Politics of meat and hidden animal suffering: Discursive responses to the documentary Food for Profit

In meat, egg, and dairy production and consumption systems, the physical and psychological suffering of the animals involved is not immediately apparent in the final products reaching consumers. The bodies and lives of these animals, together with the knowledge and emotions related to their experiences, exploitation, and slaughter, are largely excluded from public perception. In public spaces, documentary representations can assume an ethical and political role by highlighting the hidden aspects of everyday practices such as consumption, revealing their “backstage,” namely the conditions of animals in farms and slaughterhouses, and exposing the role of lobbies and economic and political interest groups in keeping these conditions concealed. Through qualitative discourse analysis, this study examines a sample of 16 Italian online reviews of the documentary Food for Profit (Italy, 2024), published by newspapers and websites that vary in content and purpose. The analysis focuses on discursive structures that express or imply: (1) reviewers’ emotional responses associated with informational content, and their attribution of the documentary’s potential impact on values, ethical and political behaviors; (2) positioning of the discourses in relation to the power structures addressed in the documentary and their underlying value orientations; (3) emergence of areas of opacity and the gap between dominant social perceptions and the informational content presented in the documentary. The findings suggest that representations of animal suffering and of its links to the politics of meat evoke moral shock, foster critical awareness, and encourage a sense of responsibility.