Project description
A closer look at the challenges of European livestock farming
Livestock farming poses pressing challenges to the wellbeing of people, animals and the environment. The European Union affords veterinarians important roles in safeguarding public goods such as food safety, animal welfare and public health within the industry. The ERC-funded VetValues project studies how different values are enacted and negotiated in everyday veterinary care. Comparative research in three European countries, The Netherlands, Sweden and Italy, will reveal how next to farmers, vets, and animals themselves, regulatory and economic contexts shape the ‘value-scape’ of animal husbandry. By learning from differences and improvements within the livestock industry, the project will contribute theoretical insights into human-animal relations. This study will also improve our understanding of the dilemmas associated with the innovating food systems.
Objective
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. 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.
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. 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.
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. 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.
Fields of science
- social sciencessociologygovernance
- engineering and technologyother engineering and technologiesfood technologyfood safety
- agricultural sciencesanimal and dairy sciencedomestic animalsanimal husbandry
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespublic healthepidemiologyzoonosis
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacydrug resistanceantibiotic resistance
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
1012WX Amsterdam
Netherlands