ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we retrace and pull together the argument from the previous four chapters. Most of the book’s examples support the thesis of a “mainstream” alienation from and denial of the animal origin of meat, so in this last chapter, we look more closely at alternatives – at ways of producing, killing, buying, or eating meat that attempts to close the gap between production and consumption. We find exemplary farmers who sidestep the industrial system and find ways of keeping and killing livestock that impose a much lighter burden on animals as well as the environment; and we find experimental retailers and food critics who model ways of breaking away from alienation and denial. We review these alternatives critically, and suggest that, while these are all praiseworthy initiatives, the real conundrum is to scale them up, so that they offer a real challenge to the industrial system. The most important precondition for this to happen, we argue, is that we take back agriculture as a political issue. This would involve a shift of power, away from the iron triangle’s “politics of meat promotion” toward a more public form of agricultural politics which discusses meat with its eyes wide open.
