Farm animal value-scapes: veterinarians and the contrasting values of European livestock production

Introduction

VetValues is a comparative ethnographic study of how European livestock farming juggles food security and economic viability with mounting concerns about biodiversity loss and global warming, the development of antimicrobial resistance and zoonotic diseases, and the compromised welfare needs of farm animals. It approaches the wicked problems of livestock production as questions of valuation and valuing—of what to value, when, and how.

Objectives

Specifically, it explores how the values of economic production, food safety, public health, animal welfare, and ecology come together and are negotiated in animal husbandry, both in assessments and in practices of feeding, housing, and treating animals.

Focus

We focus on veterinarians, professionals at the heart of the institutional and regulatory arrangements that shape the politics and governance of human and farm animal life. Previous studies have focused on the ethical dilemmas of veterinarians. VetValues decentres individual deliberations, foregrounding instead how farming’s socio-material contexts shape ways of negotiating values.

Concept Development

We develop the concept of value-scapes to explore how values are enacted in care practices and embedded in regulatory frameworks, veterinary knowledge, landscapes, animal bodies, barns, and farming traditions.

Methodology

Ethnographic research will compare veterinary care on farms in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Italy. Contrasting different national, industrial, and regulatory contexts will allow us to discern variations in the value-scapes of farm animal care in Europe.

Expected Outcomes

VetValues will thus advance our understanding of how the broader tensions within European food production are comprised—and sometimes resolved—in situated ways. It will provide a nuanced picture of the industry’s troublesome biopolitical projects that will inform theorizing on contentious multi-species relations in a world facing myriad pressing challenges to the health and well-being of humans, animals, and the planet.