This collection explains changing meat cultures through studies of both everyday food practices and the political economy of industrialized animal husbandry. We do this through case studies from 'affluent' and 'developing' countries. These contributions will shed light on global food connections and show how global, industrialized food and fodder systems have changed the way we relate to animals, their meat, and what kind of animals' meat we eat. In the past few years, controversies around meat have arisen around industrialization and globalization of meat production, often pivoting around health, environmental problems, and animal welfare issues. Although meat increasingly figures as a problem, most consumers' knowledge of animal husbandry and meat is more absent than ever. How is meat produced today, and where? How do we consume meat, and how have our consumption habits changed? Why have these changes occurred, and what are the social and cultural consequences of these changes? This book takes the reader on a geographic, ethnographic and historical journey to rural and urban areas and arenas across the world, and tells a series of stories of the dramatic changes in meat consumption.

The staggering rate of environmental pollution and animal abuse despite constant efforts to educate the public and raise awareness challenges the prevailing belief that the absence of serious action is a consequence of a poorly informed public. In recent decades alternative explanations of social and political inaction have emerged, including denialism. Challenging the information-deficit model, denialism proposes that people actively avoid unpleasant information that threatens their established worldviews, lifestyles, and identities. Environmental and Animal Abuse Denial: Averting Our Gaze analyzes how people avoid awareness of climate change, environmental pollution, animal abuse, and the animal industrial complex. The contributors examine the theory of denialism in regards to environmental pollution and animal abuse through a range of disciplines, including social psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, cultural history and law.