Meat - The Diet of Domination

A study examined "whether reported food habits (vegan, vegetarian, or carnivore diet) are associated with right-wing authoritarianism, prejudices against minorities and acceptance of social dominance."

Meat eaters have a greater tendency to pre-judice than people who mainly eat plant and fungi matter. Additionally, is it more likely that they prefer authoritarian structures and hierarchies in their social environments.

It appears, that people who made a conscious choice to refrain from eating dead animals have reflected on traditions and mainstream pressures and are acquiring and culturing their own ethical food practices. Vegans and vegetarians also prefer equal relationships.

Real men really don’t eat quiche...

Men and the elderly had the strongest inclinations to cling to and enforce the convenient traditions of the mainstream.

"The results show that individuals with vegetarian or vegan diets less frequently report having prejudices against minorities, supporting social dominance and accepting authoritarian structures than individuals with a mixed diet." (source)

Petra Veser , Kathy Taylor , Susanne Singer , (2015) "Diet, authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and predisposition to prejudice : Results of a German survey ", British Food Journal, Vol. 117 Iss: 7, pp.1949 - 1960
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-12-2014-0409

The Meat Paradox: How Carnivores Think About Dinner, Wray Herbert, 12.02.2014 

Theodor. W. Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality, 1950, PDF


Images:
Corinth, Lovis: Viktualienmarkt at Hiller in Berlin, 1923
Corinth, Lovis: Butchered Pig, 1906

Rodenticides With Your Bacon?

On Saturday morning cafes ooze the odour of fried crisp bacon.

Under proposed food law changes in Australia, pork products containing traces of rat poison could be sold legally.

"The discovery of rat bait residues in pig livers at some farms has prompted the nation’s food authority to admit chemicals used to control vermin may “inadvertently” spread to the food chain. Tests at piggeries in January found unharmful traces of coumatetrayl or warfarin at three farms. Federal Department of Agriculture coordinated tests at 23 sites in January uncovered “very low” levels of coumatetralyl in slaughtered pig livers at a Victorian and NSW piggery. Warfarin traces were detected at a South Australian piggery. The chemicals kill rodents through internal bleeding. Pigs potentially ingest them by eating feed contaminated by treated rats." (source)

Update:
Maybe it is good that nearly three quarters of bacon sold in Australia is made from imported pork meat? 

Go vegetarian!

Image:
Gauguin, Paul, The ham, 1889
Graffiti, EU, Banksy?

Meat

When you sit before delicacies and fancy foods, you will recognize their nature if you bear in mind that this is the corpse of a fish, that is the corpse of a bird or a pig; or again, that imported wine is merely grape juice, and this purple robe some sheep’s wool dipped in the blood of a shellfish; and as for sexual intercourse, it is the rubbing of a piece of intestine, then a convulsion, and the spurting of some mucus. Thoughts like these go to the heart of actual facts and penetrate them, allowing us to see them as they really are. 

Marcus Aurelius (Meditations, 6 13)  (source) 

Images:
Tomb of Menna, Scribe of the king, scene: Hunting and fishing, detail: Fishing, Thebes 1422-1411

Corinth, Lovis: Butcher shop, 1913

Reassortment in Meat Biomass

More on the mashup:

• "An unusually mongrelised mix of genetic sequences from North American pigs, Eurasian pigs, birds and humans." or
• "The Mexican swine flu, a genetic chimera probably conceived in the faecal mire of an industrial pigsty, suddenly threatens to give the whole world a fever." Mike Davis, Guardian or
• "The people making these statements know perfectly well that the Mexican flu virus is the very recent descendant of one of the triple reassortants that have been circulating in the U.S. for a decade. " or
  
• watch it all on the M e a t r i x

Flu image of Wordle is licensed under CC

Meat and gastro - What is the human caused connection?

97% of bacterial gastro-enteritis in humans is traceable to 'domesticated' meats. " Chicken and cattle are the principal sources of C. jejuni pathogenic to humans..." Animals living in their own habitat only accounted for 3 %. Campylobacter jejuni, living in the gut of poultry and mammals is being distributed into the human food chain. Preparing or consuming the infected meat is the main route for infection.
A lot needs to be done at the source of meat-production, transportation and processing, to not 'spill the guts' around. Sporadic gastro-enteritis through water or restaurants is very common. Even by being a vegetarian, one is still exposed to this 'slop-back' via water and implements. What a 'culture'!
The DNA sequencing research was conducted by Daniel Wilson, of the University of Chicago, and formerly Lancaster University, United Kingdom
via Wilson DJ, Gabriel E, Leatherbarrow AJH, Cheesbrough J, Gee S, et al. (2008) Tracing the Source of Campylobacteriosis. PLoS Genet 4(9): e1000203. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000203
Image: Egyptian relief, Berlin Museum 08

Meat without all the animal stuff

Consumers and their carnivorous pets devour gigantic amounts of meat. The “relentless growth in livestock production” cannot satisfy the insatiable demand. Dogs, bush meats, endangered animals are 'harvested' or poached from the 'wild' and sometimes even human beings. Meat 3 x a day confirms that top-dog position, and implies not being part of the world of starving grain-eaters. Social gatherings without the ritualistic incinerated slabs or sliced hunk are not worth attending.

One believes blissfully in the gently raised cow, by a loving family farm or even skillful cowboys rounding up delicious cattle fed on wild pastures and springs.

Cynical reason 'raises awareness' about the growth hormones, antibiotics in factory-logistics (aka farming), the state of sick animals and their feces that are making it into meat products. The deregulated "meat roulette", the associated diseases of aggregating in small, often unhygienic places. The long transports and finally the automated killing-factories. The suffering of the creatures.
Outside, 30 % of terrestial earth is devoted to livestock grazing. Motorised cowboys force the electronically tagged herds' meat-mass with 4x4s, snowmobiles and helicopters into the desired locations. Desertification follows, the water bodies and atmosphere are contaminated from this industrial production process. The territory yearns to be valorised for bio fuel and real estate purposes.Putting the nightmare of others aside – in our meatspace, meatbags engage in exchanges in the meat market which is defended by meat shields. Meatlifting a square watery chunk of meat molten on polystyrene out of a freezer, has detached us long ago from the presence of a warm blooded living organism in its biotope.
The next logical step is to grow edible animal muscle fibre in laboratories on an industrial scale. With molecular biological techniques a biopsy is taken from a living organism that has evolved for the last 500 million years. Outside the living being the muscular tissue is spurned into growth. Disembodied – the suffering of the individual creature is put to an end , as its muscle tissue, bathed in nutrition is grown into huge chunks or 'meat' for human consumption.
No more worries about a monoculture of grazing animals displacing bio-diversity out of a habitat. Let them eat meat without 'husbandry'. Away with nasty externalities such as environmental burdens, food, drugs and warehousing for stock. The costs of slaughtering and last but not least, the burden of 'human resources' expenditures.
“Environmentally concerned scientists”, agribusiness armed with a patent for the engineering of tissue are determined to rid the world of its financial, ecological, health and ethical woes. Revenue streams could be turned to rapids of a vertically integrated industry of life. With in-vitro 'meat production the ever-expanding human population can be supplied with laboratory-grown meat, if they can pay. Choices could be increased as consumers can decide whether they would like the animal muscle fibre in the form of sausages, burgers, nuggets or meatloaf mash up.

Contemporary cuisine is attempting to familiarise our senses to molecular gastronomy. The installation “Disembodied Cuisine” has already displayed the growing of “steaks”. Meat without animals, 'something from nothing' is the dreaming of some aspiring people.

A reduction in the consumption of animal matter, or for that matter any reduction in consuming, is off the agenda. Even if that behaviour requires three to four earths. The insatiable desire for more (of the same) is stearing this spaceship (of fools) into a diy geological and ecological epoch of this planet. Whether this anthropocene allows for any non human life to exist or is itself inhabitable by human beings needs to be seen.

Links:
“Disembodied Cuisine”, art installation
In Vitro Meat Consortium, "an international alliance of environmentally concerned scientists striving to facilitate the establishment of a large-scale process industry for the production of muscle tissue for human consumption.."
Future Food aims to inform and accelerate "the research into and development of cultured meat (in-vitro meat)"
Updates:
Eat less meat, G. Monbiot
PETA: "The first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices will receive a check for $1 million."
Dr Philip Thornton, Livestock production: recent trends, future prospects, Phil Trans R Soc B 2010 365: 2853-2867. 
The In Vitro Meat Cookbook, @nextnature,0814