Review Essay Views from the Plate and the Plant: Four Books About Industrial Meat Processing Ken C. Erickson Ken C. Erickson is associate research professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Meat: A Natural Symbol. Nick Fiddis. New York: Routledge, 1991. Meatpackers and Beef Barons. Carol Andreas. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1994. Animal to Edible. Noelie Vialles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Any Way You Cut It: Meat Processing and Small-Town America. Donald D. Stull, Michael J. Broadway, and David Griffith, eds. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995. Our view of meat can encompass a much wider cultural landscape than that covered by a place setting. Getting that broader view—the view that raises so many questions about taste, distinction, gustatory ritual, butchers and industrial work, and value—can start from almost anywhere. For Stull, Broadway, and Griffith, it starts with meat processors in the United States. For Vialles, the wider view comes from slaugh- ter plants—hers are in southwest France. Fiddis's view of meat begins at the table; Andreas's lens is focused on one Colorado packing town. These books are about linking the making of meat with the meaning of meat. A View from the Plate Do vegetarians eat animal crackers? Bill Keane, Family Circle, April 2,1996. Fiddis's Meat: A Natural Symbol is drawn from the author's doctoral work at the University of Edinburgh. Be- cause the book is a study of meat, writes Fiddis, it is also a study of "us." The data that support his analysis are culled from academic and popular sources, individual conversa- tions, and "a series of about fifty tape-recorded interviews" (viii). Fiddis is interested in how things work generally, so it might be missing the point to worry too much about just who it was Fiddis talked to, where, and when.But the British "us" Fiddis seems most concerned with barely touches on Britain's urban diversity, and one wonders, finally, whether "us" means Scottish carnivores (and their vegan counterparts), or the English variety. Fiddis's "meatology" lacks clear cultural boundaries, but many of its implications are important. Fiddis's "meatology" lacks clear cultural boundaries, but many of its implications are important. Fiddis untangles the position that meat is a "naturally" preferred and preeminent human food: an important argu- ment. This terrain will be familiar to North American readers: it is a well-tilled field. Fiddis explores the use of meat as a metaphor for maleness, strength, and vitality. This discussion, of course, draws on Levi-Strauss's venerable exegesis on cooking. It ties meat consumption to other aspects of culture, like table manners. So those of us raised with midwestern, middle-class, Scottish-American women monitoring our behavior at the table may be surprised to discover this evolutionary sequence: With time the knife evolves into an implement used only as a cutter to its gradual bluntening as it becomes more of a pusher to the modern American convention of its being used to dissect food at the beginning of a meal, thereafter being left completely alone (101). While Fiddis may not have joined any midwestern family at the dinner table (and while we may never know his source of information about evolving American table manners), few would disagree that meat is polysemic. It can mean different things at different times. Fiddis argues that the value of meat's meanings is shifting as per-capita consumption de- creases. When vegetarians reject meat, they reject a whole complex of values associated with meat's powerful—and often masculine—meanings. Those who study the meat industry would do well to attend to the cultural-ecological issues raised by Fiddis's exploration of meat-as-symbol. Large-scale meat production is implicated in well-known glo- bal environmental problems. Changes in our attitudes about meat have both environmental and symbolic consequences. Culture & Agriculture 29 Vol. 18, No. 1 Spring 1996