Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

The global non-response among mainstream public sector institutions to compelling evidence against diets that prioritize eating animals and the products derived from them speaks to the globalized effacement of farmed animal subjectivities and the transnational corporate vested interests keen to maintain current levels of farmed animal exploitation. The mainstream de-emphasis of animal-based agriculture in global discourses about climate change, sustainability, food sovereignty, and human health has some notable exceptions, perhaps most visibly on the global stage, through the positions taken by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the United Nations Environmental Program, and the World Health Organization. All of these UN agencies promote plant-based eating and accelerated movement away from meat-centric diets especially for citizens of the Global North whose animal-based consumption is high and relies on intensive agricultural methods. This paper, using critical discourse analysis, considers the media framing UN findings and reports encouraging the globalizing of vegan diets have received in affluent countries in which meat and dairy-centric diets are normative as well as the uptake of the UN positions, if any, in government laws and policies. The paper focuses on Canada as a case study.