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==Meat-eating==
==Meat-eating==

===Ambivalence===
===Ambivalence===
{{see also|List of countries by meat consumption|Ethics of eating meat}}
{{see also|List of countries by meat consumption|Ethics of eating meat}}
Line 61: Line 62:


==Meat paradox==
==Meat paradox==

===Cognitive dissonance===
===Cognitive dissonance===
{{see also|Cognitive dissonance|Schema (psychology)}}
{{see also|Cognitive dissonance|Schema (psychology)}}

Revision as of 21:40, 27 July 2015

Carnism
Joshua Norton eating meat, watched by street dogs Bummer and Lazarus in San Francisco in the 1860s. The dogs themselves would be food in other cultures.
DescriptionBelief system that supports the killing of certain species of animals for meat[n 1]
Term coined byMelanie Joy, 2001[1]
Related ideasAnthrozoology, ethics of eating meat, speciesism, veganism, vegetarianism

Carnism is a prevailing belief system that supports the killing of certain species of animals for meat.[2] The term was coined in 2001 by psychologist Melanie Joy and popularized by her book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (2009).[3]

Central to this belief system, described as a dominant but invisible paradigm, is the classification of only particular species as food, which allows them to be treated in ways that would be regarded as animal cruelty if applied to species not viewed that way. This classification is culturally relative, so that, for example, dogs are slaughtered for dog meat in China, but may be family members in the West, while cows are eaten in the West but protected in much of India.[4]

A closely related aspect of carnism is that most people dislike hurting animals but embrace diets that involve hurting them. Psychologists call this the meat paradox. They suggest that, to counteract discomfort evinced by this conflict, meat-eaters ascribe reduced sentience, cognitive ability and moral standing to food animals, and avoid consideration of the provenance of animal products.[5][n 2] Meat-eaters also defend their diet with the "Four Ns," asserting that eating meat is "natural, normal, necessary, and nice."[13]

Background

Chicken, beef and pork

The argument that using animals involves learned prejudice dates back to at least the Greek historian Plutarch, who in the first century CE sought to shift the burden of evidence from vegetarians to meat-eaters:[14]

Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived.[15]

From the 17th century and until recently, Cartesian mechanism was a prevailing philosophy in the West. This denied that animals are conscious and maintained that they were simply automata that react to external stimulation.[16] Notwithstanding the philosophical problem of defining consciousness, scientists now generally hold that animals have consciousness.[n 3]

In the 1970s traditional views on the moral standing of animals were challenged by Richard Ryder and Peter Singer, who introduced the notion of speciesism. This is defined as discrimination on the basis of species for what might be considered morally irrelevant reasons.[20] Joy has argued that carnism, whereby animals are treated differently depending on whether they're viewed as prey or pets, can be understood as one form of speciesism.[n 4]

Meat-eating

Ambivalence

See also: List of countries by meat consumption and Ethics of eating meat
Cooked dog and poultry in China, where both are food animals
A cow rests in the street in Vrindavan, India, where cows are revered.

Food psychologist Paul Rozin has called meat the "most tabooed – and the most favored," as well as the "most nutritive and most infective" of foods, a "magnet of ambivalence."[21] Around 30 percent of the planet's land surface is devoted to livestock production.[22] Ten billion land animals are killed annually in the United States for human consumption, including 8.5 billion chickens and over 100 million pigs.[23][n 5] In 2005 48 billion birds were slaughtered globally.[26]

Meat is perceived around the world as food for those of higher status because of the amount of land and labor needed to produce it, and at the same time is the only class of food frequently proscribed by certain religions and subcultures.[21][n 6] As food production became more mechanized, the link between animal and meat was lost, making it easier to ignore the provenance of animal products.[29][30] Anthropologist Noelie Vialles writes that the slaughterhouse was banished to a site outside the city walls, while events inside it were required to be industrial, non-violent and invisible: "It must be as if it were not."[31]

In 2001 psychologist Melanie Joy coined the term carnism for what she called the "invisible belief system" that underpins meat-eating, arguing that meat production and consumption lie behind a "veil of linguistic deception":[1]

We don't see meat eating as we do vegetarianism – as a choice, based on a set of assumptions about animals, our world, and ourselves. Rather, we see it as a given, the "natural" thing to do, the way things have always been and the way things will always be. We eat animals without thinking about what we are doing and why because the belief system that underlies this behavior is invisible. This invisible belief system is what I call carnism.[3]

Joy compared carnism to patriarchy, arguing that both are dominant normative ideologies that go unrecognized because of their ubiquity.[32][33] Naming ideologies allows them to be examined and questioned.[n 7] Abolitionist Gary Francione argues against this that carnism is not a hidden ideology, but a conscious choice; in his view some animals are viewed as food and others family because humans regard non-humans as property, and they may value that property as they please.[35]

"Four Ns"

A series of studies published in 2015 found that the "Four Ns" – "natural, normal, necessary, and nice" – accounted for the majority of American and Australian meat-eaters' stated justifications for consuming meat. These hold that humans are omnivores (natural), that most people eat meat (normal), that vegetarian diets are lacking in nutrients (necessary), and that meat tastes good (nice).[13][36]

Meat-eaters who expressed these views more strongly reported less guilt about their dietary habits, suggesting that they are an effective strategy for resolving cognitive dissonance. People who endorsed such arguments tended to objectify animals, have less moral concern for them and attribute less consciousness to them. They were also more supportive of social inequality and hierarchical ideologies, and less proud of their consumer choices.[13]

Meat paradox

Cognitive dissonance

See also: Cognitive dissonance and Schema (psychology)

The meat paradox was named in 2009 by psychologists Steve Loughnan, Nick Haslam and Brock Bastian to refer to the tension between the desire of most people not to harm animals and their embrace of a diet that does harm them.[5] People who eat animal products usually do not want to consider that their food choices cause harm. Bastian et al. (2011) argue that meat-eaters go to great lengths to overcome the inconsistencies between their beliefs and behavior.[6] The argument holds that this conflict creates cognitive dissonance, which meat-eaters resolve by minimizing the extent to which animals have minds, emotional lives and moral standing.[9][37]

Animals are categorized as edible, inedible, pets, vermin, predators or entertainment, according to people's schemata, mental classifications that determine, and are determined by, our beliefs and desires.[38] There is widespread revulsion at the thought of humans being eaten, whether by humans or non-humans, but otherwise disagreement about which animals count as food, with cows being eaten in the West, but not in much of India, and pigs being rejected by Muslims and Jews but widely regarded by other ethnic groups as edible.[39] These taxonomies determine how the animals within them are treated, influence subjective perceptions of their sentience and intelligence, and reduce or increase empathy and moral concern for them.[38] Avoiding consideration of the provenance of animal products also reduces dissonance.[6] Joy writes that this is why meat is rarely served with its head or other intact body parts.[40]

Ascription of limited mental capacity

See also: Animal consciousness
A woman walks her pet pig in Taiwan. Whether animals are viewed as pets or prey determines the perception of their intelligence and moral standing.[6]

Meat eaters may reduce dissonance by minimizing their perception of food animals as conscious and able to experience pain and suffering.[6][11] This is a psychologically effective strategy, because organisms perceived as less able to suffer are considered to be of less moral concern, and therefore more acceptable as food.[10][41] A 2010 study randomly assigned college students to eat beef jerky or cashews then judge the moral relevance and cognitive abilities of a variety of animals. Compared with students who were given cashews, those who ate beef jerky expressed less moral concern for animals, and assigned cows a diminished ability to have mental states that entail the capacity to experience suffering.[5]

Studies in 2011 similarly found that people were more inclined to feel it was appropriate to kill animals for food when they perceived the animals as having diminished mental capacities; that, conversely, they perceived animals as having diminished mental capacities when told they were used as food; and, again, that eating meat caused participants to ascribe fewer mental abilities to animals. A separate study found that subjects who read a description of an exotic animal rated it as less sympathetic and less able to experience suffering if they were told that native people ate the animal, regardless of whether they were told that the animal was hunted or that it was scavenged.[6][10][42]

Other studies replicated the finding that meat-eaters ascribed fewer human-like qualities to animals than did vegetarians. Researchers have found that meat-eaters specifically consider traditionally edible animals less capable of experiencing refined emotions, even though meat-eaters and vegetarians did not differ in their evaluations of non-food animals.[43] Another study determined that perception of animals' intelligence is highly correlated with disgust at the thought of eating them, and that such perception is culturally influenced.[44]

"Saved from slaughter" narratives

The National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation, in which the American president pardons a turkey, has been cited as an illustration of carnism.[45]

An illustration of dissonance reduction is the prominence given to "saved from slaughter" stories, in which the media focus on – and regularly name – one animal that escaped or otherwise evaded slaughter, while ignoring the millions that did not.[46]

Animals at the center of these narratives include Wilbur in Charlotte's Web (1952); Babe, the fictional star of The Sheep-Pig (1983) and Babe (1995); Christopher Hogwood in Sy Montgomery's The Good, Good Pig (2006);[46] the Tamworth Two; and Cincinnati Freedom. The American National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation is cited as another example. One study of that event found that most media reporting on it marginalized the link between living animals and meat, while celebrating the poultry industry.[45]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The term carnism is derived from the Latin carnem or carn-, meaning flesh or body.[1]
  2. ^ Bastian et al. (2011): "Meat is central to most people's diets and a focus of culinary enjoyment (Fiddes, 1991). Yet most people also like animals and are disturbed by harm done to them. This inconsistency between a love for animals and enjoyment of meat creates a 'meat paradox' (Loughnan, Haslam, & Bastian, 2010); people's concern for animal welfare conflicts with their culinary behavior."[6][7][8][9][10][11][12]
  3. ^ Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, 2012: "The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates."[17]
    Ethologist Ian J. H. Duncan, 2006: "There seems to be some (but not universal) agreement that all the vertebrates are sentient. ... it is when we consider the invertebrates that the debate becomes intense."[18]

    Ethologists continue to investigate emotion in animals and the cognitive abilities of different species, including self-awareness and use of symbols.[19]

  4. ^ Melanie Joy: "Speciesism is the ideology in which it's considered appropriate to value some animals over others (with humans at the top of the hierarchy). Carnism is the ideology in which it's considered appropriate to eat some of the animals on the lower rungs of the speciesist hierarchy. Carnism is a 'sub-ideology' of speciesism, just as anti-Semitism, for instance, is a sub-ideology of racism."
  5. ^ As of 2002 the top six per-capita meat consumers were Denmark, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Cyprus, the United States, St. Lucia and The Bahamas.
    The average annual meat consumption was Denmark: 321.6 lb per person (145.9 kg); New Zealand: 313.2 lbs (142.1 kg): Luxembourg: 312.3 lb (141.7 kg); Cyprus: 289.4 lb (131.3 kg); United States: 275.1 lb (124.8 kg); St. Lucia: 273.5 lb (124.1 kg); and The Bahamas: 272.4 lb (123.6 kg).[24] American consumers spend around $142 billion a year on meat.[25]
  6. ^ Rozin suggested in 1997 that the avoidance of meat was in "an early stage of moralization," defined as the process by which preferences become values. He offered cigarette smoking as an example of a practice further along in the moralization process. Values are more likely than preferences to promote cognitive consistency. Only a small minority of the public has moralized eating meat.[27][28]
  7. ^ Melanie Joy, 2011: "The primary way entrenched ideologies stay entrenched is by remaining invisible. And the primary way they stay invisible is by remaining unnamed. If we don't name it, we can't talk about it, and if we can't talk about it, we can't question it."[34]

References

  1. ^ a b c Joy, Melanie (2001). "From Carnivore to Carnist: Liberating the Language of Meat", Satya, 18(2), September, pp. 126–127; Joy, Melanie (2003). Psychic Numbing and Meat Consumption: The Psychology of Carnism, doctoral dissertion, Saybrook Graduate School, San Francisco.
  2. ^ DeMello, Margo (2012). Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 138.
  3. ^ a b Joy, Melanie (2011) [2009]. Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism. Conari Press, p. 9. ISBN 1573245054.
  4. ^ DeMello 2012, pp. 126–129.
  5. ^ a b c Loughnan, Steve; et al. (2010). "The role of meat consumption in the denial of moral status and mind to meat animals". Appetite. 55 (1): 156–159. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2010.05.043. PMID 20488214. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)
  6. ^ a b c d e f Bastian, Brock; et al. (2011). "Don't mind meat? The denial of mind to animals used for human consumption" (PDF). Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 38 (2): 247–256. doi:10.1177/0146167211424291. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)
  7. ^ Bastian, Brock (23 March 2011). "The meat paradox: how we can love some animals and eat others", The Conversation.
  8. ^ Loughnan, Steve; Bratanova, Boyka; Puvia, Elisa (2011). "The Meat Paradox: How Are We Able to Love Animals and Love Eating Animals?", In-Mind Italia, 1, pp. 15–18.
  9. ^ a b Jay Johnston, Fiona Probyn-Rapsey, Animal Death, Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2013, p. 215.
  10. ^ a b c Loughnan, Steve; Bastian, Brock; Haslam, Nick (2014). "The Psychology of Eating Animals", Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(2), April, pp. 104–108. doi:10.1177/0963721414525781
  11. ^ a b Rothgerber, Hank (August 2014). "Efforts to overcome vegetarian-induced dissonance among meat eaters". Appetite. 79: 32–41. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2014.04.003.
  12. ^ Hodson, Gordon (3 March 2014). "The Meat Paradox: Loving but Exploiting Animals", Psychology Today.
  13. ^ a b c Piazza, Jared; et al. (August 2015). "Rationalizing meat consumption. The 4Ns". Appetite. 91: 114–128. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2015.04.011. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)
    "How people defend eating meat", Lancaster University, 15 May 2015.
    Goodyer, Paula (1 June 2015). "Meat eaters justify diet using 'Four Ns': natural, necessary, normal, nice". Sydney Morning Herald.

    Singal, Jesse (4 June 2015). "The 4 Ways People Rationalize Eating Meat", New York Magazine.

  14. ^ DeMello 2012, pp. 142, 379.
  15. ^ Plutarch, translated by W. Heinemann (1957). De esu carnium (On Eating Meat), Loeb Classical Library Ed., Vol. XII. Harvard University Press. p. 541.
  16. ^ Allen, Colin; Trestman, Michael (10 June 2015). "Animal Consciousness: Historical background". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  17. ^ Low, Philip; et al. (7 July 2012). "The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness" (PDF). Consciousness in Human and Non-human Animals, Francis Crick Memorial Conference, Churchill College, Cambridge. {{cite web}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)
  18. ^ Duncan, Ian J. H. (October 2006). "The changing concept of animal sentience". Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 100: 11–19. doi:10.1016/j.applanim.2006.04.011.
  19. ^ Bekoff, Marc (2009). Animal Passions and Beastly Virtues, Temple University Press.
  20. ^ Ryder, Richard D. (1971). "Experiments on Animals," in Stanley Godlovitch, Roslind Godlovitch, John Harris (eds.), Animals, Men and Morals, Grove Press.

    Diamond, Cora (2004). "Eating Meat and Eating People," in Cass Sunstein, Martha Nussbaum (eds.), Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, Oxford University Press, p. 93.

  21. ^ a b Rozin, Paul (2004). "Meat," in Solomon H. Katz (ed.), Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, New York, NY: Scribner, pp. 466–471.
  22. ^ Steinfeld, Henning, et al. (2006). Livestock's Long Shadow, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. pp. xxi.
  23. ^ For pigs, "Livestock Slaughter 2014 Summary", United States Department of Agriculture, April 2015, p. 17; for chicken, cattle and pigs, Frohlich, Thomas C. (15 April 2015). "12 States That Kill the Most Animals", 24/7 Wall St.
  24. ^ Brown, Felicity (2 September 2009). "Meat consumption per capita", The Guardian, citing the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
  25. ^ Lavin, Chad (2013). Eating Anxiety: The Perils of Food Politics, University of Minnesota Press, p. 115.
  26. ^ Steinfeld et al., p. 132.
  27. ^ Rozin, Paul; Markwith, Maureen; Stoess, Caryn (1997). "Moralization and Becoming a Vegetarian: The Transformation of Preferences Into Values and the Recruitment of Disgust," Psychological Science, 8(2), March, pp. 67–73. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.1997.tb00685.x JSTOR 40063148
  28. ^ Rozin, Paul (1996). "Towards a psychology of food and eating: From motivation to module to model to marker, morality, meaning, and metaphor," Current Directions in Psychological Science, 5(1), February, pp. 18–24. doi:10.1111/1467-8721.ep10772690 JSTOR 20182380
  29. ^ Webster, A. J. F. (1994). "Meat and right: The ethical dilemma" (PDF). Proceedings of the Nutrition Society. Vol. 54. pp. 263–270. doi:10.1079/PNS19940031. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)
  30. ^ Presser, Lois (2013). Why We Harm, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp. 50–51.
  31. ^ Vialles, Noëlie (1994). Animal to Edible, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 4, 19, 22.
  32. ^ Joy 2011, p. 31.
  33. ^ Gibert, Martin; Desaulniers, Élise (2014). "Carnism". Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Springer Netherlands. pp. 292–298. ISBN 978-94-007-0929-4. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  34. ^ Joy 2011, p. 32.
  35. ^ Francione, Gary L. (1 October 2012). "'Carnism'? There is nothing 'invisible' about the ideology of animal exploitation". abolitionistapproach.com.
  36. ^ Ruetenik, Tadd (2015). "Violence, Sacrifice, and Flesh Eating in Judeo-Christian Tradition," Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, 22 (pp. 141–151), pp. 144–145.
  37. ^ Presser 2013, pp. 50–68.
  38. ^ a b Joy 2011, pp. 14, 17.
  39. ^ Lavin 2013, pp. 116–117.
  40. ^ Joy 2011, p. 16.
  41. ^ Waytz, Adam; Gray, Kurt; Epley, Nicholas; Wegner, Daniel M. (2010). "Causes and consequences of mind perception" (PDF). Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 14 (8): 383–388. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2010.05.006.
  42. ^ Bratanova, Boyka; et al. (2011). "The effect of categorization as food on the perceived moral standing of animals". Appetite. 57 (1): 193–196. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2011.04.020. PMID 21569805. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)
  43. ^ Bilewicz, Michal; Imhoff, Roland; Drogosz, Marek (2011). "The humanity of what we eat: Conceptions of human uniqueness among vegetarians and omnivores" (PDF). European Journal of Social Psychology. 41: 201–209. doi:10.1002/ejsp.766.
  44. ^ Ruby, Matthew B.; Heine, Steven J. (March 2012). "Too close to home. Factors predicting meat avoidance" (PDF). Appetite. 59: 47–52. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2012.03.020.
  45. ^ a b Packwood-Freeman, Carrie; Perez, Oana Leventi (2012). "Pardon Your Turkey and Eat Him Too," in Joshua Frye, Michael S. Bruner (eds.), The Rhetoric of Food: Discourse, Materiality, and Power, Routledge, p. 103ff.
  46. ^ a b Mizelle, Brett (2015). "Unthinkable Visibility: Pigs, Pork and the Spectacle of Killing and Meat," in Marguerite S. Shaffer, Phoebe S. K. Young (eds.), Rendering Nature: Animals, Bodies, Places, Politics, University of Pennsylvania Press, p. 264.

    Mizelle, Brett (2012). Pig, Reaktion Books, pp. 105–106.

Further reading

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