Globally, we eat around 318 million tonnes of meat every year. By 2050, that figure is projected to reach 517 million tonnes. This rising number reflects how farming animals like pigs, chickens and cows for consumption by humans has been largely normalised as essential to our existence. This stark separation between humans and other animals was a core value of European colonisation of places like the US.
In New England, as English colonisers’ practice of continually farming maize without giving the fields a rest was destroying soils – leading to reduced crop output – the English began hunting local animals for extra food. When these species became depleted, they started to tame and rear domesticated animals to feed expanding coloniser and enslaved populations.
This practice of taming animals was used by colonisers not only to distinguish themselves from the native “savages” they believed to be in their way, but also to assert land ownership through making animal domestication a precondition for claiming private property rights.
