carnism

Noun

carnism (uncountable)

1. The human ideology that supports the slaughter of certain animals and the consumption of their meat or other products (leather from skin, etc).
   • Mass terms like “meat,” “hamburger,” and “leather” used instead of “dead animal,” “cow,” or “skin” encourage consumers to forget that they are eating or using a dead animal. ... The commercial influence of a pervasive and legalized meat industry is strong, which may account for why speciesism and...2012, Joshua Frye, Michael Bruner, The Rhetoric of Food: Discourse, Materiality, and Power, →ISBN, page 107
   • Francophobia and anti-popery were coupled with and then merged into this ideology of carnism. As Hogarth historian Jenny Uglow writes: '[t]he oozing red meat, the feasts and freedoms— like the wearing of leather shoes instead of wooden clogs—set the English against the feeble, starving peasants of...2018, Piers Beirne, Murdering Animals, →ISBN, page 143

   Antonyms:

   vegetarianism, veganism

2. The practice of eating animal meat or using animal products (leather, etc).
   • Now we need a universal consensus about standards of decency toward ecosystems, individuals from other species, and Earth. We cannot do this unless we end carnism.2013, Will Anderson, This Is Hope: Green Vegans and the New Human Ecology
   • So violent systems such as carnism need to use a set of psychological and social defense mechanisms so that humane people participate in inhumane practices without fully realizing what they are doing. The primary defense of carnism is […]2014, Julieanna Hever, The Vegiterranean Diet: The New and Improved Mediterranean Diet

   Antonyms:

   vegetarianism, veganism