate through a power lens. Exploring points of commonality as well as differences we will ask what transformation pathways that centre social justice might look like in different parts of the world, and what the policy implications might be.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 28 June, 2024, -Tara Garnett (TABLE, University of Oxford)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the faultlines in debates about livestock production and meat eating in the UK, exploring the way power is used, understood and foregrounded in these debates.
Paper long abstract:
The last 25 years have seen growing awareness of the negative environmental and other impacts of livestock production in the UK, and in the Global North more widely. Basing their advocacy on an ever-expanding body of research, environmental and animal rights campaigners have led the call for an agricultural and dietary shift away from livestock production and consumption. Plant centred food systems, they argue, can deliver wins for the planet, for animals and for human health. Social media campaigns such as Veganuary have further popularised their messages. But recent years have started to see a backlash to this ‘less meat’ campaigning, led by an unlikely alliance of interest groups, comprising not only large meat lobbyists but also small-scale farmers who align themselves with the agroecology movement. The mainstream environmental movement has got it wrong, they argue: at best their arguments are ill informed or naïve; at worst malignly intentioned.
Different ideas about power – what it is, who has it, who ought to have it – drive these disagreements. For stakeholders in this debate, the unequal or misappropriated distribution of power leads not only to financial and political distortions, but also drives the narratives we tell about cultural and historical identity, the role of the state, the value of different kinds of knowledge, the moral status of farmed animals, humanity’s relationship with the natural world and even the relative importance of different greenhouse gases.
This presentation will explore these issues and where we might go from here.
Felipe Roa-Clavijo (Universidad de los Andes)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the implications of territorial and economic power on environmental impacts, traceability regulation, and the civil society campaigns for transparency based on key linkages between beef sales in Colombian supermarkets and Amazon deforestation.
Paper long abstract:
In 2021, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) revealed in a comprehensive report that the sale of beef in Colombian supermarkets was directly contributing to illegal deforestation in the protected Amazon forests. The report establishes a link between the beef sold in two of the nation's leading supermarket chains and the alarming deforestation observed in the Serranía del Chiribiquete National Natural Park. Remarkably, this park not only stands as the largest continental protected area in Colombia, covering 4.3 million hectares, but also represents the world's largest protected tropical forest. The report goes further, exposing a concerning connection between the beef value chain of these supermarkets and the funding of non-state armed groups. These groups ostensibly control the territories from which the cattle is sourced. In response to these findings, the implicated supermarkets released press statements vehemently denying any correlation between their beef products and Amazon deforestation, and defending their sustainable beef production model. The EIA report, coupled with the supermarkets' responses, sparked a robust civil society campaign advocating for transparency in beef sourcing and urging corporate responsibility in environmental protection. Within this context, this paper critically examines power dynamics, focusing on territorial control in cattle raising and economic dominance in retail beef sales. Analyzing the intricate facets of the beef value chain—cattle raising and beef sales—this paper provides essential insights into the far-reaching implications of power on environmental impacts, traceability regulation, and the ongoing civil society campaigns for product transparency.
Elena Lazos Chavero (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México)
Paper short abstract:
Discuss the future of the role of meat production in the agrifood systems.
Paper long abstract:
Conventional extensive cattle raising has involved deforestation and biodiversity loss in tropical regions in Latin America. Silvopastoral systems have been proposed to increase livestock production, recover rainforest as well as water security, and provide socioeconomic benefits to farmers. In 2019, researchers, cattle raisers, and members of NGOs initiated a sustainable cattle raising project based on silvopastoral systems in Los Tuxtlas region of southern Veracruz, Mexico to co-develop strategies by sharing knowledge and building local capacities. Nevertheless, there are enormous challenges to scale it up. Since the 1990s, cattle raising in Mexico has undergone economic and political transformation from free-range grazing to large transnational meat corporations based on feedlots, resulting in increased meat exportation. Transnational corporations exercise power over small- and medium-scale cattle raisers by establishing prices and conditions upon purchasing their young cattle that complete their development in feedlots. The corporations reinforce “meat power” upon reducing cattle`s fattening period, exercising control over the entire process of cattle production. I will analyse how the current cattle raising model based on large feedlots has led to vulnerabilities and uncertainties for small- and medium-scale cattle raisers of southern Veracruz and poses economic, social, political, and cultural obstacles to implementing sustainable cattle raising.
Ambarish Karamchedu (King's College London)
Paper short abstract:
Through exploring industry and firm level data, this paper examines the modes of how the chicken has become the most common bird and most consumed source of meat on the planet, and to the geographical trends in the corporate concentration of the global poultry sector
Paper long abstract:
Industrial broiler chicken is seen as an answer to persistent malnutrition and protein requirements in developing countries amidst urbanisation, economic growth, and dietary transition. This paper examines the political ecology modes of how the chicken has become the most common bird and most consumed source of meat on the planet. 70 billion chickens are slaughtered each year in a factory farming system, raised and killed in forty days, compared to living up to five years in the wild. The fifty biggest chicken producers in the world contribute to 36% of annual chicken production, in an industry worth $322 billion in 2021, whilst only two firms, EWG and Tyson, control 90% of broiler chicken genetics. Chickens alone consume 10% of annual global maize and 15% of soya production. I explore asymmetries of power and policy formulations that give rise to corporate concentration in the poultry sector, using global firm level and poultry industry reports. I identify the role of global finance and government interventions that are significant in shaping highly industrialising poultry production systems. Exposing fault lines and exclusions of the current trajectory of chicken production is urgently needed to value the animals that labour to bring meat on our plates.