Once In A Livestock Lifetime

UR Department of History
May 19
2 min read

Updated: May 20

April 2026

During the first week of April, Professor Thomas Fleischman traveled to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia to attend a conference on industrial meat production.

He was one of eight academics from around the world invited by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Mongolia and Inner Asia Study Group at Cambridge University, and the Mongolia government to provide their expertise. The conference lasted three days with the bulk of the “hard” work occurring on the first, when each presenter shared a paper on a range of topics from nomadic life, labor in slaughterhouses, epizootic diseases, and regional histories.

Zaisan Memorial (Зайсан толгой) - photo by Professor Thomas Fleischman

Fleischman’s paper, “Meat Machines: Humans, Livestock, and the Industrial Dream,” used his research on the history of East German agriculture and the global development of industrial meat to discuss the potential risks of such a system in a former communist country like Mongolia. The other two days of the conference were devoted to sightseeing in Ulaanbaatar, including a visit to the Zaisan Memorial (Зайсан толгой ) the Soviet memorial to World War II, the last surviving Tibetan Buddhist Monastery (Gandantegchinlen Monastery) in Mongolia, and some souvenir shopping. On the final day, the hosts brought Fleischman and the other guests to visit a nomadic family in the countryside, where they were invited to witness a traditional sheep slaughter and join the feast that followed. The visit ended with a trip to a national park, where they saw elk, eagles, and the last remaining indigenous feral horses in Central Asia, Przewalski’s horses, also known as tahki in Mongolian. It was a once in a lifetime experience, says Professor Fleischman, who returned with a new appreciation for this part of the world and desire to learn Mongolian.