Seasonality of meat

Posted on 14/10/2020 by Boudewijn Boon
At present time, the seasonality of animal products such as meat, dairy and eggs seems either hidden to us, or non-existing. There is a seeming abundance of these products available throughout the year1. In this post I’m asking several questions in relation to meat and its production and consumption in relation to seasonality (i.e. ‘the fact that something changes according to the seasons’). How has seasonality played a role in our meat production and consumption in the past? Is there still seasonality to be found in the present abundance, for example, when looking at particular animal products? Is it relevant to consider seasonality of meat in terms of the nutritional and sustainability challenges of our time? This post shares some preliminary answers to these questions. Seasonality of meat in the past Hunter-gatherer societies Animal foods were a major component in hunter-gatherer societies, such as the Aboriginals before European settlement of Australia2 and the Ache hunter gatherers that used to live in Eastern Paraguay3. Animal foods were often the primary source of energy for hunter-gatherers – an analysis of 13 quantitative dietary studies concluded that hunter-gatherer diets consisted of about 65% of animal foods and 35% plant-based foods as a source of energy7. What can we say about the seasonality of animal foods in hunter gatherer societies? Making general statements is difficult, as the ecological settings in which these societies were based differ a lot. In communities such as the Ache hunter gatherers, meat consumption did not vary significantly throughout the year, whereas other hunter gatherer societies are / were likely to have periods of meat scarcity. For example, present-day communities in the Congo Basin face an annual seasonal scarcity in available bushmeat (i.e. meat from wildlife species), although the intensity of this scarcity fluctuates throughout the years4. Also the Tanzanian Hadza people are known for mainly eating meat in the dry season, when hunting is easier, while in the wet season berries and honey become a more important part of their diet5. The specific reasons for these dietary shifts are different for each specific ecological setting, and they are difficult to unravel within the scope of this post – I hope to return to this topic in a future post. Acknowledging that the specifics of seasonality in different ecological settings vary, what are some of the important factors related to seasonality that affect meat consumption? Fluctuations in rainfall and temperature appear to be important, which in turn influence the availability of certain animal species, the rate of encounters with these animals, and the difficulty of hunting, as well as the availability and quality of plant foods. So as the environment of hunter-gatherers changes throughout the seasons, animal availability tends to fluctuate as well, as well as the availability of other food sources. The ways in which hunter gatherers have responded to these fluctuations vary – some communities were mobile and moved away when meat sources turned scarce, while other communities shifted their diet to more plant foods such as tubers. Generally speaking, people’s strategies with respect to seasonal changes appear to be characterised by adaptation – i.e., hunter-gatherers organised themselves by flexibly adapting to the changing availability of different foods. Early agricultural societies Patterns of meat consumption changed during the Neolithic revolution, in which a lifestyle of hunting and gathering slowly got replaced by a lifestyle of agriculture and settlement. In this period, starting around 13.000 BC, animals were first domesticated, driven by the need to have food when hunting was unproductive. Animals were kept not only for their meat, but also came to serve as a valuable source of nutrition through the milk that they produced. They also provided other useful products and services – for example, sheep provided wool and other animals were used for transporting goods or pulling the plow. Returning to our focus on meat, how did seasonality affect its availability throughout the year in early agricultural societies? And how did farmers relate to this seasonality? In his book Seasonal Food 9, Paul Waddington describes how pigs in Britain used to be more than just the meat that they produced. Rather, pigs were an integral part of the annual cycle of a homestead and played an important role in the peasant economy: “Traditionally, they were fattened through the year and killed in the autumn to provide a supply of protein, flavour and fat through the winter” (p. 29). Specific techniques were required to get the most out of the pig, resulting in products as black puddings, sausages, chitterlings (i.e. cooked intestines) and faggots (i.e. meatballs made from minced off-cuts and offal). From this example we get a picture that the seasonality of meat in early agriculture often had a specific timing – a timing that was connected to other functions of the animals (i.e. turning food waste into manure) as well as to the preparations that people made for the leaner winter months (i.e. the techniques of turning the pig into various products that could be stored for later consumption). Besides pigs, other animals occupied roles in peasant households. A distinction can be made between animals that yield products only upon death (i.e. pigs), and animals that also provide secondary products (i.e. sheep, goats and cattle, which also provide wool, milk or animal traction)10. In terms of meat seasonality, sheep and goat often served as an ‘insurance’ for periods of scarcity. Often multiple sheep or goats were kept, allowing some of them to be killed while the herd would remain. Pigs were also commonly used for these purposes, as they ate almost anything and had no by-products that peasants relied upon10. Several archeological studies have shown that in the Neolithic period, pig slaughter often took place in the first winter after birth, and this is often explained as a preparation for winter, as well as preventing the loss of body mass of the big during winter. Another explanation is that pig slaughter had a ceremonial function, being associated with feasting activities in the fall or winter12. From the above, we understand that meat was a valuable source of nutrition, particularly during the winter months. Compared to hunter gatherers, early farmers responded differently to seasonal changes in terms of meat consumption. Having animals such as pigs and sheep by their side throughout the year, they could strategically make use of the ‘products and services’ that these animals offered. Furthermore, keeping animals throughout the year allowed peasants to decide to eat meat at particular times, for example, during periods of food scarcity. Rather than ‘flexibly adapting’ to the seasons, early peasants had strategies to deal with seasonal fluctuation that are more characterised by planning and control. Such planning and control also appears to have served the purpose of facilitating feasting activities. Seasonality of meat in the present For hunter gatherers and early farmers, seasonality had implications for what could be hunted, raised or grown in specific seasons, which affected the ways in which people organised themselves over the year in a direct way. With respect to animal husbandry, this meant that there were certain predictive cycles, for example,  when parts of the herd were needed for consumption to get through the winter months. Another example of seasonality, not described above, is how herds were expanded through newborn calves or lambs, particularly during spring.  People organised themselves according these natural cycles. Our current agricultural system, however, does not always take these natural cycles as a starting point. Much more is possible in terms of ‘when to do what’ and this plays out in both production and consumption of meat. On the production side, can we still consider meat as a seasonal product? For this, let’s take a look at breeding, which is one of the most important elements of animal husbandry upon which many other things depend. It turns out that the ‘natural breeding season’ still has an important role to play in animal husbandry, although farmers have the possibility to manage the timing. Take for example sheep, and the timing of lambing. On the website of the Western Australian Government we read: “Sheep fertility increases as daylight decreases, that is, after 22 December. Pregnancy rates from joining [i.e., when ewes and rams are joined] in January and February can be up to 20% better compared to a joining in October and November from ewes of equal condition”15. Many other factors need consideration. For example, ewes’ energy demand increases significantly when pregnant, and increases further during lactation. The farmer needs to respond to this by offering sufficient nutrition, which in turn depends on pasture availability, which in turn may seasonally fluctuate. There are also ways to breed out of season – several techniques have been developed such as altering the light conditions, using hormones, or stimulating ewes to ovulate through the use of fertile rams or so-called ‘teaser rams’15, 16. Seasonality also takes place on the consumer side of meat production – consumer demand for certain meat products fluctuates throughout the year. There are various examples of consumer-driven seasonality in meat. Summer is a season in which many people get out their barbecue to grill meat14. Also religious traditions create a certain seasonality in meat consumption, such as the Muslim Festival of Sacrifice, which causes an increase in demand for beef, sheep and other meats in spring13, and Thanksgiving, which causes an annual peak in demand for turkey in the november month. In Time magazine I read that “more than 18 percent of all the 244.5 million turkeys raised on American farms” was consumed during Thanksgiving in 201717. From the above we learn that the seasonality of meat in our current agricultural system is not always something resulting directly from natural cycles. More dominant in meat seasonality seem to be the ‘cultural cycles’ on the consumer side – these have a strong influence on what is eaten when. I am curious how certain techniques, such as enforced breeding at ‘unnatural’ times, are related to these cultural cycles. Furthermore, to what extent are these cultural cycles connected or disconnected to natural cycles? I have an intuition, based on earlier readings18, that the ‘disconnect’ between natural and cultural cycles may be part of the explanation of many health- and sustainability-related issues we are currently facing as a society and as individuals. Notes and references:
  1. The abundant availability of animal products is a relatively recent phenomenon – for example, milk production has doubled and meat production has quadrupled over the past 50 years1. See: Ritchie, H. & Roser M. (2019) Meat and Dairy Production. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production
  2. O’Dea, K. (1991). Traditional diet and food preferences of Australian Aboriginal hunter-gatherers. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 334(1270), 233-241.
  3. Hill, K., Hawkes, K., Hurtado, M. et al. Seasonal variance in the diet of Ache hunter-gatherers in Eastern Paraguay. Hum Ecol 12, 101–135 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01531269
  4. Dounias, E., & Ichikawa, M. (2017). Seasonal bushmeat hunger in the Congo basin. EcoHealth, 14(3), 575-590.
  5. Smits, S. A., Leach, J., Sonnenburg, E. D., Gonzalez, C. G., Lichtman, J. S., Reid, G., Knight, R., Manjurano, A., Changalucha, J., Elias, J. E., Dominguez-Bello, M. G., & Sonnenburg, J. L. (2017). Seasonal cycling in the gut microbiome of the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania. Science, 357(6353), 802–806. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aan4834
  6. Heim, A., & Pyhälä, A. (2020). Changing food preferences among a former hunter-gatherer group in Namibia. Appetite, 104709.
  7. Cordain, L., Eaton, S. B., Miller, J. B., Mann, N., & Hill, K. (2002). The paradoxical nature of hunter-gatherer diets: meat-based, yet non-atherogenic. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 56(1), S42-S52.
  8. Reyes-García, V., Powell, B., Díaz-Reviriego, I., Fernández-Llamazares, Á., Gallois, S., & Gueze, M. (2019). Dietary transitions among three contemporary hunter-gatherers across the tropics. Food Security, 11(1), 109-122.
  9. Waddington, P. (2004) Seasonal Food: A guide to what’s in season when and why. Transworld publishers, London.
  10. Bogucki, P. (1993). Animal traction and household economies in Neolithic Europe. Antiquity, 67(256), 492–503. doi:10.1017/s0003598x00045713
  11. Vigne, J.-D. (2011). The origins of animal domestication and husbandry: A major change in the history of humanity and the biosphere. Comptes Rendus Biologies, 334(3), 171–181. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crvi.2010.12.009
  12. Wright, E., Viner-Daniels, S., Parker Pearson, M., & Albarella, U. (2014). Age and season of pig slaughter at Late Neolithic Durrington Walls (Wiltshire, UK) as detected through a new system for recording tooth wear. Journal of Archaeological Science, 52, 497–514. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2014.09.009
  13. Fidan, H., & Klasra, M. A. (2006). Seasonality in household demand for meat and fish: Evidence from an urban area. Turkish Journal of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, 29(6), 1217-1224.
  14. Peng, Y., McCann-Hiltz, D., & Goddard, E. W. (2004). Consumer demand for meat in Alberta, Canada: Impact of BSE (No. 377-2016-20604).
  15. https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/management-reproduction/time-lambing
  16. http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/livestock/sheep/facts/08-065.htm#1
  17. https://time.com/5022315/turkeys-killed-thanksgiving/
  18. Princen, T. (2010) Treading Softly: Paths to Ecological Order. Cambridge, The MIT Press
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