Meurtre alimentaire et rentabilité

Abstract

The breeding and the slaughter of the animals intended for the human consumption do not escape the exacerbated constraints of profitability. But this requirement of the profit—justifying a scientific, technical, and commercial rationalization of the practices pushed to the extreme—leads to an obliteration of the animals as well as the human beings in charge of transforming them into products. If we examine the chain which goes from the stockbreeder to the consumer such as it is depicted in French works of 20th and 21st centuries, we attend an unprecedented transformation of the relations between animals and human beings. As a matter of fact these relations don't exist anymore because the dissimulation of the “food murder” is refined until inhumanity.

Keywords:

• Bouchers
• Rentabilité
• Abattage industriel
• Animaux
• Meurtre alimentaire

Notes

1. Cet article entre dans le cadre du programme ANR « Animots : animaux et animalité dans la littérature de langue française (XX^e–XXI^e siècles) ».

2. Selon le TLFi, « travail » viendrait de « tripalium » qui désignait un dispositif de contention pour les interventions difficiles sur les gros animaux domestiques.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alain Romestaing

Alain Romestaing is maître de conférences in French literature at l'Université Paris Descartes. He is a member of l'UMR 7172-THALIM at l'Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3. He has written and directed many works on Jean Giono, the question of the body, and on animality and animals.