"Mad Cow" Disease and the Animal Industrial Complex

Abstract

A possible link between bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly called "mad cow" disease, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the fatal human equivalent, has been announced. Both of these diseases are forms of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies that attack the brain and destroy its nerve cells. That a disease identified with cows since 1985 could possibly be spread to human beings by eating meat from infected animals prompted a crisis for the meat industry and consumers. Most responses to this crisis represent a search for anthropocentric solutions to an anthropocentric problem: that is, improve the meat supply rather than examine the practice of meat eating. In this essay, the author examines this beefeating crisis through ecofeminist analysis, which resists such anthropocentricity. From an ecofeminist perspective, the beefeating crisis represents a small piece of the larger animal industrial complex and its production practices and attitudes. This analysis explains why this is a problem, and stresses a closer examination and a possible rejection of meat eating.