The Future of Meat Without Animals
366
The Future of Meat Without Animals
366Overview
This volume examines conceptual and cultural opportunities, entanglements, and pitfalls in moving global meat, egg, and dairy consumption toward these animal-free options. Beyond surface tensions of “meatless meat” and “animal-free flesh,” deeper conflicts proliferate around naturalized accounts of human identity and meat consumption, as well as the linkage of protein with colonial power and gender oppression. What visions and technologies can disrupt modern agriculture? What economic and marketing channels are required to scale these products? What beings and ecosystems remain implicated in a livestock-free food system?
A future of meat without animals invites adjustments on the plate, but it also inspires renewed habits of mind as well as life-affirming innovations capable of nourishing the contours of our future selves. This book illuminates material and philosophical complexities that will shape the character of our future/s of food.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783489077 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 08/16/2016 |
| Series: | Future Perfect: Images of the Time to Come in Philosophy, Politics and Cultural Studies |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 366 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Christopher Carter is Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of San Diego in the Theology and Religious Studies Department. His research focuses on black and womanist theological ethics, environmental ethics, and animals and religion
Contributors: Brian Henning, Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies, Gonzaga University, USA; Ethan Brown, CEO, Beyond Meat; Michael Anderson, Doctoral Candidate, Graduate Theological Union, USA; Jaya Bhumitra, Director of Corporate Outreach, Mercy for Animals; Vasile Stanescu, Assistant Professor of Communication and Theater, Mercer University, USA; Joey Tuminello, Doctoral Candidate and Teaching Fellow, University of North Texas, USA, and Program Coordinator for Farm Forward; Steven McMullen, Assistant Professor of Economics, Hope College, USA; Song Tian, Associate Professor, Institute for History and Philosophy of Science, Beijing Normal University, China; Shivani Bothra, Doctoral Candidate, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand; Christopher Carter, Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow, University of San Diego, USA; Matthew Calarco, Associate Professor of Philosophy, California State University Fullerton, USA; Eileen Crist, Associate Professor of Science and Technology in Society, Virginia Tech University, USA; Michael Marder, Ikerbasque Research Professor of Philosophy, University of Basque Country Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain; Brianne Donaldson, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Monmouth College, USA; Rebekah Sinclair, Doctoral Candidate, University of Oregon, USA; Carol Adams, Author and activist; Aaron Gross, Assistant Professor of Theology and Religious Studies, University of San Diego, USA, and CEO, Farm Forward; Adam Wolpa, Associate Professor of Art and Art History, Calvin College, USA
Read an Excerpt
When America Liked Ike
How Moderates Won the 1952 Presidential Election and Reshaped American Politics
By Gary A. Donaldson
Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.
Copyright © 2017 Rowman & LittlefieldAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78348-907-7
CHAPTER 1
"Background to the Age, and the Scramble to Nominate Eisenhower"
Just prior to the 1952 presidential election, political scientist James MacGregor Burns suggested that if the Republicans did not win in 1952 that the party might actually cease to exist. The Republicans had been crushed by Roosevelt in four consecutive elections, and then by Truman in 1948. The title of his article was "Is Our Two-Party System in Danger?" His answer, of course, was "no." In his 1956 study, Revolt of the Moderates, Samuel Lubell, another prominent political scientist, wrote of American politics at mid-century: "The 1952 election may well have been our most emotional campaign since the McKinley-Bryan or Hoover-Smith contests." He called Dwight Eisenhower's victory a "crucial turn" in American political history and further compared it to Andrew Jackson's victory in 1828, Lincoln's in 1860, and Franklin Roosevelt's victory over Herbert Hoover in 1932. Pollster Lou Harris — in his book Is There A Republican Majority? — wrote about the election: "What has happened ... is that the basic Democratic majority has been broken. But, perhaps more important, the Republicans have put together a permanent majority of their own." There is, he added, "the possibility of a permanent political revolution stemming out of the 1952 election of Dwight Eisenhower." Burns, Harris, and Lubell were all correct. The Republican Party did not wither and die, and the 1952 election was a significant turning point in American political history. Eisenhower's election had changed the political dynamic. His popularity and moderation as a candidate and then as president caused independents and political neophytes to flood into the Republican Party. Although three out of every five Americans continued to call themselves Democrats in 1952, one in four who had voted for Truman in 1948 jumped ship in 1952 and voted for Eisenhower. Even though Eisenhower was willing to accept many of the old New Deal promises and programs, his election brought an end to the era of New Deal liberalism as a political entity. Eisenhower's election also ended the age of Democratic dominance that had lasted since the early 1930s. The 1952 election established parity again between the two political parties, a parity that had not been seen in the nation's politics for much of the century.
Life had been difficult for the Republicans through the 1930s and the 1940s. Kept out of the presidency since 1933 (and in the minority in Congress since 1931), they had become little more than an opposition party. In addition, they were fiercely divided. The liberals (still often described in the 1940s as progressives) had little in common with the party's Old Guard — the conservatives and isolationists. Roosevelt and the Democrats had made political hay through three national elections (1932, 1936, and 1940) by blaming the Great Depression on the Republicans; and the Republican liberals, had in turn, maintained control in their own party by laying blame for the party's woes on the right-wing conservatives. The result was liberal (really better described in this period as moderates) Republican candidates for president: Alf Landon in 1936 and Wendell Willkie in 1940. To Old Guard conservatives like Ohio Senator Robert Taft, this development was little more that "me-tooism," and it offered little chance of success against Roosevelt and the powerful Democrats.
Not only had the Democrats forced the Republicans to carry the political blame for the Great Depression, but they had also successfully blamed the Republicans for the tremendous foreign policy mistake of isolationism. Several Republican isolationists, mostly from the Midwest, had opposed America's entrance into World War II. Almost immediately following the bombing of Pearl Harbor and America's entrance into the war (both in the Pacific and in Europe), it became apparent that entering the war had been the right thing to do, that Japan and Nazi Germany were obvious evils, and that the effort of the United States was necessary to rid the world of their aggressions. As the war began to draw to a close, the old prewar isolationists in the Republican Party appeared to be from another era, and the image hurt the party at the polls.
But a shift in the political landscape became apparent toward the end of the war. There was a prevailing opinion that the time for Democratic domination was over, that the pendulum was about to swing back and a tsunami of Republicanism was about to wash over Washington. Political pundits also saw that the emergencies that had brought the Democrats to power in the first place were also over. The Great Depression was at an end and that the policies needed to fight that economic disaster were no longer necessary. With the war ending, there was no longer the concern that changing boats in midstream might somehow jeopardize America's war-making capabilities. The time for a Republican Party resurgence had finally come.
As the 1944 campaign approached, Republicans began casting about for a candidate that might be able to unseat Roosevelt and the Democrats. They looked first to General Douglas MacArthur, the theater commander in Asia, a military hero, and an outspoken conservative all his life; and then to General Dwight Eisenhower, the Allied commander in Europe, a military hero of equal or even greater status than MacArthur, but something of a political enigma. It had been suggested to Eisenhower by a war correspondent as early as 1943 that politics might be in his future. The general's only response was that the correspondent had surely "been standing in the sun too long." But by late 1943 and early 1944, the drumbeat quickened as the Republicans became increasingly desperate. Arthur Eisenhower counseled his younger brother to issue a statement immediately that he was not interested in a political career, arguing that MacArthur's military reputation had been damaged because he had refused to step away from the political arena. Dwight Eisenhower responded that any such statement would only make him appear ridiculous, and that he would not, he wrote to his brother, "Tolerate the use of my name in connection with any political activity of any kind." There was even some additional talk that Roosevelt might choose Eisenhower as his running mate in 1944, particularly if the Republicans nominated MacArthur. But both MacArthur and Eisenhower became consumed with the war effort, and all talks of making generals into politicians in the midst of the war quieted.
In 1944 the Republicans went through one more cycle of their Roosevelt-era defeatist plan when they passed over their 1940 candidate, Wendell Willkie, and nominated Thomas E. Dewey, the well-known New York City gangbuster and popular New York State governor — and like Willkie, a moderate. Despite predictions of a Republican victory from the likes of journalist and pundit Walter Lippmann and a Republican endorsement from the powerful United Mine Workers head John L. Lewis, Roosevelt won the election fairly handily (54 to 46 percent), although Dewey had gotten closer to Roosevelt than either of his two Republican predecessors. The 1944 campaign had at least two dramatic events: Roosevelt was persuaded by big-city bosses and Southern conservatives in his party to dump his second vice president, Henry Wallace, and choose instead Missouri Senator Harry S. Truman, a moderate Democrat, a New Dealer, and the popular head of a Senate wartime investigating committee. The choice became known as the "Second Missouri Compromise," and was considered foolhardy by many who thought that there was a good chance that Roosevelt would not live out his fourth term. Then in October, Roosevelt dispelled all rumors about his deteriorating health by campaigning through New York City during a heavy rainstorm with the top down on his limousine.
On February 20, 1945, Vice President Truman heard that Roosevelt had died. He had been in office only four weeks, and the prospect of taking over the presidency was something that clearly frightened him. The news "swept through the corridors and across the floor" of the Senate, Truman recalled in his memoirs. But it was only a rumor. "There had always been baseless rumors about Roosevelt." Then he added, "I did not want to think about the possibility of his death as President." It was no wonder that rumors flew through Washington in the late winter and early spring of 1945. Truman recalled: "I was shocked by his appearance. His eyes were sunken. His magnificent smile was missing from his careworn face. He seemed a spent man. I had a hollow feeling within me."
In March, when Roosevelt returned from the Yalta Conference, he addressed Congress, and many were alarmed to see how old, thin and frail he looked. He spoke while seated in the well of the House, an unprecedented concession to his physical incapacity. He opened his speech by saying, "I hope that you will pardon me for this unusual posture of sitting down during the presentation of what I want to say, but ... it makes it a lot easier for me not to have to carry about ten pounds of steel around on the bottom of my legs." On March 29, Roosevelt went to Warm Springs, in Georgia, to recuperate from his trip and to prepare for his appearance at the founding conference of the United Nations. On April 12, he died of a massive stroke. He was just sixty-three.
Roosevelt's death changed so many things, but it was in the arena of foreign affairs that things changed the most. Truman had almost no experience in foreign policy, and to make matters worse, FDR had not bothered to keep his vice president informed on international issues, including the Manhattan Project that resulted in the atomic bomb. In fact, all Truman knew of U.S. foreign policy was what he read in the newspapers. Clearly, the new president was not prepared to handle America's foreign affairs in this new and complex period. When he came to office, the battle on Okinawa was still raging in the Pacific, while in Europe, U.S. and Allied armies moved more quickly than expected toward Soviet forces racing into Germany from the east. On April 30, the Soviets entered Berlin and Hitler committed suicide. It was the beginning of a new era.
At the Potsdam Conference in Berlin in late July 1945, Truman (in office for only a few months) and Eisenhower (then serving as the first governor of the American zone of occupied Germany) were bantering about the postwar world when Truman jolted Eisenhower with a suggestion that he might want to consider a future in politics. "General," Truman said, "there is nothing that you may want that I won't try to help you get. That definitely and specifically includes the Presidency in 1948." Eisenhower later recalled his amazement at the offer. "I doubt that any soldier of our country has ever [been] so suddenly struck in his emotional vitals by a President with such an apparently sincere and certainly astounding proposition as this. ... [T]o have the President suddenly throw this broadside into me left no recourse except to treat it [as] a very splendid joke which I hoped it was. ... Mr. President." The General replied, "I don't know who will be your opponent for the presidency, but it will not be I."
When Eisenhower returned home after the war, he was asked over and over: Will you run? To an audience in his hometown of Abilene, Kansas, in 1945 he seemed to make it pretty clear. "It is silly to talk about me in politics," he said, "and so for once I'll talk about it, but only to settle this thing once [and] for all. I should like to make this as emphatic as possible. ... In the strongest language you can command, you can state that I have no political ambitions at all, make it even stronger than that if you can. I'd like to go even further than Sherman in expressing myself on this subject." He could hardly have been any more definitive, but the 1948 campaign was still three years away, and in that time Eisenhower definitely toyed with the possibility of making a run.
* * *
It is a phenomenon of the American political system that (in order to appeal to the largest possible range of voters) a presidential candidate is often bound to select a running mate who carries nearly the opposite appeal. Such was the case in 1944 when Roosevelt chose Harry Truman as his running mate. In many ways, FDR was an unusual American political figure. He was not a man of the people, not at all the type of figure that the nation, generally, looks to elect. He was urbane, urban, patrician-wealthy, a career politician who had risen to political importance in New York as a reformer who had battled the bossism of Tammany Hall. With the Roosevelt family money and name, he had glided through life from the social prominence of Hyde Park, to Groton, Harvard, and on to Columbia Law. He headed to Wall Street, the New York State Legislature, national politics in 1920, and finally to the White House in 1933. In contrast, Truman could be considered the anti-Roosevelt, FDR's exact opposite. Truman's life had been hard. He grew up on the Missouri frontier where opportunities were limited and prospects were bleak. There was no prominent family name, no family wealth, and no marvelous education to carry him through life. He served with some distinction in France during World War I, and returned home to try his hand at business. His small men's clothing store in Kansas City soon failed. He then speculated in oil and mining interests, failing at those as well. At age thirty and struggling to find his place in the world, he turned to politics and found some success at the local level where he seemed destined to stay. But by allying with the Pendergast political machine, a corrupt Kansas City political organization, Truman moved up the political ladder and finally into the U.S. Senate where he made a name for himself as one of the few southerners who stood by Roosevelt and the New Deal.
Truman stepped into the White House just after FDR's death with a convincing 87 percent approval rating, a figure that clearly owed more to his anonymity and expectations than to his popularity. After about a year and a half, by the time of the 1946 congressional elections, his approval ratings had plummeted to a paltry 32 percent. Truman's greatest challenges in office revolved around Reconversion, the process of regulating the postwar economy that was Truman's first real act as president. And he generally stumbled. Taking advice from economists who believed that an immediate removal of price controls would cause either debilitating inflation or depression, or both, Truman left price controls in place for nearly two years after the war ended. At the same time, organized labor pushed at the other end. Generally quiet during the war years in an effort to keep production up, the nation's labor unions went out on strike all over the nation when the war ended. As labor and other production costs increased and prices remained fixed by the federal government, production of consumer goods ground to a halt. To meet the demand, a vibrant black market emerged, embarrassing the government even more. Finally, under pressure from just about every direction, an embattle Truman removed the price controls. It was a popular decision, but the long wait had hurt the president; his first real decision had been wrong.
Truman's handling of these postwar labor strikes brought the labor unions out against him. Certainly, labor had done its part to win the war, but following V-J Day, the American worker was taking home less real income than in the years before the war. In 1941, the average American worker's real wage was just over $28.00 per week. That had risen to $36.72 by 1945. But by the fall of 1946, inflation and a reduction in overtime pay had pulled real wages back to near the 1941 level. The economic pie was expanding, but labor's share had remained the same. Industry leaders, however, argued that they were shackled with Truman's wartime price controls. In addition, they were stuck with the immense cost of retooling, of converting from wartime to peacetime production. Labor and management were on a collision course that would engulf the immediate postwar years. And Truman, caught in the middle, had no real answers. He would be damaged by the events.
The result was nearly inevitable. Through the summer of 1945, the nation experienced 4,600 work stoppages impacting some 5 million workers. Following V-J Day, the situation worsened. In September, 43,000 oil refinery workers went out on strike, cutting off one-third of the nation's oil supply. Six weeks later, the United Auto Workers struck General Motors, idling some 325,000 workers. Then in January, 750,000 steelworkers walked out, followed by 200,000 electrical workers and another 200,000 meatpackers. The nation seemed on the verge of paralysis, and the American people looked to their president for answers. Truman responded as he often did to crises. He pulled together a blue ribbon committee of representatives from labor and management to find a solution. They had none.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
List of Figures and Tables / Introduction, Brianne Donaldson / Part I: Our Past Cannot Meat the Future / Beyond Meat, Ethan Brown / 1. Towards 2050: The Projected Costs and Possible Alternatives to Industrial Livestock Production, Brian G. Henning / 2. An Ethical Consumer Capitalism, Steven McMullen / 3.The “Vegetable Basket Project”: Tracking the Increase of Meat Production and Consumption in China Since the 1980s, Song Tian, with Yao Wang and Mo Zhao. Translated by Yuan Gao / 4. The Rise of Non-Veg: Meat and Egg Consumption and Production in Contemporary India, Ana Bajželj and Shivani Bothra / 5. Seeing Meat Without Animals: Attitudes for the Future, Adam Wolpa / Part II: Nourishing Innovation/s / Miyoko’s Kitchen: Artisan Vegan Cheese, Miyoko Schinner / 6. Meat Without Flesh, Michael Marder / 7. The Future of Animals, The Future of Food: Two Organizations Working to Change Public Attitudes and Appetites, Jaya Bhumitra and Bruce Friedrich / 8. New Harvest: Building the Cellular Agriculture Economy, Isha Datar, Gilonne d’Origny, and Erin Kim / 9. Beyond Happy Meat: The (im)Possibilities of “Humane,” “Local” and“Compassionate” Meat, Vasile Stănescu / 10. The Future of Industrial Agriculture: An Environmental Justice Perspective, Joseph A. Tuminello / 11. Exploiting Fantasy: Overconformity in Animal Agriculture, Meatless Meat, and Animal Ethics, Brianne Donaldson / Part III. Matters of Taste / Hampton Creek—Dear You, Josh Tetrick / 12. Eating Prometheus’ Liver: Geoengineered Meat from 1875 to the Present, Michael Anderson / 13. Vegan Soul: Moving Beyond (animal) Meat In Black Communities, Christopher Carter / 14. The Sexual Politics of Meatless Meat: (in)Edible Others and The Myth of Flesh Without Sacrifice, Rebekah Sinclair / 15. Ethical Spectacles and Seitan-Making: Beyond the Sexual Politics of Meat—A Response to Sinclair, Carol J. Adams / 16. Making Meaning Without Meat: A How-to Guide, Aaron Gross / 17. Altermobilities: Animals, Mobility, and the Future of Meat, Matthew Calarco / 18. Epilogue, Christopher Carter / Appendix A: A (non-exhaustive) List of Plant-Based and Cultured Meat Food Producers, Funders, and Innovation, Saadullah Bashir / Appendix B: Strategies for Plant-Based Food Producers / Bibliography / Biographies / Index