ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by focusing in on an especially fraught and complex manifestation of those relations – animal agriculture and the problem of meat. It focuses on academic work and activism in the West and/or Northern Hemisphere, the issues raised are being taken up globally. The chapter deals with the broiler chicken as geological signal of the Anthropocene. It offers a starting point for understanding the scope of industrialised animal agriculture and its acceleration from post-war. Animal agriculture and meat eating are morally defensible – in that people defend it as such, in ways that cannot readily be reduced to a by-product of a drive to reduce dissonance. Stereotypical framing of vegetarians and vegans is also considered part of dissonance reduction going viral. B. Bastian and S. Loughnan also highlight in-out group processes – categorising others as ‘extreme’ and related stereotypes of vegans and vegetarians.
