Novara FM: The Empty Promise of Ethical Meat w/ Amber Husain
Novara Media
Novara Media
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 28 July 2023
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The global meat industry has grown fivefold since the 1960s and is still growing. Yet sales of vegan and so-called ‘plant-based’ alternatives are soaring, as more of us question our relationship with meat and our attitudes towards animal life and the planet’s health.
In her provocative new book Meat Love, writer Amber Husain plucks examples from Greek tragedy to bourgeois restaurant culture to interrogate our most well-meaning assumptions, revealing the empty promise of “ethical” meat. Does eating the whole animal make killing it OK? Can you really love a creature and send it to be slaughtered? And why would Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall want to cosplay as a peasant?
Amber tells Eleanor Penny about the cultural conditions that sustain our desire for flesh while devaluing both human and animal life.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode of Navara FM was made possible by your donations, just like everything else |
| 0:06.8 | we do in Navara Media. |
| 0:08.9 | If you can, please consider donating one hour's wage per month or whatever you can afford |
| 0:15.3 | and help us build people-powered media. |
| 0:18.7 | Just go to navara.media-forward-slash-support to set up a regulation of any size. |
| 0:26.4 | We couldn't do it without you. |
| 0:28.4 | So thank you. |
| 0:53.4 | Hello and welcome to Navara FM. |
| 0:56.2 | I'm Eleanor Penny. |
| 0:59.3 | The global meat industry is a triumph of capital. |
| 1:03.6 | It's grown in size fivefold since the 1960s, and last year it pulled in over $1.2 trillion, |
| 1:10.4 | a figure that's only set to rise. |
| 1:14.0 | But on the other hand, in recent years there's also been a 40% rise in veganism in the UK alone, |
| 1:20.4 | and sales of plant-based foods have grown three times faster than overall food sales. |
| 1:25.9 | More and more people are questioning our relationship with meat eating and how it shapes |
| 1:30.1 | our attitudes to the rest of the natural world. |
| 1:34.3 | In her new book Meat Love, writer and author Amber Hussain asks how we can collectively |
| 1:39.5 | reimagine our connection to animal life, starting with how we look at the animals that end |
| 1:44.3 | up dead in our ovens and on our plates. |
| 1:48.0 | Alongside this latest title, Amber Hussain is the author of Replace Me from Peninsula |
| 1:52.3 | Press in 2021, a book about work, desire and the sweeping late capitalist fear of being |
| 1:58.1 | replaced. |
... |
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