Food and Animal Welfare

(Hardback)

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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.

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 *

Author Bio

Henry Buller is Professor of Geography at the University of Exeter, UK. Emma Roe is Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Southampton, UK.