194 N Taylor and H Fraser producers’ use to reach mass audiences during prime time viewing; how their language can be used to deny and erase violence perpetrated against ‘livestock’ This can be done in covert ways, for instance, where cooking and consuming meat (or ‘protein’) is central to popular Australian cooking programs such as Master Chef, My Kitchen Rules, Hot Plate or the Restaurant Revolution Yet, the injunction to eat meat can also be done in explicit, if not belligerently celebratory ways, as in the many advertising campaigns for red meat, pork and lamb In many meat advertising campaigns, the old adage ‘feed the man meat’ is expanded to assert that humans (women included) are meant to eat meat; that it is essential to good health and an important part of human interactions, from steak dinners, to spit roasts and barbeques Well-known Australian actor Sam Neill’s promotion of red meat illustrates this perfectly Standing in front of a barbeque and being the envy of his neighbours, Sam reiterates the dominant discourse of red meat eating being ‘instinctive’, before chanting the slogan is, ‘Red meat, we were meant to eat it’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= hNWB6Vq18xc) The more recent 2014 advert by Sam Kekovich, a former Australian footballer renowned for his hypermasculinity, goes further, shouting at parents to induct their children into meat eating early, including the toddler wearing a T-shirt emblazoned, ‘Vegan and Proud’ In this discourse, it is so normal to eat meat that to not so is to be ‘unAustralian’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= v9Xo0v63wMA) Such a position underlies the 2015 Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) advertisement, ‘You’re better on Beef’ with the executive creative director asserting that, ‘The chance to reframe an Aussie icon like Beef as the ultimate life fuel is one of our proudest moments’ (http://www.campaignbrief.com/2015/03/youre-better-onbeef-the-messa.html, emphasis added) Exposing the Happy Meat Illusion The call to eat meat as an act of patriotism, health and history denies the importance of life and discourse of death for slaughtered animals To quote Young Lee (2008, p 3), that the early human diet included (rotten, raw) meat does not make meateating ‘natural’ Rather, that inheritance exposes the extent to which meat-