This research paper consists of a summary and review of Jeremy Rifkin's book Beyond Beef.
Rifkin traces the changing but nonetheless central role of cattle as civilization evolved. In ancient cultures, such as that of Egypt, and in the later Roman Mithran cult, the bull was revered as a god and as a symbol of fertility and martial/masculine prowess. The great nomadic tribes of Central Asia valued cattle as possessions, as well as a blood sacrifice to the gods. As the European economies developed and their populations cultivated a taste for beef, cattle became a commodity and an important source of wealth and power. First introduced into the New World by the Spanish, cattle ranching dominated the societies of many Central and South American nations.
Cattle production and consumption: the making of the modern world
In the 19th century, large sections of agricultural, pastoral and forest-covered land were devoted to cattle grazing, first in England, then in Scotland and Ireland and finally in the Western Hemisphere and other areas suitable for the raising of cattle. The effect of the enclosure of lands for grazing in the British Isles was to eject tenant farmers from their ancestral lands and create large numbers of impoverished migratory laborers who were exploited by the factories which sprang up during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution. In Ireland, farmers were forced to rely on the potato, a crop which could be grown in small areas and whose failure due to disease led to the great famine and mass emigrations of the 1840s.
The natural climate of the American Great Plains made them a logical place to graze cattle to satisfy the growing appetite for beef of the Western world; however, the development of cattle ranching was dependent on the creation on the necessary pre-conditions for the establishment of a modern system of cattle production, slaughtering and distribution. First, Rifkin describes how "the buf...