Food and Animal Welfare

by Henry Buller, Michael K. Goodman (Editor), Emma Roe, David Goodman (Editor)

Overview

Drawing together the latest research and a range of case studies, Henry Buller and Emma Roe guide readers on a fascinating journey through animal welfare issues 'from farm to fork'. Animal welfare offers a vital lens through which to explore the economies, culture and politics of food. This is the first text to provide a much-needed overview of this strongly debated area of the food industry.

Buller and Roe explore how animal welfare is defined, advocated, assessed and implemented by farmers, veterinarians, distributors, and consumers. From the practicalities and limitations of establishing a basic standard of care for livestock, to the ethics of selling welfare as a product in the supermarket, this indispensable book offers empirical insights into a key aspect of the global food system: the lives, deaths, and consumption of animals which are at the core of the food chain. It is a must-read for students and scholars of animal welfare, agro-food studies and human-animal relations in disciplines such as geography, politics, anthropology, and sociology as well as animal behaviour, psychology and veterinary science.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780857857071
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	05/03/2018
Series:	Contemporary Food Studies: Economy, Culture and Politics
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Henry Buller is Professor of (more than) Human Geography at the University of Exeter. He has written well over 100 books, articles and reports on social science approaches to animal welfare, animal geography, human-animal relations, rural development, food and environmental studies. He is currently undertaking research in the antimicrobial resistance and, in particular, diagnostic procedures in livestock farming systems with research projects in the UK, Tanzania and Thailand. He was a key member of the EU funded WelfareQuality® research project (2005-2010) and, more recently, the EU funded H2020 project 'Hennovation'. He was editor of the rural social science journal Sociologia Ruralis from 2002 to 2014 and has been an appointed member of the UK Farm Animal Welfare Council for a number of years and has chaired the DEFRA/FAWC 'Welfare at Killing Committee'.

Emma Roe BSc PhD is Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Southampton. Beginning her career studying embodied consumption practices, she moved into the study of farm animal welfare through working on the EU WelfareQuality® research project between 2004-2009. She has established herself as one of the leading academics in the governance of food retail and food service markets for higher welfare food products and the ethics and politics around sentient materialities and somatic sensibilities in food/animal/human research. She continues to work closely with animal welfare expertise in the animal science and food industry community.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Food And Animal Welfare
1. Food And The Animal
2. Worthy Lives
3. Food Animal Care
4. Selling Welfare
5. Globalisation And Farm Animal Welfare
6. Emerging Welfare Concerns In China
7. Future Food Animals: Future Protein
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Appropriate audiences for Food and Animal Welfare include anthropologists who study food or human-animal interactions; scholars interested in post-humanist approaches; anyone who wants to understand the nuts and bolts of what processes and practices deliver animal products to the table; graduate students, and advanced undergraduates. I think this book, in all or part should be required reading for students of food anthropology, economics, animal science, biology, and food systems ethics.” —FoodAnthropology

“This is a much needed critical intervention into the politics and ethics of animal agriculture and issues of animal care. As Buller and Roe remind us, these are subjects that cannot be owned by any one field, not by veterinary scientists or ethicists. Questions about animal welfare are also deeply social, making this book all the more powerful by reminding us of our own interdependence with those nonhuman animals that feed us.” —Michael S. Carolan, Colorado State University, USA

“What becomes manifest as body eats body? Interfacing animal and agro-food studies - mixing science, economics and ethics; tracing bodies, body-parts, feelings and foodstuffs - the authors centralise animal welfare as the hinge for answering this provocative question. Addressing complex, often contradictory events - caring and killing, raising and erasing, fattening and rendering - they close the distance between field and fork, conjuring new sensibilities with which to rethink the politics of livestock production and consumption.” —Christopher Philo, University of Glasgow, UK

From the Publisher