Kill Your Favorite Dish: Examining the Role of New Carnivorism in perpetuating Meat Eating

Scholars and activists opposing the killing of nonhuman animals have long shared the assumption that the invisibility of the animals killed for meat is one of the most sig- nificant factors when it comes to explaining how meat eating is perpetuated. However, a recent tendency towards a new visibility of these animals and their physical trans- formation into meat fundamentally challenges this assumption. The present paper addresses this discrepancy by examining an example of what has been described as “New Carnivorism” in the form of a Danish TV show called Kill Your Favorite Dish. The paper finds that in the show, visibility is in fact instrumental in justifying meat eating, as it is constitutive of a complex narrative about awareness, authenticity, pleasure, and respect. This points to a need for more nuanced understandings of how invisibility and visibility of nonhuman animals are at work in enabling the continuance of meat eating.