Negotiating welfare in daily farm practice: how employees on Danish farms perceive animal welfare

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingArticle in proceedingsResearch

Little is known about how employees on husbandry farms perceive animal welfare and about factors influencing the relationship between them and the animals in daily work. Today, Danish farms are mainly family-owned, and the employees are often of other nationalities, and one third are unskilled. The aim of this paper is to document how employees perceive animal welfare and to discuss how they deal with ethical assumptions in daily work. The paper reports the findings of qualitative interviews with 23 employees from five Danish farms (mink, dairy and pig production). Employees emphasise physical aspects of animal welfare relating to feed, water and health. However, some employees described naturalness, which is known to be of importance to the public, as an area that could be negotiated. Some issues, like pain, were also negotiated, especially pain imposed on the animals by the employees themselves. Getting used to impose pain in daily work was described as a working condition in the job which one had to accept. A negative relationship among employees and managers as well as lack of credit also related to animal welfare and were described as creating a worse situation for the animals.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProfessionals in food chains : EurSafe 2018
EditorsSvenja Springer, Herwig Grimm
Number of pages6
PublisherWageningen Academic Publishers
Publication date2018
Pages60-65
Chapter7
ISBN (Print)978-90-8686-321-1
ISBN (Electronic)978-90-8686-869-8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018
Event Congress of the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics: Professionals in food chains - Wien, Austria
Duration: 13 Jun 201816 Jun 2018
Conference number: 14

Conference

Conference Congress of the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics
Nummer14
LandAustria
ByWien
Periode13/06/201816/06/2018

ID: 199029195