Live, Die, Buy, Eat

Front matter

Live, Die, Buy, Fat

Live, Die, Buy, Eat. These words represent a chain of events which today is disconnected. In the past few years, controversies around meat have arisen around industrialization and globalization of meat production, often pivoting around health, environmental issues, and animal welfare. Although meat increasingly figures as a problem, most consumers’ knowledge of animal husbandry and meat production is more absent than ever. Tracing a historical process of alienation along three distinct axes, the authors show how the animal origin of meat is covered up, rationalized, forgotten, excused, neglected, and denied. 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? Using Norway as a case study, this book examines the dramatic changes in meat production and consumption over the last 150 years. With a wide range of historical sources, together with interviews and observation at farms, slaughterhouses, and production units, as well as analyses of contemporary texts and digital sources, Live, Die, Buy, Eat explores the transformation of animal husbandry, meat production and consumption, together with its cultural consequences. It will appeal to scholars of anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, geography, and history with an interest in food, agriculture, environment, and culture.

Kristian Bjorkdahl is a rhetoric scholar who holds a PhD in rhetoric from the University of Oslo, Norway, where he is Associate Professor at the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies. He does work on moral and political rhetoric, the idea of the Nordics, pandemic preparedness and response, as well as on research communication. He is co-editor of several books, including Rhetorical Animals: Boundaries of the Human in the Study of Persuasion (Lexington 2018), Pandemics, Publics, and Politics: Staging Responses to Public Health Crises (Palgrave Macmillan 2019), and Do-Gooders at the End of Aid: Scandinavian Humanitarianism in the 21st Century (Cambridge 2021). He is also co-editor of the Norwegian language rhetoric magazine Kairos.

Conclusion

Sources and References Bibliography Index vii

Figures

0.1 1.1

1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7

1.8 1.9 1.10

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 25

3.1

3.2 3.3 3.4

3.5 3.6

Arve Juritzen’s Facebook update from October 10, 2014 An old Norwegian pig, from before the start of professional breeding

Boy lying on pig, 1930s

“The Dairy Maid’s Day Off”

A våkekone (“watcher”), that is, farrowing crate

Modern Norwegian pig farm

Flow chart illustrating “scrapping causes” in pig breeding Two Topigs Norsvin “terminal boars” variety, and one “parent sow” variety

Woman feeding hens in the courtyard, early 1900s Close-up of chickens from modern Norwegian chicken farm “An Ode to the Grass-Eaters Among Us.” Gilde advertisement featuring a version of the iconic free range, grass-fed cow. The caption reads, “Many advocate for a greener diet in Norway. Luckily, someone is already at it.” Farm slaughter of a pig. Photographer: Dagfinn Gronoset Oslo Slaughterhouse, interior, ca. 1935

A bouterole, or “slaughter mask”

Nord-Østerdalen Slaughterhouse

Slaughterhouse workers by conveyor belt at Nortura’s chicken facility at Herland, Norway’s biggest. Almost completely robotized and automated, the facility at full capacity kills and processes 12,500 chickens an hour, or

3.5 chickens a second

Bryne market place, 1963, with one butcher shop on either side of adjoining lower building

Ulleval Haveby butcher shop, ca. 1926

Team of butchers processing a carcass at Brodrene Bothner Ulleval Haveby delicatessen, ca. 1926

Photographer: Ingimundur Eyolfson

Model of self-service store interior, 1950

Ulleval Haveby supermarket, ca. 1964. Photo: Atelier Rude

Figures

Tubularized minced meat, of the cooperative's Gilde brand Gilde "meat hostess,” posing for the camera, ca. 1964 Photo: Foto Normann

Meat choppers

Meat grinder on wood plate

Housewife posing with child and freezer, advertisement from 1950s. Photo: Atelier Rude

Image of pig, divided into cuts

Image of hare being flayed, accompanying a recipe for hare Line drawing of pig, divided into cuts

Varieties of minced meat

193 237 239

243 254 257 258 260

Tables

1.1 4.1

Hens per farm, on farms with hens, over time Total production of meat for sale and home use, in million kilograms

TT

Acknowledgments

Having spent several years working on this book, we have naturally acquired many debts — so many, in fact, that keeping tabs on them all has not been possible. As the manuscript was all done, and we sat down to write our acknowledgments (sadly, the only form of repayment academics have to offer their creditors), we realized that a fair amount of research actually remained: Who helped make this book possible, and how?

We cannot answer that question in full. We are very likely to have forgotten someone, and besides, we would not want our acknowledgments to extend into a chapter in its own right. The book is long enough as it is. There are three people, though, whose contributions to this project we simply could not forget, for the simple reason that they were instrumental in initiating it. First, we want to thank food historian Henry Notaker, for suggesting an ingeniously simple way to look for what had disappeared from cookbooks; not only did his trick help us toward our first publications in this area, it convinced us that there was much more to find. Next, we want to thank Andrew Meirion Jones, whom we have in fact never met, but who reviewed the book containing one of said publications. He noted that our chapter had “an interesting argument that could have been developed with a wider study,” and that we had a “strong idea that [...] could easily spawn a wider research project.” Well, we took Professor Jones quite literally, and think of this book as a direct response to his (in fact explicit) call, “I wanted to know more!” Finally, while professor Jones’ enthusiastic frustration made an impression on us, the decision to embark on this project was taken only after Neil Jordan, at Routledge (then Ashgate), reached out to suggest exactly what Jones had called for, a book. The larger project was not, we can attest, so easily spawned as professor Jones assumed it would be, and the ease with which we accepted Neil Jordan's offer turned out to be inversely proportional to the difficulty we had in delivering something for him to publish.

We doubt we would have arrived at all, had it not been for the fact that colleagues and friends sustained interest in the project even in periods where ours waned. Importantly, we have found outlets for various parts of our research along the way, and this has been tremendously important for us. Mickey Gjerris, Rune Klingenberg, Gitte Meyer, and Geir Tveit published xii Acknowledgments one of our early pieces in an important Danish-language volume on meat, Kød, while Rane Willerslev and Dorthe Refslund did the same in an Englishlanguage volume, Taming Time, Timing Death. In the latter instance, we were incidentally referred to, at one point, as “new death scholars,” and while this was not exactly how we self-identified at the time, we were spurred on by it! Our work has also appeared as part of edited volume collaborations with Tone Druglitrø, for the volume Animal Housing and Human- Animal Relations (where we also leaned heavily on the support of Henry Buller); Tomaz GruSovnik and Reingard Spannring, for Environmental and Animal Abuse Denial; and Arve Hansen, for Changing Meat Cultures. In a related context, we worked with Alex C. Parrish, for the volume Rhetorical Animals. We would like to thank all the editors who have invited our work, as well as our co-editors on these projects, as well as everyone who took part in associated workshops and other academic exchanges. These have not only aided our progress, giving us important, interdisciplinary reviews from peers, they have been highly worthwhile events in themselves.

Over the years, we have been invited to present ongoing research in academic and popular settings, and have received invaluable feedback by academic peers, stakeholders, and members of the public. We would like to thank Liv Emma Thorsen, Kristin Asdal, and everyone else involved in and around the Kultrans project, as well as Rune Ellefsen, Ragnhild Sollund, and Guri Larsen, who took us in, despite our total lack of qualifications within criminology. Our contact with the Animal Ethics conference in Oslo, and with the Council for Animal Ethics, gave us opportunities we would otherwise not have had, and for that we are grateful. Thanks also to Bjarne Rogan and the Centre Franco-Norvegien en sciences sociales et humaines, for a stipend allowing us to partake in discussions with French colleagues on meat, and to Marie-Dominique Ribereau-Gayon and Patricia Pellegrini, for introductions to scholars at (Le Centre national de la recherche scientifique) CNRS — Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, and not least, to Noelie Vialles, for fruitful discussions about carnivorism in all its shapes and forms. Susan McHugh, Erica Fudge, and Mara Miele have given us important feedback in various animal studies networks, conferences, and meetings — among other places in Lillehammer. Jone Salomonsen, Marion Grau, and Devin Zuber invited us to contribute at the REDO workshop at Berkeley GTU, when we were still trying to orient ourselves in some disturbing archive material about old slaughter rituals, and comments given at this workshop made us sharpen our arguments. Sophia Efstathiou kindly invited us to give an introductory key note to the MEATigation project, providing us with a particularly well suited audience for our findings. Taina Syrjåmaa introduced us to her network of scholars working on industrial agriculture through the Culture of Unsustainability project (UNSUS), and let us present our research on two occasions.

Research assistant Iris Leikanger helped us get through some of the archives we were given access to, and has leafed through heaps of old documents in the archives of Consumption Research Norway (SIFO) and

Acknowledgments xiii

MatPrat, looking for relevant unpublished sources. Her work has been invaluable, and we are very grateful to her for her observant mind and keen sense of order. Unni Kjærnes and Arne Dulsrud told us about the potential the SIFO archive might have, and Annechen Bahr Bugge was kind enough to point usin the right direction. Thanks go also to Ane Ohrvik and key bearer Line Esborg at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental languages, University of Oslo, and the Norsk Folkeminnesamling (NFS archives), as well as to Audun Kjus, at Norsk Folkemuseum, for granting access to the Norwegian Ethnological Research (NEG) questionnaires. We are grateful both to present and past collectors and curators of such amazing banks of knowledge about everyday life in the past and present. We would also like to extend our gratitude to Anne Eriksen for lending us her office space just across the hall to the NFS archive; this was much appreciated. Thanks to Runar Sørli, Heidi Ousdal, Live Skinnes, Marianne Olssøn, Gry Beate Knapstad, Eli Bjørklid, and Ole Bakkebø for informative and important discussions about Norwegian agriculture, and Svein Dich Mathiesen and Rávdná Biret Márjá E. Sara for rich discussions on slaughter.

While writing this book, we have involved just about everyone we know, pestering them to take part in pilot studies, put us into contact with relevant informants, sites, companies, or stories, or help with various practical tasks, big or small. The consequence has been that our list of friends and acquaintances, who will here remain unnamed, has grown considerably along the journey. We are grateful to everyone who granted us interviews, conversations, or access to information — farmers, slaughterers, shopkeepers, and eaters alike. Thank you for giving us access to inaccessible places, for sharing insights into matters we were ignorant about. Another unnamed group is anonymous even to us, but no less important, namely, the anonymous reviewers of the articles and book chapters we have published along the way; their feedback has greatly improved our work.

There is no place like home, and our own institution, the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo, has been just that. The Centre has graciously accommodated our interest in meat and allowed us to spend a lot of time over many years doing research on a project that was not particularly well funded. We are very grateful that we have been allowed space to work on this book in between other projects, and also, that the Centre decided to fund open access publication of the book. In particular, our gratitude goes out to former director, Kristi Anne Stølen, present director, Sidsel Roalkvam, head of office, Gitte Egenberg, and, not least, Kristoffer Ring, who informed us that it is very rare that a 300-page computer document — even if deleted — cannot be retrieved. Our most special thanks of all, however, go out to our nestor, Desmond McNeill, who meticulously read our every word, reminding us always that, while creative patchworking can take you quite the distance, rigor and logic are needed to go all the way.

Finally, a heartfelt thanks to our families and especially to Christine and Olav, for putting up with us and with the peculiarities of academic labor.