Civilizing the market for welfare friendly products in Europe? The techno-ethics of the Welfare Quality® assessment

Geoforum 48 (2013) 63–72

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Civilizing the market for welfare friendly products in Europe? The techno-ethics of the Welfare QualityÒ assessment Mara Miele ⇑, John Lever Cardiff University, School of Planning and Geography, Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue, CF10 3WA Cardiff, UK

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 28 July 2010 Received in revised form 21 December 2012 Available online 13 May 2013 Keywords: Civilizing markets STS Geographies of food consumption Animal welfare standards

a b s t r a c t Greater attention to and anxiety about farm animal welfare emerged at the end of the 20th century, as worries over food safety and food quality (connected to the BSE, FMD and other epidemics) pushed farm animal welfare into public discourse and political debate. The creation of a transparent market for animal friendly produced foods is one of the strategies currently envisaged by the EU to meet the widely recognized challenge of promoting animal welfare without threatening the economic competitiveness of the animal farming industry in Europe (EU Animal Welfare Strategy, 2012–2015). This paper aims to contribute to debates on STS and food standards within the geographies of food literature. Empirically it draws on research carried out during the EU funded project Welfare QualityÒ, which has proposed a protocol based on scientifically validated measures for assessing the welfare of chickens, pigs and cattle both on-farm and at slaughterhouse, in order to making ‘accountable’ the (ubiquitous) ‘welfare claims’ on animal products. While these developments have the potential to improve the life of farm animals by rewarding the most ‘animal friendly’ producers on the market, we address the matters of concern that arise from the implementation of the protocol by looking at a case study of UK based free-range chicken producers. Drawing on STS insights and especially on the work of Callon et al., (2002, 2009) we look at the controversies that emerge about the ‘welfare friendliness’ qualification of free-range chickens and we discuss the role and partial achievements of this market for civilizing animal welfare politics and science. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

‘[...] markets need to be civilized, that is, to be included in this multi-problematization that is a living source of questions, research and the invention of satisfactory answers; but simply by participating in this movement they can act also as a civilizing force in politics and science. Civilization may be this never-ending effort to transform unsolvable issues into solvable problems, and thus to prove right Marx’s claim that humanity never asks itself questions that it cannot solve. But we still need to establish why it asks itself certain questions rather than others, and that, in my opinion, is the whole point of studying civilizing markets. (Callon, 2009, p. 547)

1. Introduction By the late 20th century animal-farming practices had changed dramatically: over the space of a few decades, a ‘livestock revolution’ had facilitated the prevalence of year round confined rearing systems for the majority of chickens, pigs and large numbers of

cattle (Fraser, 2008). Technological innovations in animal farming were seriously affecting the lives and bodies of farm animals’ in industrial production systems (Gibbs et al., 2009; Holloway and Morris, 2008), with selective breeding and innovations in feeding and confined housing systems producing a drastic reduction in production costs and a significant shortening of the lifespan of farm animals (Blokhuis et al., 2013). Throughout this period there was a rapid growth in new social movements (including environmental and animal rights activism, e.g. the Vegan Society was founded in 1944 in the UK1) and animal welfare emerged as a political issue in a number of European countries (e.g. Sweden, Finland, Norway, the UK) as well as in the European Union2 (Sutton, 2004; Tester, 1991). By the beginning of the 21st century public concerns over industrial methods of rearing animals and their impact on farm animal welfare had become increasingly visible and widespread (Stassart and Whatmore, 2003; Mayfield et al., 2007; Lang, 2010; Ingenbleek and Immink, 2011). Many new EU animal farming regulations were attempting to address the welfare problems caused 1

⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Miele). 0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.04.003

See http://www.vegansociety.com. See Caporale et al. (2005) for an overview of the regulation on animal welfare in the European Union. 2

64

M. Miele, J. Lever / Geoforum 48 (2013) 63–72

by intensive all year round confined systems of animal production: the veal crate ban (2006),3 the meat chickens’ welfare directive (2007),4 and the recent ban on conventional cages for laying hens (2012)5 are all examples of this process. Remarkably, these initiatives have been accompanied by numerous market-led initiatives across the EU, many of which aim to promote farming practices with ‘higher animal welfare standards’ by asking for a premium price on ‘animal friendly’ labelled foodstuffs (organic, free-range and crueltyfree as in the case of ‘Freedom Food’ in the UK and ‘Beter Leven’ – Better Life – in the Netherlands). The appearance of such products in the food market has been interpreted as part of a broader trend towards ‘ethical marketing’ through which new food products carrying ‘ethical’ claims – such as fair trade (for addressing social justice), organic (for addressing environmental sustainability), free-range and cruelty free (for addressing animal welfare) – emerged from ‘alternative food networks’ and facilitated the adoption of new consumption practices (Barnett et al., 2005). As Kate Soper has pointed out, the potential of consumption practices to be seen as new sites of political agency is now acknowledged by both corporate capitalism and its opposition (2008).6 And the formation of these new markets has in many cases actually been celebrated by policy makers and NGOs7 as a way of promoting changes in current supply chain practices towards more socially desirable innovations that would be voluntarily adopted rather than imposed by new regulations. However, in recent geographies of food and private standards literature, these developments have been interpreted in contrasting ways. Some authors, looking at the UK, have welcomed these developments and have aligned them with an agenda of reconnection between production and consumption practices (Eden et al., 2008; Miele, 2011). Other authors see them as examples of a specific development of food markets in Europe and in other Western countries led by retailing and food services companies focussed on the development of private standards as a strategy for segmentation and diversification. This has created the opportunity for new governmentalities of food (Miele et al., 2005; Ransom, 2007; Busch, 2011) and forms of hybrid governance, where the goal of improving animal welfare is coupled with the goal of increasing the competitiveness (of part) of the animal food chain (Lever and Miele, 2012). A more critical position has been expressed by authors like Guthman (2003, 2008, 2011) and Renard (2005), who have looked at the emergence of these markets (and their associated new ‘ethical’ standards) in USA and Latin America and have interpreted these innovations as a consequence of the resurgence of neoliberal policies. Thus, these latter authors, have explicitly questioned the wider success, i.e. the actual delivery of a public good such as social justice, environmental sustainability or animal welfare, of the markets through which they emerged. As Kjærnes (2012) has pointed out, these ‘ethical food’ markets develop in specific forms (in terms of products, market share, actors and the rules they have to comply with) in different places and they give rise to different types of consumers’ engagement with food politics. From this literature we draw the conclusion that, even in those instances and in those countries where the emergence of the markets for ‘ethically qualified’ products has been celebrated for the contribution they make to improvements in environmental sustainability, animal welfare, social justice and

3 EU Directive 97/2/EC prohibits, as from 31 December 2006, the use of the veal crate throughout the EU. 4 Council Directive 2007/43/EC of 28 June 2007 laying down minimum rules for the protection of chickens kept for meat production, coming into force in 2010. 5 Council Directive 1999/74/EC of 19 July 1999 lays down minimum standards for the protection of laying hens, phasing out conventional cages in 2012. 6 Still, Soper emphasizes an ‘alternative hedonism’ as the key element of this ‘ethical turn’ in consumption practices that challenges the post-modernist/hedonistic approach of the consumer culture that dominated the 1980s and 1990s (2008). 7 For example Singer and Mason (2006), or Compassion in World Farming, http:// www.ciwf.org.uk/your_food/meat_poultry/chicken_and_poultry/default.aspx).

cultural and environmental biodiversity, their achievements are often contested, context specific and fragile. We want to contribute to this debate by focusing on a specific aspect of the development of these markets and we argue that their fragility is associated with the constant work required by the involved actors in the supply chain to sustain the ‘ethical’ qualification of the foods that characterize them (Callon et al., 2002). We illustrate this point by looking at the emerging market for animal friendly foodstuffs in Europe as an example of these complexities and fragilities and we argue that it is contributing to change animal welfare science and animal welfare politics even though it has limited effects in transforming the animal supply chains. Our analysis is especially devoted to exploring the potential of this market to broaden the range of actors who are getting involved in animal welfare issues (i.e. consumers, retailers, marketing experts, celebrity chefs, new breeds of farmed animals, etc.) and who might offer new and different perspectives on these issues from the traditional stakeholders (farmers, the animal farming industry, regulators, NGOs, etc.) that historically constituted the main protagonists of animal welfare policies in Europe. In this sense we draw on Callon’s work in defining ‘civilizing markets’ in pragmatic rather than in normative8 terms, by addressing the potential for a ‘multi-problematization that is a living source of questions, research and the invention of satisfactory answers (2009, p. 547)’ that this market for animal friendly products might bring about. In approaching the issue of how this multi-problematization might come about we focus on the market devices that are creating the condition of possibility for this market to develop. More specifically we will look at one tool, the Welfare QualityÒ protocol, for assessing the level of animal welfare achieved on farms. This initiative was developed under the auspices of the EU in order harmonize the welfare claims on animal foods in order to increase the transparency of animal food markets in Europe (Blokhuis et al., 2003; Blokhuis et al., 2010; Blokhuis et al., 2013). We argue that this protocol, from its inception, has been conceived as a techno-ethical device (Hobson, 2006) that should attempt to order animal farming practices (Law, 1994; Lever and Miele, 2010) in terms of the animal welfare that they achieve; and, more ambitiously, that proposes a holistic definition of animal welfare based on scientific principles but also broad enough to address the concerns of the European public for the quality of life of farm animals. Therefore the Welfare QualityÒ definition of animal welfare (articulated in four welfare principles and twelve welfare categories) emerged out of the dialogue between science (e.g. the animal scientists working on the project) and the various constituencies of European society (e.g. consumers, producers, NGOs, retailers, etc.) extensively consulted during the lifespan of the project itself (see Miele et al., 2011). In this sense the Welfare QualityÒ assessment and monitoring protocol can be seen as an important tool in civilizing the market for animal friendly products for it provided a hybrid forum (Callon et al., 2009) for discussion and negotiation among scientists, farmers, consumers, NGOs and other stakeholders on what animal welfare is and how it should be measured (Miele et al., 2011). In order to illustrate this point we will look at the (trial) implementation of the Welfare QualityÓ protocol in a case of free-range chicken production in the UK. We will focus on farmers’ reactions 8 This definition is different from a normative definition of ‘civilization’ as proposed by Francione, among others, who maintain an abolitionist position (i.e. the abolition of all uses of nonhuman animals for human purposes). The abolitionist advocates aim to remove animals from the sphere of property and to award them personhood; that is, to see them awarded legal rights to protect their basic interests. From this perspective Francione argues that animal welfare regulation and, by proxy, a market for animal friendly products, is only facilitating the exploitation of farmed animals by making animal farming more acceptable in the eyes of consumers by removing the cruellest practices (Francione, 1995; Francione and Gardner, 2010).

M. Miele, J. Lever / Geoforum 48 (2013) 63–72

to this new market ‘techno-ethical device’ and their resistance or contestation to some of the measures proposed by the animal scientists to address consumers’ concerns about animal welfare on the basis of scientifically valid measures (see Miele et al., 2011, p. 112). Through the discussions with these farmers about their worries over the constraints they experience in the costs of production, but also their dismissal of consumers’ ideas about what is relevant for the quality of life of farm animals and their (partial) disagreements over the ‘welfare friendliness’ qualification within the assessment as proposed by the scientists, we address the complexity of making the market for welfare friendly products more transparent and multi-problematized. The paper proceeds in the following way. In the first section we examine the different types of concerns and regulation of animal welfare that have emerged in Europe in the past decades and the various forms of governance of animal welfare issues across a sample of European countries. We underline the complexity of the animal welfare issue that increasingly is perceived by the European public as both a public good that should be regulated by the European Union and the national states (e.g. humane killing, transport, no cruel treatment) and a market attribute, where claims such as ‘animal happiness’, ‘access to pasture’, ‘possibility to express natural behaviour’ should be visible on animal food products on the market. Then we address the process of creating markets and the role of market devices such as food standards in enabling their workings. Here we draw on Callon’s theorization of market functioning (Callon, 1998; Callon et al., 2007) and from this perspective we attempt to trace of vast array of actor and devices that affect the shape and development of the market for animal friendly products in Europe. To illustrate this point we focus on an example of the implementation of the Welfare QualityÒ protocol in a case study of UK free range chicken farmers. This example provided some intriguing insights into the working of the market for animal friendly products and the developments in chicken farming more generally. Finally, we discuss the potential contribution of the new market for welfare friendly products to the civilization of both animal welfare science and animal welfare politics.

2. Animal welfare in transition, from public good to market attribute? Where and how Recent studies into consumer concerns about food (Whatmore, 2002; Stassart and Whatmore, 2003; Wales et al., 2006; Sassatelli, 2007; Kjarnes et al., 2007; Halkier, 2010) found that there had been considerable shifts in food practices across Europe after the BSE crisis in the 1990s, which varied considerably ‘between social groups, following quite complicated and sometimes surprising patterns’ (Murdoch et al., 2000; Miele et al., 2005, p. 14). There were ‘indications of distinctions among several dimensions’, including ‘a north–south divide and differences between countries that have experienced severe food crisis and erosion of consumer trust and countries that have not’ (Miele et al., 2005, p. 14). This section examines these institutional arrangements and their implications in more detail. Across the EU there are varying degrees of institutional change taking place and varying degrees of resistance to the attempt to make animal welfare a consumer issue, as strongly advocated by influential NGOs such as Compassion in World Farming, Royal Society for the Protection against Cruelty to Animals in the UK (see Singer and Mason, 2006). In Sweden and Norway, animal welfare is perceived as public good, and there are strong legislative frameworks in place that ensure animal welfare legislation is already superior to that of the EU. In Norway national legislation compels retailers to source products directly from within the Norwegian agricultural system and Norwegian retailers are thus con-

65

fronted by ‘powerful farmer cooperatives and wholesalers’ that hinder the wider concentration of retail power (Miele et al., 2005, p. 111). Although Norwegian agriculture – which is generally small in scale and spread out across the country in rural areas – evokes notions of the ‘natural’ in the same way that these qualities are evoked through the market in other countries, these qualities are rarely communicated through product branding, primarily, it appears, because the knowledge that food has been produced in Norway is enough to convince consumers of its quality. In this sense, Skarstad et al. (2007) claim that animal welfare is an ‘invisible attribute’ aligned with the agricultural system and the wider social and environmental agenda. In Sweden too, a strong domestic legislative framework determines relations between producers and consumers, which was even maintained after entry into the EU. While private labelling and certification schemes have expanded rapidly in other parts of Europe over recent years, they have generally been absent in Norway and Sweden. In Italy and France, things are different. These countries have more traditional retail structures than northern European countries and this influences attitudes towards animal welfare in particular ways. In France, concerns often revolve around the industrialization of agriculture, which is seen to produce bad food, as opposed to traditional artisan practice, which is seen to produce food of higher quality and value. As a consequence, many French certification schemes seek to guarantee artisan production and animal welfare is usually a secondary concern (Miele et al., 2005). These issues are in turn linked to the renowned French gastronomic culture, where the bêtes noires of the international animal welfare lobby (‘Foie Gras’, ‘Cheval’ and ‘Veal’) are commonplace. This would appear to suggest that animal welfare is not a major concern in France, yet recent surveys (Kjaernes et al., 2007) and research have suggested that French people are very much concerned about animal welfare issues (Buller and Cesar, 2007). On top of its artisan producers, France also has some of the largest retailing and agro-food corporations in the world. Examining the ways in which animal welfare is portrayed in these sectors, Buller and Cesar (2007) found that animal welfare claims are increasingly aligned with ‘constructed goods’ and a range of issues connected to nature and health (of consumers as well as animals). However, many of the claims made about ‘quality’ products in France reinforce the idea that farm animal welfare is more about food quality than about the quality of life of the farm animals and the emphasis is generally on ‘better tasting food’. Ethics start to play a more obvious role, Buller and Cesar claim, only when animal welfare is juxtaposed with discourses of environmental sustainability by ‘major retailers and manufacturers conscious of the criticisms of nongovernmental organizations and others regarding their general environmental impacts’ (2007, p. 53). In Italy too, people are more concerned with ‘taste’, which, as in France, is seen as ‘a precondition for quality’ (Miele and Parisi, 2001). The retail sector is highly fragmented and most regions have their own traditional cuisines with their own demands and requirements. Fifty percent of meat is still sold by independent butchers and attention is focussed more on the sensory properties of food rather than on product branding. While there are many local quality assurance schemes that focus on animal issues to varying degrees, animal welfare is not communicated on products to any significant extent; small scale producers tend to focus on ‘food safety, traceability, controlled supply chains, organic production, or typical regional products’ (Kjærnes et al., 2009, p. 34). Although Italian consumers are concerned about animal welfare, it is not something they think about when shopping for food (Miele and Parisi, 2000; Miele and Evans, 2010). In countries like the UK and the Netherlands, that have suffered severe animal farming crises, new aesthetic sensibilities towards ‘nonhuman animals’ have emerged and increasing numbers of peo-

66

M. Miele, J. Lever / Geoforum 48 (2013) 63–72

ple have turned away from intensively produced products towards ‘natural products’ associated with ‘quality’ and ‘safety’ (Murdoch et al., 2000; Sassatelli, 2007). This fact has been increasingly recognized by retailers as an opportunity for ‘quality’ market segmentation and increasingly farm animal welfare has become one aspect of ‘quality’ branded products (Roe et al., 2005). The interest of retailers in stocking ‘welfare friendly’ products has also extended to the inclusion of a concern for animal welfare as part of their brand values’ (Ransom, 2007; Kjærnes et al., 2008). In many cases, animal welfare has thus been advanced in a somewhat ambivalent manner, in some cases outside the confines of nation state regulation, in other cases in conjunction with dedicated regulation. Up until 2002, the Dutch Government was one of the leading voices in farm animal welfare in Europe. However, from 2002 until 2007 policy became more aligned with the market and with European regulation, with the government adopting ‘a stimulating and facilitating rather than a legislating role’ (Kjærnes et al., 2009, p. 30). While the neoliberal focus on the market remained dominant in this period, and several market led initiatives have appeared (e.g. the Beter Leven quality mark promoted by Albert Hein, the main supermarket chain9) animal welfare is now back on the political agenda as a result of continuing pressure from the Party for the Animals, that now has two representatives in the Dutch Parliament.10 The UK is another interesting example of this intermingling of public and private interventions; there are higher animal welfare standards than in the EU for certain types of animal farming (e.g. pigs’ production, chickens reared for meat production) and a higher number of private standards for almost all types of animal farming (e.g. the RSPCA endorsed standard Freedom Food and a large number of retailer standards). Drawing particularly on the experience of the UK, Freidberg (2004) has interpreted these developments as connected to the emergence of an ‘ethical complex’ – consisting of networks of NGOs, media, retailers and other economic and political actors – who participate in the creation of a specific market for animal friendly products within which the ‘naturalness’ of products is presented as a key feature of higher priced products through the identification of specific food ‘attributes’ to describe what ‘naturalness’ might be (e.g. free-range, organic, freedom foods). These markets are implicitly informed, she argues, by strong social and economic pressures that have brought together a diverse range of actors for mutually beneficial purposes. As Freidberg (2004) notes: In all cases, the supermarkets’ efforts to appear socially responsible have depended on certain NGOs for information, advice, and public displays of approval, whether in the form of press releases, labels, or participation in the supermarkets’ own reform initiatives (Friedberg, 2004, p. 521). The complex social attitudes towards farm animals and food products wrapped up in these developments have been captured in a number of Europe wide recent studies. The pan-European (Eurobarometer surveys, 2005, 2007) have highlighted the importance of animal protection to European consumers (i.e. 82% of respondents stated that ‘we had a duty to protect animals whatever the cost’11) and a majority of 60% of respondents stated that they were concerned about farm animal welfare, which scored more highly than BSE or ‘gaining weight’. The same surveys have shown 9

See http://www.vionfood.nl/en/beter-leven-better-life-quality-mark/. The formation of this ‘single issue’ party advocating nonhuman animals’ interests has been followed in other countries (UK, Germany, Italy, Portugal among others, etc.) even though with less electoral success. See http://www.partyfortheanimals.nl/ content/view/492 for more information. 11 Special EUROBAROMETER 225/ Wave 63.1 (2005). Social values, science and technology, Fieldwork January-February 2005, publication June 2005. 10

that production methods (organic, free-range, etc.) were considered by consumers as more important for food choice than ‘country of origin’ or ‘brand name’. Moreover, 74% of the participants interviewed believed that buying welfare friendly products could have a positive effect on the quality of life of animals, 60% declared to be willing to pay a higher price for products sourced from more animal welfarefriendly production systems (57% would pay a ‘price premium for more animal welfare friendly eggs’ for example12), however only 43% of respondents stated that they could identify such products from the label, which reinforced the view that the European market for animal products needed to be made more transparent (European Animal Welfare Action Plan, 2006–2010; European Animal Welfare Strategy, 2012–2015). The rise of new food ‘sensibilities and moralities’ (Kjaernes et al., 2007) has undoubtedly created a greater awareness of farm animal welfare amongst growing numbers of European citizens, but it is widely recognized that this increasing awareness is rarely translated into a significant increased consumption of welfare friendly products, that, till recently, only accounted for less than 4% of the total animal products market, with highest sales in the UK (Kjarnes et al., 2005). While the ‘ethical complex’ described by Friedberg has helped to advance farm animal welfare standards in some parts of Europe, creating a ‘retail’ space in which dedicated consumers are, to some extent, now performing ethical food choices for animal welfare, there are limits to these initiatives and a large majority of ordinary consumers remains unaffected (see Miele and Evans, 2010). Kjærnes (2012) has argued that a possible reason for the apparent contradiction between ‘ethics and action’, i.e. on the one hand, a high level of concern about the quality of life of farm animals found among European citizens and, on the other hand, the low level of sales of animal friendly produced products, might indicate citizens’ knowledge not only of the crises in the animal farming industry (BSE, FMD, Bird Flu, Dioxin and so forth) but also of the recent institutional changes promoted by the EU, and by some national governments in Europe, to tackle these problems. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) in the UK and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) have been established in order to restore consumer confidence in the farming industry and for providing an independent body evaluating the benefits that consumers could gain from food or farming innovations. Moreover, the increasing ‘bundling’ of animal welfare claims with notions of ‘quality’ and other attributes on animal foods labels and packaging, has also led to a widely spread perception (especially in the South of Europe) that all quality products are produced at a higher animal welfare standard. Therefore many of those consumers who buy quality products are convinced that they are already buying welfare friendly produced foods (Buller and Cesar, 2007; Roe et al., 2005). Despite this complexity, a common understanding of animal welfare seems to circulate in Europe, which associated animal friendliness with more ‘natural’ systems of production (free-range and organic), with specific resources (space, access to pasture, and high quality feed) and limits to feed additives (antibiotics and growth promoters) (Evans and Miele, 2012). And the appearance of new welfare friendly labelled products has contributed to establishing a new norm among European citizens, that animal welfare is becoming a new consumer issue, even though the degree by which they are ready or inclined to actually engage with it is very uneven, with the UK leading the development of this market in Europe (Singer and Mason, 2006; Roe and Marsden, 2006). 12 Special EUROBAROMETER 229/Wave 63.2 (2005). Attitudes of consumers towards the welfare of farmed animals, Fieldwork February–March 2005, publication June 2005.

M. Miele, J. Lever / Geoforum 48 (2013) 63–72

67

In what follows we see how a discourse about improving animal welfare in the case of meat chicken production in the UK centred upon the consumers’ demand pull has led to an intermingling of technological innovations in the free-range systems for addressing both ‘naturalness’ and ‘productivity’ and how this situation raises questions about the actual animal welfare improvements achievable by market mechanism. 3. What does improving animal welfare mean? In the European Union, the protection and welfare of animals is now enshrined in Article 13 of the Lisbon Treaty, which recently came into force. Since its inception, the EU has implemented a series of ‘Directives’ and regulations that aim to improve animal welfare by establishing common trade rules and a common minimum animal welfare standard. Moreover, in the late 1970s, the Farm Animal Welfare Council in the UK proposed the ‘Five Freedoms’13 (FAWC, 1979) as key principles for monitoring the welfare of farmed animals. Although they were never recognized in law, these ‘freedoms’ became the basic principles for animal welfare legislation up to the present day, giving legitimacy to a wide range of quality assurance schemes and their associated welfare claims. The Five Freedoms have been adopted as guidelines especially in the UK, where farm animal welfare is now often interpreted in terms of specific resource requirements in many systems of production and it is translated into attributes of animal friendly products. These systems of production have added complexities to the public understanding of what is animal welfare, by proposing one aspect of animals’ life as indicator or proxy for higher welfare, e.g. space, access to a range, organic feed, for example in the case of free-range or organic production (see Miele and Evans, 2010). However, there is still no real agreement about what animal welfare is and how to improve it. In animal welfare science there has been a growing interest in overcoming the limits of the ‘resource’ approach and in developing measures for ‘welfare outcomes’, or ‘welfare as experienced by the animal’ and not simply inferred by the availability of resources (e.g. a range, enrichment, more space and so forth). However there is also a growing awareness that animal welfare is difficult to define because it is a ‘multidimensional’ concept that encompasses many aspects of animals’ life (health, behaviour, positive and negative emotions), the relevance of which may change from person to person and it might change over time (Fraser, 2008). Recently, the EU has started to explore the possibility of using a market mechanism (i.e. the consumer pull) for promoting the adoption of animal friendly innovations by the animal farming industry. Improving the transparency of the market for animal products in relation to the way in which farm animals are reared and on the basis of the welfare that they achieve then has become a main step in achieving this goal. The European Strategy on Animal Welfare, 2012–201514 indicated the need to develop animal welfare measures based on the Welfare QualityÒ protocols in order to develop a product information system that offers ‘guarantees about welfare issues and production conditions’ that will allow consumers and retailers to purchase animal products of a clearly recognized standard (Blokhuis et al., 2003). As a result of these developments, animal farming practices need to be evaluated to assess the level of animal welfare that they achieve and not only on their compliance 13 Freedom from hanger, from thirst, from discomfort, from pain, injuries, disease, and fear and stress and to freedom express natural behaviour, see: http:// www.fawc.org.uk/freedoms.htm. 14 See European Commission (2012) http://ec.europa.eu/food/animal/welfare/ actionplan/docs/aw_strategy_19012012_en.pdf (p. 7).

Box 1. Four Principles and 12 Criteria (Welfare QualityÒ, 2007).

with the requirements for resources that should be provided to animals.15 The Welfare QualityÒ assessment protocols for cattle (see Botreau et al., 2007), pigs and chickens are based on a combination of resource, body and behaviour measures and they clearly attempts to address the limits of current assessment protocols of private standards, including those aimed at monitoring the schemes of production for higher welfare, such as free range or organic, that rely on strict prescriptions of resources (e.g. the size of the range, number of animals per square metre and so forth). First, Welfare QualityÒ has developed four ‘positive’ welfare principles: good feeding, good health, good housing and appropriate behaviour. Then it has articulated these principles into 12 welfare criteria and a set of welfare measures for each criterion, to be carried out both on farm and at the slaughterhouse (see Box 1). Certain measures can only be taken on farm, looking at animals’ behaviour as well as body conditions; other measures are more easily taken at the slaughterhouse, by examining the carcasses of animals (e.g. the conformation of the carcass can indicate if the animal has suffered from hunger or malnutrition, and some measures for the principle ‘good feeding’ are therefore taken at slaughterhouse). After completing an assessment, farmers are given a score for the individual measures used and an overall flock score which would be, in a live situation, further elaborated into twelve criterion scores, four principle scores and finally an overall welfare score. This final overall welfare score could be used on a consumer label that ranks the products on a four-tier continuum of ethical classifications, from unclassified to excellent. In order to get a score up to the required level, underperforming farmers are provided with feedback and advice, the idea being that this process will drive up standards and reward farmers who make innovations for better animal welfare in their farming practice. An important aspect of this protocol is the introduction of some animal behaviour measures for addressing animals’ emotional states (e.g. stress, fear, boredom, excitement, suffering, happiness). The introduction of these measures was an effect of the investigation of the public understanding of animal welfare that was carried out in the Welfare QualityÓ project (see Miele et al., 2011, pp. 112– 113). Particularly important in this regard were the definitions pro15 For example, minimum space per bird housed in cages, in the case of laying hens; maximum number of birds per square meter in the case of indoor meat chickens; number of drinkers and feeders per square metre and so forth.

68

M. Miele, J. Lever / Geoforum 48 (2013) 63–72

vided by the lay public about what is important for defining a good quality of life for farmed animals, most notably the great importance attached to ‘positive emotions’ and ‘the possibility to express natural behaviour’ (Evans and Miele, 2012; Evans and Miele, 2007a,b). The protocols were tested on cattle, pigs and chickens farms in three European countries, but we draw only on the tests that we conducted in the UK with a group of twenty free range chicken farms (see Lever, 2009; Bock et al., 2009). A series of semi-structured interviews was carried out with the farmers at the time that the animal scientists were testing the protocol on farm; a second interview was conducted with the farmers after they received the results of their farm assessment (which comprised the assessment carried out at the slaughterhouse as well). The interview started off by asking farmers for their views on animal welfare and then general information about their farm and human–animal relations from a producers’ perspective. Information was then collected about their experiences of the implementation of the new assessment scheme, their impressions and opinions about the measures adopted, possible limits and improvements. Towards the end of the interview, the focus turned back to farmers’ concerns about animal welfare and their possible role in relation to the other actors in the supply chain they were linked to. The group of farmers we interviewed were members of a Free Range Growers Group contracted to a large national production company. The contract that ties them to the company specifies that the farmers only grow the chickens while the company owns them; the company provides the farmers with the chicks and decides which breed of bird is most suitable for the different type of production, e.g. indoor versus free-range. The company delivers the chickens’ feed, it regulates the quantity of feed for the entire cycle of the birds’ life and it provides the technical support that the farmers might need. These farmers were also certified by Freedom Food, whose standard is promoted by the RSPCA. At the end of each production cycle (e.g. 35–41 days for conventional indoor chickens, and 58–61 days for free-range chickens) the company sends a ‘catching crew’ to collect the chickens and to send them to the slaughterhouse. Then the company sells them to two national supermarket chains that set the price consumers pay for chickens and the price of chickens’ carcasses. From the conversation with one of the farmers we interviewed it emerged that the net income he was making after paying all the costs was less than 5 pence per bird. Many farmers claimed that they had very little ‘room for manoeuvre’ and that the welfare they could achieve on their farms was largely determined by these relations with the production company. We started off our interviews by asking farmers general questions about animal welfare. As free-range farmers most talked about the benefits of free ranging and many stressed the need for good animal husbandry and good stockmanship, both of which were linked to production and profitability. There was a broad consensus that farmers could only assess and maintain welfare by ‘walking’ their chicken sheds on a regular basis and by getting to know their flocks intimately. The implication was that farmers instinctively know when things are going well, and likewise, when something is wrong. You just know, you just see them. They’ll tell you, if there’s something not right as soon as you go in the shed . . . they’ll either be quiet or else be noisy, one or the other, and you just get a feel for it (Farm 9, March 2009). Even in fully automated sheds, where ventilation, heating, humidity, light, feed and drink are all controlled, farmers claimed that there was no substitute for walking their sheds. Many farmers defined animal welfare in local, context specific terms and they clearly regarded themselves as experts on farming in a particular location. They talked about the impact of different micro climates within a few miles of each other, where the prob-

lems faced by individual farmers could be very different. They pointed out how light rays from the sun at a particular angle at particular time of the year sometimes had a strange impact on chickens, and how, at other times, birds in two identical sheds in the same location could act very differently for no reason other than the wind blowing. As one farmer put it: [T]here is no rhyme or reason to it, they are sensitive things; if the light in one shed is slightly different to another their behaviour may be completely different (Farm 6, January 2009). The main concern of farmers was for the health of chickens. For most farmers, checking the ability of birds to walk was thus seen as a good test of welfare, one that provided farmers with all types of important information: It gives you all sorts of information to be perfectly honest with you. It gives you bone structure, muscle structure information. Feeding information, the amount of exercise they’ve had in the past, all sorts of information (Farm 11, February 2009). Farmers generally looked for leg problems when they walked their sheds, pulling out and culling any birds with problems, a practice that was again bound up with being a good stockman. However, some argued that leg problems were not really a major cause of welfare problems on free-range systems, given the slow-growing breeds that they were using: It would [be] for standard birds, but for free range it wouldn’t make no difference because the breed of bird we’ve got, we’ve got the Hubbard we do not get leg problems. And it’s a strong bird. When we had the Ross and Cob before the Hubbard came in, I would say yes it would be a good thing. But for the slow-growing Hubbard bird, legs are not a problem (Farm 9, February 2009). One farmer elaborated on this by arguing that free-range birds only got leg problems early in the growing cycle, and that problems with hips and limping later in life are more frequent in intensive systems. Another farmer claimed that leg problems were really an issue that had to be addressed by production companies rather than farmers, as it is these companies that must focus on breeding birds with particular characteristics for particular systems. While most farmers recognized the need to carry out welfare assessments, many argued that the interrelation between a diverse range of context specific factors were crucial to any attempt to improve animal welfare. The situation was most evident in one of the measures for good health, where an assessor randomly selected 10 birds at 10 locations in a birdhouse and inspected them for foot lesions, hock burns and cleanliness of the plumage. While some farmers thought this measures provided a good indication of welfare, many argued that it was often very difficult to pin down what the underlying cause of a given foot problem may turn out to be, especially with free range birds. As one farmer indicated: This is something you have to keep your eye on because the causes are not that clear [. . .] free range birds run around in all types of weather, in mud or sun, some flocks have hock burns in some conditions, some don’t, so it is not clear (Farm 3, December 2008). While some farmers clearly attributed foot lesions to poor ground cover (litter) material, others argued that more complex causes could be at work, e.g. the breed and/or the quality of the feed. This was actually reflected in the results of the assessment, where a farmer with the worst performance for foot problems received a better than average litter score, and a farmer with bad litter received a better than average foot score. Time and again, farmers stressed the interrelation between the individual measures in the assessment, pointing out how some of the factors were not under their control. The results of the assessment of chicken behaviour created more discussions and questioning. Many issues came up about the usefulness of a measure for assessing behavioural characteristics indicating ‘fear’ and ‘activity levels’ (positive emotion) and the possible confusion between the two. A ‘novel object’ (a simple stick

M. Miele, J. Lever / Geoforum 48 (2013) 63–72

with colourful stripes, see Miele, 2011) was used to test chickens’ reactions to unexpected items. Then an avoidance distance test (ADT) was used to test the ‘Good human–animal relationship’, and the number of birds in a given time to get close (arm length) to the observer was recorded (Welfare QualityÒ, Assessment Protocol for Poultry, 2009, p. 38). While some farmers thought this measure gave some indication of welfare, others again argued that it is very difficult to measure ‘normal behaviour’ especially in free range birds that may be more active breeds and might look ‘agitated’ if compared with the conventional ones. Some farmers explained this in relation to walking their sheds when, for no apparent reason, something spooks a chicken and sets the whole flock off running around in a frenzy. One farmer suggested that the first time you saw this type of behaviour you might be worried by it, but that after a while you understand that it not something to be overly concerned about. Although there was a feeling that measuring behavioural characteristics gave some indication of welfare, most farmers didn’t rate this type of measure too highly. As one farmer suggested: I would not read too much into the welfare side of things, it could be the way farmers walk through the shed that scares them (the same doing the test). Some do it quickly, some slowly (Farm 6, January 2009). Some farmers argued that this measure was only relevant in relation to very extreme forms of behaviour, when, for example, feeding or drinking equipment malfunctions or breaks down, and birds react out of the ordinary. This was sometimes related to husbandry and stockmanship: You’ve got to know when a flock is well. The fact that we know. . . from their behavioral characteristics that something’s wrong and then we can start to look elsewhere [for the cause of the problem] (Farm 10, February 2009). Other farmers argued that high levels of activity are a good sign of health in freerange birds, and nothing to get concerned about: The more active they are, the more healthy they are, especially on ours anyway. The more active they are the better they’ll range, and this is what we’re after (Farm 9, February 2009). A number of farmers recognized this and claimed that free range breeds were generally much more active than conventional breeds and feared that a standard measure of ‘fear’ or ‘activity level’ would penalize them, while ‘normal behaviour’ is very much affected by the breed of chickens: [I]t would depend on the breed, we have Hubbard’s and they are very active, and can be easily spooked; Ross and Cob are much quieter, it’s the broiler breed and they are much quieter (Farm 5, January 2009). All the farmers indicated that the test of fear was the least useful and least relevant measure. The changed behaviour of the new dedicated breeds for free-range chickens in general was seen as a great improvement compared to the more passive behaviour of the breed for indoor system of production and not to be mistaken with fear (see Miele, 2011). Some farmers displayed further concerns over measuring emotions like chickens’ boredom (negative emotion) or interest (positive emotion) and also of the way in which these emotions were measured, i.e. through repeated observations of selected groups of birds (Qualitative Behaviour Assessment, Wemelsfelder, 2007). As one farmer stated: Some of the things they were looking for sounded absolutely bizarre! How can you tell if a chick looks bored, interested, or whatever? And then they have to give a score for a flock as a whole, so even if there are differences in the flock. . . everything ends up being a middle score (Farm 5, November 2008). Overall, even with some concern and disagreement regarding the importance of certain measures, most free-range farmers recognized the usefulness of the Welfare QualityÒ protocol for assessing the welfare of chickens achieved on their farms. But while animal welfare was seen to be dependent on good husbandry, stockmanship, and extensive local knowledge, farmers had a more parsimonious interpretation of animal welfare, (one that was compatible with the generation of an income and that did not required

69

further training) and they disagreed on the relevance of certain ‘higher quality of life’ aspects increasingly required by supermarkets and NGOs. For example, although some farmers spoke of the high welfare standards associated Freedom Food, several of them criticized it or could not see the value of some innovation to increase animal welfare. There was a general feeling that private standards and supermarkets constantly introduce new measures ‘to appease the [incompetent] public’ and give the supermarkets what they need. As one farmer put it: ‘They do a lot for change’s sake, they’ve got to do a lot to stay in front of their competitors, if the supermarkets did not want freedom food on their packaging, and the RSPCA weren’t anything to do with it, we would not be being pushed down that line (Farm 6, February 2009). One repeated complaint was the requirement to introduce higher levels of lighting in sheds, which addressed consumers and animal welfare scientists’ concern for birds living all their life in dark sheds (RSPCA Welfare Standard for Chickens,16 2011: 7–19). Many farmers, at first, resisted this innovation (and resented the associated costs of introducing more lighting or windows in their chickens’ sheds) since they thought that it would increase feather pecking and cannibalism. A similar claim was made about the demand to put new ventilation systems in free range sheds, which many farmers also thought was a waste of time, primarily because the pop holes through which chickens accessed the outdoor range already provided enough light and ventilation. These were contested issues and the farmers’ views were directly opposed to the findings of the Scientific Committee for Animal Health and Animal Welfare that concluded that ‘brighter lighting is important to stimulate activity. Increased activity can help reduce the incidence of leg disorders and contact dermatitis, such as hock and foot pad burn’ (2000, p. 62). The main issue was that the introduction of higher lighting that offers opportunity for better animal welfare, as this also required careful management and training in order to avoid undesirable effects such as increased aggression and cannibalism. As one farmer put it: Free range chicken use to seem the right thing to do, but there’s so much paper work now it’s like a conventional way of doing things, I can’t see the point in it (Farm 7, January 2009). The implication here was that the proliferation of standards and the growing attention to consumer desires and consumer understanding of animal welfare (or ‘profane knowledge’ as Wynne, 1996, called it) is such that the farming practices need constant adjustment and revisions. The second time we visited the economic crisis had worsened and the intensity of the demands placed on farmers had started to increase significantly. At this time, around the start of 2009, farmers were being asked to close the pop holes in order to produce indoor (lower welfare) birds in housing they had invested heavily into produce outdoor (higher welfare) birds. While these changes provided the whole integrated chicken supply chain with alternative sources of revenue in a time of economic recession when the demand for free-range chickens had dropped off significantly, they again challenged the views of the farmers about the merits of free-range farming.17 As one farmer pointed out: We went into free range to be free range farmers, not to keep the birds in, you know, it goes against all our ideals, and we’ve been doing it for 11 or 12 years now, and that’s why we went into it, because we thought that’s how chickens should be reared (Farm 10, February 2009). It is at this juncture that we can start to see the fragilities of a highly innovative market and how the need to meet a variable consumer demand affects the free-range chicken sector.

16 Available at http://www.rspca.org.uk/ImageLocator/LocateAsset?asset= document&assetId=1232725466971&mode=prd. 17 Such were the pressures involved, that the South West Free Range Growers group lost around 10% of its members during the early months of 2009 (Lawrence, 2009).

70

M. Miele, J. Lever / Geoforum 48 (2013) 63–72

4. The free range chicken market: a fragile construction

As Callon notes: ‘The belief used to be that markets were quasinatural realities, and theoreticians were content to identify the conditions of their viability . . . We now realize that they have to be sometimes created from scratch, and that they are in reality fragile and complicated socio-technical artefacts. It is therefore necessary to reconsider the following basic questions: what are markets made of?’ (2009, p. 539). The free-range chicken sector in the UK offers some interesting insights into the complexities involved in creating a market for welfare friendly produced foods. Firstly, a demand for animal friendly foodstuff needs to be created and sustained. This task, as we pointed out above, might be more complicated in parts of Europe where ‘animal welfare’ is strongly institutionalized as public good (e.g. Sweden and Norway), or where it is folded into a more general concept of food quality as in France and Italy. In other countries, such as the UK and the Netherlands, were ‘animal welfare’ has started to be seen as a ‘food quality attribute’ we can see that a number of actors (supermarkets, poultry producing companies, NGOs) have been instrumental in the emergence of such a market. In this latter case, the reliance on consumer demand (as well as retailer policies) makes the ‘animal welfare improvements’ and achievements of the market for welfare friendly foodstuffs tenuous and fragile, when understood in the context of highly vertically integrated supply chains. As we have seen, free range farmers’ knowledge and skills need to be constantly updated to implement animal welfare innovations (e.g. lighting, ventilation, management and so forth) and all these investments might be nullified if a sudden change happens in the market: free range farmers have been asked to keep indoor the ‘free-range’ chickens if consumer demand drops. However, we would argue that the formation of this market has achieved some important effects in animal welfare politics and animal welfare science. For example, the formation of this new market affected several actors in the chicken supply chain; it led the production companies to develop animal welfare training courses for farmers; it pushed the breeding companies to develop specific breeds (so called slow growing) for free-range and organic systems of production; and it led the standard setting agencies interested in higher animal welfare systems of production (e.g. RSPCA, Soil Association, certain supermarkets schemes, etc.) to look for innovations in animal housing, design, management and new type of environment enrichment. These developments were built on the experience and scientific evidence that when the different systems of production are assessed using scientific measures, the ‘more natural’ systems of production need to rely on higher technological inputs, such as improved breeds of birds, improved ranges, appropriate feeds and so forth; otherwise they might score equal if not worse than conventional intensive indoor systems in terms of health and productivity (Weeks, 2009a,b). All these initiatives can be interpreted as experimentations for finding workable solutions to the problem of improving farm animal welfare while maintaining the economic viability of the free-range chickens farming. Moreover, the appearance on the food market of animal friendly qualified products, such as free-range and organic chickens, communicated to consumers ideas about animals natural living and happiness, which enriched the debate about what is important for defining the quality of life of farm animals (Miele, 2011; Buller and Roe, 2013). The claims on these products in turn led animal welfare science to develop measures for positive emotions and natural living of farm animals and to question the existing measures of stress, fear

and other negative emotions (Boissy et al., 2007a,b; Veissier et al., 2009). These are new areas of research and they tap into consumers desires and lay understandings of animal welfare that were never properly addressed when the regulation of animal welfare was concerned with the definition of a common ‘minimum animal welfare standard’ for creating common rules for European producers and the conversations (or the tables of negotiations) for informing new regulations about animal farming was confined amongst more traditional stakeholders (Blokhuis et al., 2013). However the farmers pointed to the difficulties of giving an account of the ‘emotional states’ of animals on farm when the welfare assessment is necessarily periodic, as it can involve only a sample of animals and only few measures are available. Their criticism points to the ineffability of the concept of market transparency and to the limits of what can actually being accounted for. Indeed the emergence of the markets for animal friendly qualified products pointed out that measures for animals’ positive emotions are scarce and in need of development if they are to be seen as more legitimate and robust by the farmers whose welfare concerns are focused on chickens’ health and general productivity. All these innovations and the controversies that they generate might be seen as ‘the research and the invention of satisfactory answers’ (Callon, 2009, p. 547) or to multi-problematize with experiment ‘in vivo’ (Callon, 2009; Callon et al., 2009) the definition of animal welfare and to overcome a view, sometimes endorsed by the farmers, that welfare coincides with health, and the opposite view, most often endorsed by the lay public, that welfare simply coincides with ‘natural living’. Going back to the questions we started from, what is the market for welfare friendly products in Europe made of? How can it contribute to the improvement of animal welfare? The case we presented here has revealed some of its limits and some of its potential as well as the diversity of actors involved in its construction and its workings. Chicken producers, food retailers, consumers, but also breeding companies, chickens, animal rights/animal welfare NGOs, media campaigns, animal scientists, social scientists, European Union regulation, national regulations... each of them, even though they are not all linked by commercial relations, still participate in the design of the market for welfare friendly products and affect its functioning. But does this market work well? What are its achievements? Drawing on Callon we might say that ‘A market which functions satisfactorily is one that organizes the discussion of the matters of concern produced by its functioning and the framings/overflowings that it entails. It takes those matters of concern into account and sets up procedures and devices designed not only to encourage the expression of problems which arise but also to facilitate the design and evaluation of theoretical or practical solutions to those problems’ (2009, p. 546). The example of the market for free-range chickens in the UK shows that it promoted a wide discussion in animal welfare science as well as many experimentations and engagements around the matters of concern of the lay public regarding what is important for the quality of life of chickens and how it can be improved. It also led to the invention of new techno-ethical devices, the Welfare QualityÒ protocol, to render the controversies around the qualification of ‘animal friendliness’ debatable and a source of experimentation. Then we might say that the achievements of the market for animal friendly products are not about the transformation of the animals’ supply chains, rather, the changes it promoted are more diffuse than specific: a number of animal friendly qualified products have started to appear promoted by a joint effort of NGOs (e.g. RSPCA), retailers and animal production companies and ‘animal welfare is becoming a consumer’s issue’, as Kjærnes et al. (2009) have pointed out, but not necessarily with a strong market demand for welfare friendly products. More importantly the emergence of new animal friendly qualified products, a case of ‘foods sold with a story’, as Freidberg

M. Miele, J. Lever / Geoforum 48 (2013) 63–72

(2003) has pointed out, that communicate to consumers ideas of animals’ natural life or happiness have created the opportunity for further research in the field of farm animals’ emotions to make these welfare ‘friendliness’ claims accountable and comparable. These interventions are the modest achievements of the market for welfare friendly products. Modest but not insignificant, since they contribute to the civilization or multi-problematization of animal welfare science and politics. References Barnett, C., Cloke, P., Clarke, N., Malpass, A., 2005. Consuming ethics: articulating the subjects and spaces of ethical consumption. Antipode 37, 23–45. Blokhuis, H., Miele, M., Veissier, I., Jones, B. (Eds.), 2013. Improving Farm Animal Welfare: Science and Society Working Together: The Welfare Quality Approach. Wageningen Academic Publishers, Wageningen (NL). Blokhuis, H.J., Jones, R.B., Geers, R., Miele, M., Veissier, I., 2003. Measuring and monitoring animal welfare: transparency in the food product quality chain. Animal welfare 12, 445–455. Blokhuis, H., Veissier, I., Miele, M., Jones, B., 2010. The Welfare QualityÒ project and beyond: safeguarding farm animal well-being. Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica Section A – Animal Sciences 60 (3), 129–140. Boissy, A., Manteuffel, G., Jensen, M.B., Oppermann Moe, R., Spruijt, B., Keeling, L.J., Winckler, C., Forkman, B., Dimitrov, I., Langbein, J., Bakkenj, M., Veissier, I., Aubert, A., 2007a. Assessment of positive emotions in animals to improve their welfare. Physiology & Behavior 92 (3), 375–397. Boissy, A., Arnould, C., Chaillou, E., Désiré, L., Duvaux-Ponter, C., Greiveldinger, L., Leterrier, C., Richard, S., Roussel, S., Saint-Dizier, H., Meunier-Salaün, M.C., Valance, D., Veissier, I., 2007b. Emotions and cognition: a new approach to animal welfare. Animal Welfare 16 (Suppl. 1), 37–43 (7). Bock, B.B., De Jong, I.C., 2009. Synthesis Report Work Package 463. The Assessment of Animal Welfare on Broiler Farms. Report for Work Package 4.6.3. Welfare QualityÒ Project 4.32. Botreau, R., Veissier, I., Butterworth, A., Bracke, M.B.M., Keeling, L.J., 2007. Definition of criteria for overall assessment of animal welfare. Animal welfare 16, 225– 228. Buller, H., Cesar, M., 2007. Eating well, eating fare: farm animal welfare in France. International Journal of Sociology of Food and Agriculture 15 (3), 45–58. Buller, H., Roe, E., 2013. Modifying and commodifying farm animal welfare: the economisation of layer chickens, Journal of Rural Studies, http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2013.01.005. Busch, L., 2011. Standards, Recipes for Realities (Infrastructures). The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Callon, M., Méadel, C., Rabeharisoa, V., 2002. The economy of qualities. Economy and Society 31 (2), 194–217. Callon, M., 1998. The embeddedness of economic markets in economics. In: Callon, M. (Ed.), The laws of the markets. Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 1–57. Callon, M., 2009. Civilizing markets. Accounting, Organizations and Society 34, 535– 548. Callon, M., Lascoumes, P., Barthe, Y., 2009. Acting in an Uncertain World, an Essay on Technical Democracy. The MIT Press, Cambridge (MA) and London, UK. Callon, M., Millo, Y., Muniesa, F., 2007. Market devices. Blackwell, Malden, MA. Caporale, V., Alessandrini, B., Dalla Villa, P., Del Papa, S., 2005. Global perspectives on animal welfare: Europe. Revue Scientifique et Technique – Office International Epizooties 24 (2), 567–577. Eden, S., Bear, C., Walker, G., 2008. Mucky carrots and other proxies: problematising the knowledge-fix for sustainable and ethical consumption. Geoforum 39 (2), 1044–1057. Eurobarometer, 2005. . European Commission (2012), Communication from the commission to the European Parliament, the Council and the European Economic and Social Committee on the European Union Strategy for the Protection and Welfare of Animals 2012-2015, (Text with EEA relevance), {SEC(2012) 55 final}, {SEC(2012) 56 final}, 15.2.2012 COM(2012) 6 final/2, Brussels, European Commission. Available from: . Eurobarometer, 2007. . European Union. The Animal Welfare Action Plan, 2006–2010. . Evans, A., Miele, M., 2007a. Consumers’ views about farm animal welfare, part I: national reports based on focus group research, Welfare QualityÒ Reports no. 4, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK. Evans, A., Miele, M. (Eds.), 2007b. Consumers’ views about farm animal welfare, Part 2: Comparative report based on Focus Group Research. Welfare QualityÒ Reports no. 5, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK. Evans, A., Miele, M., 2012. Between food and flesh: how animals are made to matter (and not to matter) within food consumption practices. Environment and Planning D – Society and Space 30 (2), 298–314. Farm Animal Welfare Council, 1979. Press Statement. .

71

Francione, G., 1995. Animals, Property and the Law. Temple University Press, Philadelphia. Francione, G., Gardner, R., 2010. The Animal Rights Debate, Abolition or Regulation? Columbia University Press, New York. Fraser, D., 2008. Understanding Animal Welfare: The Science in its Cultural, Context. Wiley-Blackwell. Freidberg, S., 2003. Editorial: not all sweetness and light: new cultural geographies of food. Social and Cultural Geography 4, 3–6. Freidberg, S., 2004. The ethical complex of corporate food power. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 22 (4), 513–531. Gibbs, D., Holloway, L., Gilna, B., Morris, C., 2009. Genetic techniques for livestock breeding: restructuring institutional relationships in agriculture. Geoforum 40 (6), 1041–1049. Guthman, J., 2003. Fast food/organic food: reflexive tastes and the making of ‘yuppie chow’. Social and Cultural Geography 4, 45–58. Guthman, J., 2008. Thinking inside the neoliberal box: the micro-politics of agrofood philanthropy. Geoforum 39, 1241–1253. Guthman, J., 2011. Weighing. In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism. University of California Press, Berkeley. Halkier, B., 2010. Consumption Challenged, Food in Medialised Everyday Lives. Ashgate Publishing Limited, Farhnam, UK. Hobson, K., 2006. Bins, bulbs, and shower timers: on the ‘techno-ethics’ of sustainable living. Ethics, Policy & Environment 9 (3), 317–336. Holloway, L., Morris, C., 2008. Boosted bodies: genetic techniques, domestic livestock bodies and complex representations of life. Geoforum 39 (5), 1709– 1720. Ingenbleek, P.T.M., Immink, V.M., 2011. Consumer decision-making for animal friendly products: synthesis and implications. Animal Welfare 20, 11–19. Kjaernes, U., Lavik, R., & Kjoerstad, I. (2005) ‘Animal friendliness and food consumption practices. Preliminary results from population surveys in 7 countries’ in Butterworth, A. Proceedings of the Welfare QualityÒ Conference, Brussels, 17/18 November 2005. Available from: . Kjaernes, U., Miele, M., Roex, J. (Eds.), 2007. Attitudes of consumers, retailers and producers to farm animal welfare, Welfare QualityÒ reports n. 2, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK. Kjærnes, U., 2012. Ethics and action: a relational perspective on consumer choice in the European politics of food. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 25 (2), 145–162. Kjærnes, U., Bock, B., Roe, E., Roex, J., 2008. Construction, Distribution and Production of Farm Animal Welfare: Opinions and Practices within the Supply Chain, Welfare QualityÒ Report Series No. 7. Cardiff University Press, Cardiff. Kjærnes, U., Bock, B., Miele, M., 2009. Improving Farm Animal Welfare across Europe: Current Initiatives and Venues for Future Strategies’, Welfare QualityÒ Report Series N. 13. Cardiff University Press, Cardiff. Lang, T., 2010. From ‘value-for-money’ to ‘values-for-money’? Ethical food and policy in Europe. Environment and Planning A 42 (8), 1814–1832. Law, J., 1994. Organising Modernity. Blackwell, Oxford. Lawrence, F., 2009. Chicken Farmers Unite to Fight Planned Pay Cut by Supermarket Supplier: Free-range Producers Say Cuts could Force them Out of Business. (12.06.09). Lever, J., 2009. Unpublished Research Report for Work Package 4.6.3, Welfare QualityÒ Project. Cardiff University. Lever, J., Miele, M., 2010. Ordering animal farming practices: farmers vs. animal scientists. Presented at Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) 2010 Annual Meeting, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, 25–29 August 2010. Lever, J., Miele, M., 2012. The growth of the halal meat markets in Europe: an exploration of the supply side theory of religion. Journal of Rural Studies 28 (4), 528–537. Mayfield, L.E., Bennett, R.M., Tranter, R.B., Wooldridge, M.J., 2007. Consumption of welfare-friendly food products in Great Britain, Italy and Sweden, and how it may be influenced by consumer attitudes to, and behaviour towards, animal welfare attributes. International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food 15 (3), 59–73. Miele, M., 2011. The taste of happiness: free-range chickens. Environment and Planning A 43 (9), 2076–2090. Miele, M., Parisi, V., 2001. L’Etica del Mangiare, i valori e le preoccupazioni dei consumatori per il benessere animale negli allevamenti: un’applicazione dell’analisi Means-end Chain. Rivista di Economia Agraria Anno LVI (1), 81–103. Miele, M., Parisi, V. (Eds.), 2000. Atteggiamento dei consumatori e politiche di qualità della carne in Italia e in Europa negli anni novanta. Franco Angeli, Milano. Miele, M., Murdoch, J., Roe, E., 2005. Animals and ambivalence: governing farm animal welfare in the European food sector. In: Higgins, V., Lawrence, G. (Eds.), Agricultural Governance: Globalization and the new politics of regulation. Routledge, Oxford, UK, pp. 110–125. Miele, M., Evans, A., 2010. When foods become animals. Ruminations on ethics and responsibility in care-full spaces of consumption. Ethics, Place and Environment 13 (2), 171–190. Murdoch, J., Marsden, T., Bank, J., 2000. Quality, nature, and embeddedness: some theoretical considerations in the context of the food sector. Economic Geography 76, 107–125. Miele, M., Veissier, I., Evans, A., Botreau, R., 2011. Animal Welfare: Establishing a Dialogue between Science and Society. Animal Welfare 20, 103–117.

72

M. Miele, J. Lever / Geoforum 48 (2013) 63–72

Ransom, E., 2007. The rise of animal welfare standards as understood through a neo-institutional lens. International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food 15 (3), 26–44. Renard, M.C., 2005. Quality certification, regulation and power in fair trade. Journal of Rural Studies 21 (4), 419–431. Roe, E., Murdoch, J., Marsden, T., 2005. The retail of welfare-friendly products: a comparative assessment of the nature of the market for welfare friendly products in six European countries’ in Butterworth, A. In: Proceedings of the Welfare Quality Conference, Brussels 17/18 November 2005. . Roe, E., Marsden, T., 2006. A comparative assessment of the market for welfarefriendly foodstuffs across 6 European countries. In: Kjarnes, U., Miele, M., Roex, J. (Eds.), (2007) Farm Animal Welfare Concerns: Consumers, Retailers and Producers, Welfare QualityÒ Reports No. 2. Cardiff University Press, Cardiff. Sassatelli, R., 2007. Consumer Culture, History, Theory and Politics. Sage, London. Singer, P., Mason, J., 2006. Eating: What We Eat and Why It Matters. Arrow Books, London. Skarstad, G.A., Terragni, L., Torjussen, H., 2007. Animal Welfare according to Norwegian consumers and producers: definitions and implications. International Journal of Sociology of Food and Agriculture 15 (3), 75–90. Soper, K., 2008. Alternative hedonism, cultural theory and the role of aesthetic revisioning. Cultural Studies 22 (5), 567–587. Stassart, P.M., Whatmore, S.J., 2003. Metabolising risk: food scares and the un/remaking of Belgian beef. Environment & Planning A 35, 449–462. Sutton, P.W., 2004. Nature, Environment and Society. Palgrave.

Tester, K., 1991. Animals and Society: The Humanity of Animal Rights. Routledge, London. Veissier, I., Boissy, A., Désiré, L., Greiveldinger, L., 2009. ‘Animals’ emotions: studies in sheep using appraisal theories. Animal Welfare 18, 347–354. Wales, C., Harvey, M., Warde, A., 2006. Recuperating from BSE: the shifting UK institutional basis for trust in food. Appetite 47 (2), 187–195. Weeks, C.A., 2009a. Do free-range poultry systems offer better quality? In: Paper presented at ‘Knowing Animals: Cross-fertilization between Animal and Social Science for Understanding the Quality of Life of Farm Animals’ International Conference, Florence, Italy, 5–6 March 2009. Weeks, C.A., 2009b. Does ranging behaviour go against the grain for modern chickens? In: Paper presented at ‘Knowing Animals: Cross-fertilization between Animal and Social Science for Understanding the Quality of Life of Farm Animals’ International Conference, Florence, Italy, 5–6 March 2009. Welfare QualityÒ, 2009. Welfare QualityÒ Assessment Protocol for Poultry (Broilers, Laying Hens). Welfare QualityÒ Consortium: Lelystad, The Netherlands. Welfare QualityÒ, 2007. Welfare QualityÒ Fact Sheet. Principles and criteria of Good Farm Animal Welfare. . Wemelsfelder, F., 2007. How animals communicate quality of life: the qualitative assessment of animal behaviour. Animal Welfare 16 (S), 25–31. Whatmore, S., 2002. Hybrid Geographies. Sage, London. Wynne, B., 1996. May the sheep safely graze? A reflexive view of the expert – lay knowledge divide. In: Lash, S., Bzerszynski, B., Wynne, B. (Eds.), Risk, Environment and Modernity: Towards a New Ecology. Sage, London, pp. 44–83.