Abstract
This article argues that a fusion of critical animal studies and postcolonial critique affords food systems scholars a richer understanding of Western media narratives regarding a “bushmeat problem” during the 2014 Ebola outbreak. To do so, I perform a rhetorical analysis of expert, journalistic, and editorial texts disseminated through outlets with high economic and/or social capital in North American and Western European countries. My analysis demonstrates three overarching themes in these texts regarding the intersections of bushmeat and Ebola, which I describe as: 1) biosecurity; 2) conservation; and 3) development. By invoking an ethic of anti-speciesism and decoloniality, I not only demonstrate the colonial logics at play in the 2014 Ebola outbreak, but also name an insidious ideology fundamental to food systems discourse in postcolonial contexts: carnistic colonialism.
Highlights
In 2014, West Africa experienced an outbreak of the deadly Ebola Virus Disease, colloquially shortened to its filovirus strain, Ebola
Consider American practices of de-beaking chickens and taildocking pigs, or force-feeding geese for foie gras, or intensive confinement of animals leading to psychotic breaks, or recorded instances of slaughterhouse employees beating “downed” animals—all despite readily available alternatives such as legumes, nuts, vitamins, plant-based fibers, governmentallysubsidized soy, etc. For those who would label African bushmeat as unethical because bushmeat animals are endangered, again note how carnistic colonialism renders invisible the species degradation involved in industrialized agriculture
Assessing how bushmeat narratives functioned during the 2014 Ebola outbreak elucidates the connections between food, flesh, andcolonial politics
Summary
In 2014, West Africa experienced an outbreak of the deadly Ebola Virus Disease, colloquially shortened to its filovirus strain, Ebola. Rhetorical criticisms of the food production/ consumption practices and public health discourses during the 2014 Ebola outbreak are incomplete when terms like “food” are left un-interrogated and when “meat” is assumed to be a product of specific animals raised and killed in specific ways. This conclusion is especially apparent during viral outbreaks of deadly diseases, zoonotic viruses. I demonstrate how contemporary medical discourses surrounding the 2014 Ebola epidemic followed a familiar discursive pattern in which both “nature” and “natives” were presented as unclean, uneducated, and immoral, and in need of moral (and not necessarily medical) interventions
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