Biochemical Scale: A Response to Dinesh Wadiwel

Andrew Barry

doi:10.52537/humanimalia.28280

Author(s)

Andrew Barry University College London Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52537/humanimalia.28280

Keywords:

metabolism, scale, animals, biochemistry, methionine, urban

Abstract

The scale of global meat production is vast, but how is its scalability achieved? This essay addresses this question through a response to Dinesh Wadiwel’s analysis of the gestational and metabolic labour of animals. While valuing his focus on labour, I argue that an account of the scalability of meat production also needs to attend to the biochemistry of metabolism as well as its industrialization. Following the work of Maan Barua and Hannah Landecker, the essay zooms in on the critical importance of methionine supplement to poultry feed in forging relations between the biochemistry of the chicken’s body and the wider circuits of an industrialized metabolism.

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Author Biography

Andrew Barry, University College London

Andrew Barry is Professor of Human Geography at University College London and co-convenor of UCL Anthropocene. Andrew studied chemistry and the history and philosophy of science as an undergraduate, and previously taught at Brunel University, Goldsmiths, and Oxford University, before joining UCL. He is author of Political Machines: Governing a Technological Society (Athlone), Material Politics: Disputes along the Pipeline (Wiley-Blackwell), and co-editor of Interdisciplinarity: Reconfigurations of the Social and Natural Sciences (Routledge), Chemical Exposures: Toxicity in the Anthropocene (UCL press, forthcoming) and Carbon Times (Duke University press, forthcoming).