Cheap Meat

Cheap Meatfollows the controversial trade in inexpensive fatty cuts of lamb or mutton called "flaps," from the farms of New Zealand and Australia to their primary markets in the Pacific islands of Papua New Guinea, Tonga, and Fiji. In this engrossing story, Deborah Gewertz and Frederick Errington address the evolution of the meat trade itself along with the changing practices of exchange in Papua New Guinea. More importantly, they show that flaps-which are taken from the animals' bellies and are often 50% fat-are not mere market transactions but are evidence of the social nature of nutrition policies, illustrating and reinforcing Pacific Islanders' presumed second-class status relative to the white populations of Australia and New Zealand. Not only are flaps' consumers aware that those who produce and purvey these cuts of meat consider them to be inferior, but many observers attribute the "lifestyle diseases" that often afflict Pacific Islanders to their consumption.Cheap Meatshows that the debate over fatty meat is emblematic of the often fraught geopolitical relationships in this Pacific region as well as in the fast foods controversies in the United States.

Deborah Gewertz is G. Henry Whitcomb 1874 Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Amherst College. Frederick Errington is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. Among their many books are Emerging Class in Papua New Guinea: The Telling of Difference and Yali's Question: Sugar, Culture, and History.