Meat and taboos/religious beliefs | TableDebates

A person slices a steak with a knife on a wooden chopping board. Photo by Los Muertos Crew via Pexels.

News and resources

Israeli Rabbi says cultured meat is kosher

Israel’s chief Rabbi David Lau recently ruled that lab-grown beef produced by the company Aleph Farms could be considered kosher. Due to the way this beef is produced (the meat is cultivated from stem cells) he concluded that it would be classed as pareve - that is a food that is neither meat nor dairy. However, this ruling came with the caveat that this would only be the case if the lab-grown meat was advertised as a meat alternative rather than real meat.

Journal articles

What’s cooking? The normalization of meat in YouTube recipe videos consumed by South Asian British Muslims

The 'meat paradox' is defined as enjoying meat whilst disapproving of animals suffering or being killed. This study looked into how social media videos and TV cookery programmes can influence viewers to overcome the meat paradox. The authors chose to look specifically at British Muslims because studies suggest they are a group whose eating habits are significantly influenced by such media types and also consume more meat per capita than the national average.

Image: Valeria Boltneva, Ham burger with vegetables, Pexels, Pexels Licence

Journal articles

“We have to keep it a secret” – Meat consumption in India

This study interviews urban Indians, mainly people living in Mumbai, on their meat consumption habits. It finds that there is a difference between public and private eating patterns, because of the social stigma attached to eating meat despite rising consumption.

Dissected report cover

Dissecting meat marketing narratives

This report from Greenpeace Denmark identifies seven “myths” used in marketing materials from large meat companies. It assesses the imagery commonly used with each of the seven narratives using examples of real adverts, and argues that meat advertising should be regulated more closely.

Image: johnrp, Cumbrian sheep Herdwick, Pixabay, Pixabay Licence

On flesh and the spirit: understanding British Muslims’ meat consumption

Hibba Mazhary is a part-time PhD student in Geography at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. Hibba first entered the department as a BA Geography undergraduate in 2013, before going on to complete an MSc there in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance. She divides her time between fieldwork, teaching undergraduates, and undertaking various part-time research assistant roles, including a project on parenting and the gut microbiome, one on meat normalisation media narratives, and one with the RSPCA on laboratory rat welfare. Hibba is interested in all things farm animal welfare and food sustainability. Her first TABLE blog, in which she sets out the aims of her PhD research, can be found here: Distancing death: slaughter, welfare and consumption in the British halal meat industry.

Image: Ruth Hartnup, Smoked salmon, Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Wild Type raises $3.5M to reinvent meat and fish for the 21st century

Start-up Wild Type have raised $3.5 million towards the development of a platform and set of technologies that they hope could allow any type of meat to be cultured in the laboratory.

Special Issue Food and Nutrition Security: Can science and good governance deliver dinner?

The journal Food and Nutrition Security has produced a special issue on the question: “can science and good governance deliver dinner?’ The guest editor Voster Muchenje provides this overview of its rationale and contents for the FCRN:

Mumbai, India bans meat four days

Officials in Mumbai have imposed a four day ban on the slaughter and sale of meat. The ban was introduced after increasing pressure from the vegetarian Jain community - a financially very powerful community in the Indian state of Maharashtra.

New paper into feral meat eating in Australia

The demand for meat is expected to double by 2050. Projections indicate that expanding the livestock industry to meet this demand would exceed biophysical limitations, dangerously exacerbating climate change and biodiversity loss. This paper uses an anthropological approach to explore an alternative meat source that not only avoids livestock’s pitfalls, but targets introduced pest species that have a history of profound destruction within Australian ecosystems.