호주 쇠고기 산업의 생산주의, 문화, 그리고 지속가능성

Abstract

South Korea imports a significant amount of Australian beef and Korean consumers, in general, have trust in the quality of Australian beef, especially vis-à-vis US beef. While Korean consumers do not know exactly how Australian beef is produced, they consider Australian beef is ‘clean and green,’ in part due to aggressive promotional activities by Meat & Livestock Australia. Koreans tend to think that Australian cattle are raised on nutritious and unpolluted grasslands under environmentally sustainable conditions, which reinforces their trust in the safety of Australian beef. This paper shows that, contrary to Korean consumers’ taken-for-granted expectation, the Australian beef industry is heavily influenced by productivism which emphasizes maximization of profit and market competitiveness, often at the expense of environmental sustainability. The full picture of Australian beef industry is complicated as diverse actors such as graziers, organisations like Meat & Livestock Australia, along with green groups,have different views and interpretations of the meaning of sustainability. Following in-depth interviews with graziers (beef producers) in Central Queensland, we argue that natural resource management practices in the Australian beef industry are driven by a complex interaction of cultural norms and the global political economy. Although many contest the environmental sustainability of the cattle industry, the productivist ethos is deeply embedded – to the extent that producers often equate sustainability with economic viability. Indeed, there were very few in the study who accepted that Australian beef production practices compromised the natural environment. While there is a challenge ‘from without’ by environmentalists and even Asian consumers to a lesser degree, defense ‘from within’ by graziers, who maintain that their current beef production methods are sustainable, is quite robust.