Meat consumption

The sustainability challenges that the food system is facing are ever increasing. The traditional approach to monitoring these changes considers economic, societal and environmental sustainability. A strong case has been made, however, that a fourth dimension, ethical, should also be considered. Conventionally, two main strategies have been used to assess the improvements in sustainability: efficiency and sufficiency. Efficiency is usually linked with technological improvements, and sufficiency is connected with a reduction in production or consumption. We introduce a third strategy to the analysis; namely consistency that is related mainly to the ethical dimension of sustainability. Trends of the indicators related to the three strategies are calculated on both a global and regional scale from 1962 to 2009. Efficiency (measured as land requirement for animal products) has increased by about 13 percent globally, sufficiency (measured as the a mount of meat consumed) has declined by ...

The act of animal killing affects the human psyche in manners that are culturally contingent. Throughout history, societal attitudes towards the taking of animal lives have mostly been based on deference and/or dominion. Postdomestic societies have evolved in fundamentally different ways. Meat production is abundant yet concealed, animals are categorized and stereotyped, and slaughter has become a highly disquieting activity. Increased awareness of postdomestic meat production systems raises a moral polemic and provokes disgust in some consumer segments. Overall, a heterogeneous set of solutions has emerged to deal with the societal upset and cognitive dissonance caused by animal slaughter. This includes the so-called carnism approach, a rise in animal welfare programs, a market demand for reassuring narratives (“story meat”), a rehabilitation of the metier of farmers and butchers, crowd butchering, neo-ritualism and home slaughter, the biotechnological exploration of “cultured meat” and “pain-free meat”, entomophagy, “meatless meat”, and the increasing proliferation of vegan and vegetarian lifestyles.

This quantitative study of commodity prices examines the
early modern food market, a period and topic widely neglected by
historians owing to a lack of data or palaeographic expertise that has
prompted scholars to turn their attention to later periods. Despite the
ubiquitous presence of fish in European food markets, specialists have
difficulty identifying its consumption levels or price. This paper provides
a wide panorama of qualitative observations about food provisioning
practices and the cost hierarchy of commodities on the French market
from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. We conclude that sea fish
became an affordable alternative source of protein in the general diet.
Our research demonstrates that cod fish occupied a good place on the
French food market, competing successfully against top-selling
commodities such as meat.

La intervenció 2009-2010 al jaciment de la Rosella (Tàrrega, Catalunya) va posar al descobert un hàbitat rural d’època tardoibèrica (segles ii-i a. n. e.). Les restes del poblat corresponen a una bateria de quatre habitatges contigus amb una extensa zona ocupada per un sitjar i altres estructures arqueològiques –fosses, cisternes, retalls, possibles basses o zones d’extracció d’àrids...– associades i coetànies als nivells d’ús del poblat. Tot i que els rebliments de les diferents estructures van aportar, en general, quantitats força pobres de materials, unes poques fosses van aportar conjunts faunístics singulars i molt rics. Destaquen especialment les deposicions de les estructures FC-9, FC-10 i SJ-36 situades en l’extrem sud-oest del jaciment, la cisterna CS-116 més pròxima a l’hàbitat o el dipòsit sota paviment FS-129 en un context domèstic.

The debate on meat's role in health and disease is a rowdy and dissonant one. This study uses the health section of the online version of The Daily Mail as a case study to carry out a quantitative and qualitative reflection on the related discourses in mass media during the first fifteen years of the 21st century. This period ranged from the fall-out of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) crisis and its associated food safety anxieties, over the Atkins diet-craze in 2003 and the avian flu episode in 2007, to the highly influential publication of the report on colon cancer by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2015. A variety of conflicting news items was discernible, whereby moments of crisis, depicting the potential hazards of meat eating, seemed to generate reassuring counter-reactions stressing the benefits of meat as a rich source of nutrients. In contrast, when the popularity of meat-rich diets was on the rise due to diets stressing the role of...

Mainstream dietary recommendations now commonly advise people to minimize the intake of red meat for health and environmental reasons. Most recently, a major report issued by the EAT-Lancet Commission recommended a planetary reference diet mostly based on plants and with no or very low (14 g/d) consumption of red meat. We argue that claims about the health dangers of red meat are not only improbable in the light of our evolutionary history, they are far from being supported by robust scientific evidence.

This study relates social-demographic characteristics of Vietnamese households to their consumption of meat. Pork and poultry constitute the majority of meat consumed in Vietnamese households. Hence, pork and poultry consumption have great influence on the total amount of meat consumed. Increasing pork and poultry consumption has strongly contributed to the total meat consumption growth. Tobit models are estimated drawing on the latest Vietnamese Household Living Standard Survey in 2010. The analysis of demand for pork and poultry in Vietnamese households demonstrates that meat demand in Vietnam is significantly affected by socio-economic and demographic factors of households. Understanding meat consumption patterns will help the Vietnamese government to implement policies to ensure food security. The policies may affect food redistribution between rural and urban areas, ethnic groups, the poor and the rich. In addition, food firms who wish to invest in the food market in Vietnam have to understand meat consumption patterns and meat demand to develop suitable business strategies and thereby contribute to increasing food security. This opens possibilities for domestic meat supply chains like feed producers and other livestock input suppliers, agricultural producers, processors, traders and the retail sector to take advantage of this dynamic markets sector.

To facilitate more ethical food consumption, social movements aim at behaviour change by feeding consumers information that confronts them with problematic aspects of their current behaviour and/or promotes ethical behaviour. However, changing behaviour is even more difficult than understanding it. One aspect that needs special attention in this regard consists of the often negatively judged verbal reactions ('justifications') that occur instead of the desired behaviour change. When consumers decide on the complex matter of the (non-)acceptability of keeping and killing animals for food, chances are high that contradictory cognitions and drives get simultaneously primed. When thisdeemed uncomfortableambivalence gets dissonant enough, the discrepancies between cognitions, drives and regularly performed actions may lead to a change in intention and behaviour; however, the innate drive to reduce the discomfort of cognitive dissonance often leads to the expression of coping strategies: pieces of framing used to feel goodor less badabout contradicting aspects of a decision. Though arguably only the person doing the decision-making can truly assess whether a certain uttered frame was a coping strategy, in literature several characteristic coping strategies are documented, therewith providing a way for researchers to recognise them in framing. In the context of deciding on eating animals, I will discuss four classic coping strategies used to reduce dissonance, and four to oppress dissonant cognitions or drives and/or avoid their priming altogether. Moreover, I will introduce two less commonly acknowledged ways to deal with dissonance, that seek to accept, balance and optimize ambiguous situations instead of seeking to (dis)solve them. Noticing cognitive dissonance can help change-makers uncover the paradoxes or contradictions that are present in society that both block the way to change as well as provide windows of opportunities for achieving it. I will conclude by discussing opportunities and limitations of pointing out coping strategies in facilitating more ethical food practices and provide alternative routes of dealing with coping strategies.

Not only the remains of meat products eaten in the town, but also animal bone leftovers from such crafts as bonecarving and leatherwoking have been found during the work on six Majar hillfort archeozoological collections in the last few years. The particularities of the citizens’ meat diet have been determined; the main thing in the diet in different town districts is beef. Meat of the animals from the nomadic steppe, mutton and horsemeat, played significantly lesser role in the citizens’ meat consumption than the production of the sedentary county, which provided beef. Bonecarving and leatherworking are marked with their leftovers. It has been determined based on the materials from excavation site №X that the main raw material for bonecarving was antler and middle sized domestic stock horns. The functioning of leatherworking productions dating back to 1340s has been fixated based on the study of excavation site №XIII and shovel test pit №2 of 2017 materials. The livestock for these productions was supplied from the nomadic steppe. Mutton consumption in several town districts increased at the time of the productions' functioning. It is easily explained by the fact that sheep carcase leftovers are a side product of such crafts.
Not only the remains of meat products eaten in the town, but also animal bone leftovers from such crafts as bonecarving and leatherwoking have been found during the work on six Majar hillfort archeozoological collections in the last few years. The particularities of the citizens’ meat diet have been determined; the main thing in the diet in different town districts is beef. Meat of the animals from the nomadic steppe, mutton and horsemeat, played significantly lesser role in the citizens’ meat consumption than the production of the sedentary county, which provided beef. Bonecarving and leatherworking are marked with their leftovers. It has been determined based on the materials from excavation site №X that the main raw material for bonecarving was antler and middle sized domestic stock horns. The functioning of leatherworking productions dating back to 1340s has been fixated based on the study of excavation site №XIII and shovel test pit №2 of 2017 materials. The livestock for these productions was supplied from the nomadic steppe. Mutton consumption in several town districts increased at the time of the productions' functioning. It is easily explained by the fact that sheep carcase leftovers are a side product of such crafts.

Στην ΑΝΑΚΟΙΝΩΣΗ αυτή επιχειρείται μια εθνογραφική προσέγγιση, μερικών όψεων των διατροφικών στρατηγικών στην ορεινή κοινότητα της Ελεύθερνας Μυλοποτάμου, όπως παρατηρήθηκαν και καταγράφηκαν επιτόπου, στα τέλη της δεκαετίας του 1980. Κάτω από το πρίσμα των πρώτων υλών που χρησιμοποιούνται για τη διατροφή, περιγράφονται αποκρυσταλλωμένες πρακτικές του τραπεζιού, οι οποίες αφορούν στον καθημερινό και τον τελετουργικό χρόνο, στη νηστεία και την ευω¬ χία, στην αφθονία και τη σπάνη, σε συνάρτηση πάντα με μια φυσική οι¬ κονομία. Παρουσιάζεται η πλούσια ποικιλία των τροφών μιας φτωχής κοινωνίας και η προτιμητέα φυτοφαγία μιας γεωργοκτηνοτροφικής κοινότητας της Κρήτης1.

In 2006 the author traveled to East Anglia, UK. to conduct an ethnoarchaeological study on factors influencing consumer behavior. The main objectives were to investigate how meat consumption is influenced by food scares and other health concerns, and how meat vendors and consumers negotiate what is good to sell and eat. This study was prompted by the author's work on urban archaeological sites where changes in consumption patterns were observed in late eighteenth to early twentieth century urban household deposits. Meat vendors target specific segments of the market. Price and income, while key factors in determining meat consumption, are not necessarily
correlated. The effect of food scares on consumers was found to be temporary while lasting effects included dietary issues like obesity, high cholesterol, and consumption of fatty meats. Changes in social and economic landscapes, local class tensions, and a general malaise about Stalham's future were also important factors in decision making practices for most of the people interviewed for this study.

The need for analysis and action across the interrelated domains of human behaviors and lifestyles, environmental sustainability, health and inequality is increasingly apparent. Currently, these areas are often not considered in conjunction when developing policies or interventions, introducing the potential for suboptimal or conflicting outcomes. The INHERIT model has been developed within the EU-funded project INHERIT as a tool to guide thinking and intersectoral action towards changing the behaviors and lifestyles that play such an important role in today's multidisciplinary challenges. The model integrates ecological public health and behavioral change models, emphasizing inequalities and those parts of the causal process that are influenced by human behaviors and lifestyles. The model was developed through web-based and live discussions with experts and policy stakeholders. To test the model's usability, the model was applied to aspects of food consumption. This paper shows that the INHERIT model can serve as a tool to identify opportunities for change in important −food-related behaviors and lifestyles and to examine how they impact on health, health inequalities, and the environment in Europe and beyond. The INHERIT model helps clarify these interrelated domains, creating new opportunities to improve environmental health and health inequality, while taking our planetary boundaries into consideration.

Social practice theories help challenge the often hidden paradigms, worldviews and values at the basis of many unsustainable practices. However, practice theoretical research can also struggle to provide useful results for policymaking. Connected to social practices, discourses and their boundaries define what is seen as possible, what the range of issues and their solutions are. By exploring the connections between practices and discourses - where paradigms, worldviews and values are represented through cognitive frames – this book develops, firstly, a conceptual approach to help enable purposive change in unsustainable social practices. This is done in an interdisciplinary manner integrating different literatures. Secondly, the book takes the current vastly unsustainable meat system as a central theme. Radical transformation towards new meatways, such as strong flexitarianism, is arguably necessary, yet complex psychological, ideological and power related mechanisms still inhibit change. Discourses around new solutions, such as cultivated meat, new generation plant-based meats, and insects, are explored for answers.

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Meat consumption is on the rise in India. However, most studies on meat consumption have been conducted among Western audiences and there are relatively few insights into meat consumption in emerging markets, especially India, which tends to be stereotyped as a vegetarian nation. The aim of this qualitative study was to explore meat consumption practices among urban Indians aged 23–45 years. The sample comprised mainly Mumbai residents. The research methodology used constructivist grounded theory. Semi-structured face-to-face in-depth interviews was the main mode of data collection and the research used an iterative study design along with an inductive analysis approach. A key finding was that while meat consumption is on the rise, there are social stigmas still associated with it. This has led to discrepancies between consumption behaviours occurring in public (frontstage behaviours) and those carried out in private (backstage behaviours). Using Goffman's theory of self-presentation, the study provides insights into various ways in which backstage meat consumption occurs in collectivist Indian society today. The backstage setting can comprise places outside the home, such as restaurants, and in some instances, segregated ‘safe’ spaces within the home itself. Within these spaces, the study explores how certain consumption taboos are quietly broken while actions are taken to present appropriate frontstage appearances before various audiences. This study contributes to the relatively sparse literature on meat consumption in India while also using Goffman's theory to highlight the discrepancies between public and private consumption behaviours within the collectivist Indian context

Consumo di carne e macellai nel Medioevo costituiscono i temi su cui studiosi di matrice diversa si sono confrontati smantellando alcuni cliché (sporcizia delle città, carne alimento per pochi, barbarie dei macellai) e illustrando per Italia e Spagna, grazie allo studio di ossa e scrittura, le metamorfosi dei paesaggi scomparsi dettate dal cambiamento delle abitudini alimentari, i conflitti, il nesso forte tra campagna e città, il variare delle economie e la convivenza tra i macellai delle religioni del Libro. El consumo de carne y el mundo de los carniceros en la Edad Media son dos temas sobre los que diferentes especialistas han sabido desmantelar ciertos lugares comunes (suciedad en las ciudades, la carne como alimento para pocos, violencia de los carniceros) para mostrar, gracias al estudio de huesos y escrituras en contextos históricos italianos y españoles, la metamorfosis de los paisajes dictados por los cambios en la dietas, los conflictos sociales, los fuertes vínculos entre ciudad y mundo rural, las alteraciones económicas y la convivencia entre carniceros de las religiones del Libro.

Background: A comparative cross-sectional study involving oral cancer patients and healthy individuals was designed to investigate associations between retinol, alpha-tocopherol and beta-carotene with the risk of oral cancer. Materials and Methods: This study included a total of 240 matched cases and controls where subjects were selected from the Malaysian Oral Cancer Database and Tissue Bank System (MOCDTBS). Retinol, alpha-tocopherol and beta-carotene levels and intake were examined by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) respectively. Results: It was found that results from the two methods applied did not correlate, so that further analysis was done using the HPLC method utilising blood serum. Serum levels of retinol and alpha-tocopherol among cases (0.177 +/- 0.081, 1.649 +/- 1.670 mu g/ml) were significantly lower than in controls (0.264 +/- 0.137, 3.225 +/- 2.054 mu g/ml) (p<0.005). Although serum level of beta-carotene among cases (0.106 +/- 0.159 mu g/ml) were lower compared to controls (0.134 +/- 0.131 mu g/ml), statistical significance was not observed. Logistic regression analysis showed that high serum level of retinol (OR=0.501, 95% CI=0.254-0.992, p<0.05) and alpha-tocopherol (OR= 0.184, 95% CI=0.091-0.370, p<0.05) was significantly related to lower risk of oral cancer, whereas no relationship was observed between beta-carotene and oral cancer risk. Conclusions: High serum levels of retinol and alpha-tocopherol confer protection against oral cancer risk.

Tesi di Laurea Specialistica in Antropologia Culturale ed Etnologia - Università di Bologna, anno accademico 2018-2019 - discussione del 19.03.2020

Il primo capitolo è dedicato ad una disamina degli studi di antropologia relativi all’alimentazione.
Segue un approfondimento di alcuni confronti accademici focalizzati sul consumo di carne, che si dimostra oggetto “buono da pensare” per la disciplina, oltre che per le società osservate: l’analisi dei tabu alimentari relativi alle categorie carnee ha fornito l’occasione per il dibattito e lo sviluppo di alcune prospettive interpretative, tra cui, in particolare, lo strutturalismo e il materialismo culturale.
Vengono quindi indagate le connessioni tra i limiti della scelta individuale in relazione al consumo di carne ed i valori ad esso associati nei contesti di precarietà alimentare e nei contesti di abbondanza. Il consumo di carne emerge come tratto socialmente distintivo e contribuisce alla configurazione delle categorie di lusso, etica e sostenibilità.
L’ultimo capitolo considera le peculiarità dei diversi contesti produttivi di caccia, allevamento e industria zootecnica. Le indagini etnografiche di questi diversi ambiti rilevano pratiche e valori caratteristici, reazioni di resistenza, compromessi e proposte alternative.

This research was carried out to in Burdur, Elazığ and Konya provinces in order to evaluate the factors affecting the poultry meat consumption status and consumption habits of students belonging to different classes of veterinary faculties. The material of the study was obtained from surveys conducted with 242 students in three different faculties during the academic year 2018-2019. The data were analyzed by SPPS. According to the results of the research; It has been determined that 51.7% of the students are under 250 TL of the monthly individual food expenditure. The ratio of animal food expenditures in individual food expenditures of those students to be 100 TL and below is determined as 59.1%. When the monthly poultry meat consumption rates of the students are examined; The rate of those who did not consume was 5.8%, the rate of those consuming less than 500 gr and 31% of those consuming 500-999gr was determined as 37.2%. It was determined that the students who participated in the survey consumed 1.1 kg of poultry meat per month. It was determined that there was no statistically significant relationship between the poultry meat consumption and the city, class level and shelter status of the students. In fact, a statistically significant relationship was found between the gender, income level, monthly budget for food and amount of monthly budget allocated to animal food.

Meat consumption has become a contentious issue among the Swiss population. The emotional character of the debates surrounding the necessity for a change of habits, namely a reduction in consumption and a shift in the kind of meat we eat, reveals its particular place in our societies: as a symbolic food with roots in our affective economies, as involved in the creation of a shared culture and national identity, and as a political object used to defend different views. To date, research in sustainable consumption has given much attention to environmental- and animal-friendly groups and their practices. However, certain interest groups have been voicing the right to meat, or promoting alternative forms of meat consumption. In this paper, we seek to understand the affective dimension of ‘no’, ‘low’ and ‘pro’ meat consumption initiatives in the Swiss context. Based on a qualitative study and an understanding of emotions as part of social practices, we draw out what affects and related m...

The sustainability challenges that the food system is facing are ever increasing. The traditional approach to monitoring these changes considers economic, societal and environmental sustainability. A strong case has been made, however, that a fourth dimension, ethical, should also be considered. Conventionally, two main strategies have been used to assess the improvements in sustainability: efficiency and sufficiency. Efficiency is usually linked with technological improvements, and sufficiency is connected with a reduction in production or consumption. We introduce a third strategy to the analysis; namely consistency that is related mainly to the ethical dimension of sustainability. Trends of the indicators related to the three strategies are calculated on both a global and regional scale from 1962 to 2009. Efficiency (measured as land requirement for animal products) has increased by about 13 percent globally, sufficiency (measured as the a mount of meat consumed) has declined by 91 percent and consistency (measured as the number of animals slaughtered) has declined by 264 percent. In addition, convergence analysis emphasizes that industrialized and developing countries are moving towards similar patterns of animal products consumption. Such results suggest that measures should be taken to develop a food system that is not only efficient, but also ethically just.

The present study aims to establish, based on facts and data, the per capita consumption of the three most consumed meats in Brazil, which are, in order of magnitude, chicken, beef and pork. This study was motivated by the disparities in numbers that appear in several publications, which are more accentuated in debates and oral manifestations. We will cover a period from 1967 to 2019, using data published by IBGE1 for production, both in its Municipal Livestock Survey-PPM2 and in the Quarterly Slaughter Survey3. Naturally, IBGE research is restricted to slaughter under federal, state or municipal sanitary inspection. They do not include other types of slaughter. It is undeniable that there is informal slaughtering of all animals for consumption of their meat, but informality does not allow quantifying the resulting productions, even with educated estimates or other methods, the vast majority based on guesswork, allegories and mathematical props4. The average weight of the slaughtered animals results from a simple function of averaging the total weight and the number of heads slaughtered, to allow an evaluation of the evolution of the yield. Apparent consumption corresponds to: (Production + Imports)-Exports. And the apparent consumption per capita is this result divided by the Brazilian population estimated by IBGE every 1st of July. Import and export data were collected from Comex Stat5. The NCM6 positions covered are listed at the end of this writing for chicken and other poultry1, beef2 and pork3. The Brazilian is essentially a carnivore and naturally eats goats and sheep, rodents (pacas, capybaras and others), meats from various game, raised in captivity with the proper permits or illegally slaughtered, since hunting is illegal in Brazil. 1 Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics https://www.ibge.gov.br/en/home-eng.html 2 PPM-Pesquisa Pecuária Municipal https://sidra.ibge.gov.br/pesquisa/ppm/quadros/ brasil/2018 3 Pesquisa Trimestral do Abate de Animais-https://sidra.ibge.gov.br/pesquisa/abate/tabelas 4 We have a local politician who stated that any number you could say could be said, since the vast majority had no idea what was being said and they never had the knowledge to contest, yielding to the fascination of inflated or reduced numbers according to the speaker's conveniences at that time and the audience, particularly if they were foreigners and politically biased. He did not, however, use slurred words like those used here. 5 The Comex Stat is a system for querying and extracting data from Brazilian foreign trade from the Ministry of Industry, Foreign Trade and Services http://comexstat.mdic.gov.br/en/geral 6 The Mercosur Common Nomenclature (NCM) is a regional nomenclature for the categorization of goods adopted by Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay since 1995, being used in all foreign trade operations in the Mercosur countries. NCM is based on the Harmonized System (SH), which is a condensed expression of the "Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System" maintained by the World Customs Organization (WCO), which was created to improve and facilitate international trade and its statistical control.