Sustainable exploitation : the political ecology of the Livestock Revolution

Animal agriculture emits more greenhouse gases than the global transport sector, is the single largest driver of biodiversity loss, and contributes to the crossing of almost every other planetary boundary as well. The industrial exploitation of yearly more than 70 billion land animals and a trillion aquatic animals for profit is strongly linked to social injustice like hunger and colonialism. Nevertheless, international institutions anticipate a Livestock Revolution, an upsurge in the consumption of animal source foods of around 70 percent by 2050, increasing the number of slaughtered land animals to 120 billion via sustainable intensification. Despite its immense socioeconomic and ecological impact, the Livestock Revolution remains unexplored and uncontested, both in academia and politics. This thesis scrutinizes the discourses and structures fueling the Livestock Revolution, it interrogates its inevitability and its consequences for animals, society, and the environment. Performing a sociological discourse analysis of reports on the Livestock Revolution from 1999 to 2016, the dissertation demonstrates that the Revolution is not unavoidable but rather a process promoted in view of stagnating turnovers in the Minority World. The widely shared biologistic assertion that population growth, income increase, and urbanization in the Majority World provoke an increasing consumption of animal protein conceals the discursive and structural settings of the Livestock Revolution, which, ultimately, universalize the Minority World’s meatified system of production and consumption. To condense the Revolution’s chief characteristics, the thesis proposes the concept of “sustainable exploitation”, underscoring, on the one hand, the Revolution’s promise of green growth, poverty alleviation, and environmental stewardship, and, on the other hand, its detrimental effects on farmed animals, workers, communities, and nature at large – in sum, the paradoxes of ecological modernization theory. In its uniformity, the Livestock Revolution discourse is highly successful; counterhegemonic perspectives are exceptional. It is thus crucial to dismantle the symbolic power of the Minority World’s imperial diet and to reveal that the Livestock Revolution is not a matter of fate but a question of power and capital interests

The Evolution of Diversity

Since the beginning of time, the pre-biological and the biological world have seen a steady increase in complexity of form and function based on a process of combination and re-combination. The current modern synthesis of evolution known as the neo-Darwinian theory emphasises population genetics and does not explain satisfactorily all other occurrences of evolutionary novelty. The authors suggest that symbiosis and hybridisation and the more obscure processes such as polyploidy, chimerism and lateral transfer are mostly overlooked and not featured sufficiently within evolutionary theory. They suggest, therefore, a revision of the existing theory including its language, to accommodate the scientific findings of recent decades

Toward a Constructive Engagement: Agricultural Biotechnology as a Public Health Incentive in Less-developed Countries

Discourses on global public health crises, especially as they impact the less-developed world, focus mostly on the issue of access to life-saving drugs for needy populations. Also, they implicate the misalignment of global pharmaceutical research and development (R&D) agenda with the health needs of the poor. Equally attracting significant attention is the role of intellectual property in driving up the cost of drugs and exacerbating the drug access freeze to needy populations. More often, the conceptual strings of these discussions are woven around a complex interaction of themes, including those of globalization, the development narrative, and strategic changes in international lawmaking, especially in the areas of intellectual property, international trade, and the correlating supervisory international institutional and global governance regimes

Soybean and Nutrition

Worldwide, soybean seed proteins represent a major source of amino acids for human and animal nutrition. Soybean seeds are an important and economical source of protein in the diet of many developed and developing countries. Soy is a complete protein and soy-foods are rich in vitamins and minerals. Soybean protein provides all the essential amino acids in the amounts needed for human health. Recent research suggests that soy may also lower risk of prostate, colon and breast cancers as well as osteoporosis and other bone health problems and alleviate hot flashes associated with menopause. This volume is expected to be useful for student, researchers and public who are interested in soybean