Consumer and Consumed

Bibliographic Data

ID2142832
AuthorsJ Staples (0000-0002-2648-8636, Brunel University of London, corresponding author), Jakob A Klein (SOAS University of London)
Year2017
Volume82
Issue2
Pages193-212
Publication date2017-03-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnos (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0014-1844 • E-ISSN: 1469-588X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00141844.2015.1107604
OpenAlexW2315573161
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited59

The papers that make up this collection were already long in development when the European 'horsemeat scandal' in early 2013 threatened to derail still further what fragile trust there remained in food producers and retailers. 1This scandal entailed the discovery that horsemeat was being passed off in branded ready-made meals and processed foods as other types of more culturally acceptable meat, beef in particular (Lawrence 2013).But earlier animal foodrelated crisesfrom the discovery of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle in the 1980s, to the widespread contamination of powdered milk with melamine in China that came to light in 2008had already made it abundantly plain that, in the context of industrialising and globalising food supply systems, the animals we eat do not simply sustain our bodies or satisfy our culinary tastes but, in doing so, come profoundly to reshape social, economic and ecological relations and cultural understandings of edibility, taste and health.Connections between humans and animals-as-food are not simply one-way relationships between consumer and consumed, but involve a more complex set of relations concerned, among other things, with ecological change, world markets and local economic conditions, health and food safety, labour relations, and changing cultural values.For example, growing meat consumption has been described as part of a wider, increasingly globalised 'nutrition transition' away from diets rich in fibres and complex carbohydrates, a transition associated with emergent health concerns including rises in obesity, type II diabetes, gastrointestinal disorders, cardiovascular illnesses and certain cancers (Popkin

Business · Environmental ethics · Political science · Sociology · Threatened species · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Ecology · Food Waste Reduction and Sustainability · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy