The Animal in Closed-loop Food Innovations: Mythologization, Technology and Relations

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Published: Dec 30, 2024
Keywords:
circular food systems animal welfare technology mythologization human-animal relations sustainable innovations swedish food-tech companies Derrida Haraway closed-loop systems climate change animal ethics circular economies food production animal exploitation technoculture human exceptionalism synthesis journal national and kapodistrian university of athens nkua journal of comparative literary studies
Emelie Pilflod-Larsson
Mid Sweden University
Abstract

This article focuses on human-nonhuman animal relations in the context of closed-loop food innovations. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I Am (1997) and Donna Haraway’s The Companion Species Manifesto (2003) and When Species Meet (2008), I explore how these relations are constructed and mediated by technology. Closed-loop systems, designed to minimize waste through circular production systems, recently entered the food industry and were praised as climate-friendly solutions to its environmental impact. Focusing on narratives from three Swedish food-tech companies, this study analyses the companies’ closed-loop food innovations as neoliberal “creation myths,” invoking Derrida’s reading of the naming of animals in the Biblical creation myth. I conclude that the narratives reveal how technological innovations are both idealized and mythologized in our time, while their violent implications for animals in food production remain unproblematized. Although the companies emphasized the sustainability benefits of their closed-loop innovations, the narratives did not include animal welfare, nor did they offer a new way of living with and relating to nature.

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Author Biography
Emelie Pilflod-Larsson , Mid Sweden University

Emelie Pilflod-Larsson is a Lecturer in Sociology at Mid Sweden University. Her current research centers on gardening and food security, where her focus is on human-nature relations, social relations, and ideology. She has also conducted research within the areas of healthcare restructuring and rural studies.

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