Working group 3.4

Peoples’ Ambivalence Towards Animal Farming: Where Modern Concerns and Desires Collide

Convenors:
Bettina Bock, Wageningen University, Bettina.bock@wur.nl (contact person)
Simon Oosting
Birgit Boogaard

Modern society has an ambivalent relationship with animal farming. On the one hand we increasingly see citizens expressing concerns about the industrial and artificial character of modern animal farming and its inherent risks for animal welfare and food safety. Yet most of these citizens do not translate this concern into becoming political consumers who are paying more for animal friendly products or amending their consumption patterns. This ambivalence between how people react as citizens and as consumers is one aspect of the contradictory relation between humans and farm animals  

There is increasing concern over the artificiality of farm animals’ life and the limited space they have to express their natural behaviour. People expect that more ‘naturality’ will bring more happiness into farm animals’ life. But most people have hardly any idea about how animals are kept in modern farms and how much room they have for natural needs. Retailers use positive images of ‘the natural’ to promote a wide range of products, evoking an idyllic image of the countryside. Animal protection organisations use horrific images of factory farming to make their case. Farmers and their organisations struggle to balance competing social and economic pressures by integrating natural elements within modern technology, for example, by designing animal friendly housing systems. At the same time ‘naturality’ is a contested issue. Modern citizens increasingly appreciate ‘the natural’, possibly as an antidote to the artificiality that surrounds them. At the same time ‘naturality’ evokes fear and meets resistance, for instance when animals attack humans or each other.
 
This working group aims to clarify modern society’s relationship with animals, focusing on farm animals and animal production in the broad sense of the word. Our aim is to better understand how and why farm animals are important for us as modern citizens while our physical contacts with farm animals are so limited. What do farm animals mean to us? Why do people worry about them so much and what is it that they actually worry about? Can these concerns be met and how? Will this actually make a difference for the animals themselves?

The convenors invite papers that deal with humans’ relations with farm animals. This may include papers analysing how citizens, farmers or other actors perceive farm animals and how they relate to and engage with farm animals.  Papers may focus on the mainstream livestock species or on more exotic species that are used for production. Papers that study the social significance of farm animals’ new roles in therapy and education, recreation and tourism and as co-creators of natural landscapes are also welcome. We especially welcome interdisciplinary studies.