2025/11/01 by Maida Kosatica · 1 voice · 1 citation
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Environmental Science · #Organic Food and Agriculture #Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact #Culinary Culture and Tourism
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0047404525101784
openalex publication_date 2025/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/12/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Abstract Inspired by a discourse-centred commodity chain analysis (Thurlow 2020), this study investigates beefy landscapes materialized in three organic grocery store chains in Germany. Organic food stores produce meat-intensive texts that may contradict their widely promoted and mediatized claims to sustainability, complicating the pleas for reducing meat consumption which is essential to limit global warming. Focusing on organic beef, with the largest climate footprint of any protein source, the study looks into semiotic material detached from scientific findings on environmental issues and composing an alarming part of the globalized clean food discourse that masks unsustainable realities. By putting forward cows as icons of organic cattle farming and the effortless convenience of preparation, while erasing environment-related impact categories, beef consumption is perpetuated. The article ultimately shows that our ‘meaty routines’ (Sundet, Hansen, & Wethal 2023) are deeply rooted in environmental escapism as we follow the hype to eat right. (Organic beef, Anthropocene discourse, semiotic landscape, discourse-centred commodity chain analysis, (Social) Life Cycle Assessment)