ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some of the implications of what has been represented as a radical change in livestock breeding for thinking about meat in relation to living farm animals: the use of genetic techniques in selecting breeding animals. It outlines Foucault's conception of biopower, and shows how and why this theory is valuable in exploring changing techniques of livestock breeding, before looking at how biopower can inform a political ecological understanding of farmed animals and livestock breeding vis-a-vis meat. The chapter examines the beef cattle and sheep breed society perspectives on the implications of geneticization for breeding practices, specifically focusing on how concepts related to the meat of their animals bodies are re-articulated and made newly available for intervention within the localized ecologies of farms and herd/flock populations. It provides some comments on the practical and ethical implications of this reorientation for livestock breeding and the political ecologies of livestock farming and meat systems.
