Description du projet
Gros plan sur les défis de l’élevage européen
L’élevage pose des problèmes urgents concernant le bien-être des personnes, des animaux et de l’environnement. L’Union européenne confère aux vétérinaires un rôle important dans la préservation de la sécurité alimentaire, le bien-être animal et la santé publique au sein de l’industrie. Le projet VetValues, financé par le CER, étudie la manière dont différentes valeurs sont déployées et négociées dans le cadre des soins vétérinaires quotidiens. Une recherche comparative menée dans trois pays européens, les Pays-Bas, la Suède et l’Italie, révélera comment, outre les agriculteurs, les vétérinaires et les animaux eux-mêmes, les contextes réglementaires et économiques façonnent le «paysage de valeurs» de l’élevage. En s’inspirant des différences et des améliorations au sein de l’industrie de l’élevage, le projet apportera un éclairage théorique sur les relations entre l’homme et l’animal. Cette étude permettra également de mieux appréhender les dilemmes associés aux systèmes alimentaires innovants.
Objectif
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.
Champ scientifique
- 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
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsInstitution d’accueil
1012WX Amsterdam
Pays-Bas