Paper short abstract:

Changes in the diets of farm animals enabled major shifts in human diets and industrial livestock farming. This paper focuses on the import of Thai cassava meal to Europe, and to what extent the origins of the cassava feed were (in)visible in industry and public discourse in Europe/the Netherlands.

Paper long abstract:

Historical changes in the diets of farm animals enabled major shifts in human diets and industrial livestock farming. These shifts were accompanied by entangled social and environmental impacts in both production and consumption countries. In recent decades, soy in particular has attracted a lot of attention as a globally traded commodity for feeding animals. Soy connects large-scale destruction of living environments and ecosystems in South America to industrial livestock farming in consumption countries, such as the Netherlands. However, soy is not the only animal feed ingredient. In the 1980s, Thai cassava meal (tapioca) actually surpassed both soy and maize imports for feeding European chickens, pigs and cattle. This situation was created through a European price policy nicknamed ‘the hole of Rotterdam’, which protected European grain farmers from the world market, while creating an import tariffs ‘hole’ for substitutes of grains, like cassava. As cassava is also an important global subsistence crop, this shift is important for understanding the global environmental impact of industrial livestock. In this paper, we will discuss this radical change in European animals’ diets using the Netherlands as a consumption country where the use of cassava in animal feed has an older colonial history, and where the ‘hole’ was designed and located, had consequences and was criticized by NGOs. Our paper focuses on two questions. First: the role of the Dutch and European feed industry in establishing the ‘hole of Rotterdam’, and its consequences for livestock farming. Second: to what extent the Indonesian and Thai origins of the cassava feed were visible or invisible in industry and public discourse in Europe/the Netherlands.