Sustainability and animal welfare

Alison Hodge, University of Exeter

Link to project: Realising the Links between Quality Food Production and Biodiversity Protection

The proposed PhD research project will identify, explore and analyse the incorporation of animal welfare concerns into arguments, policies and practices for rural sustainability. It will investigate the articulation of animal welfare programmes, schemes and mechanisms with sustainability objectives and consider the degree to which this articulation complicates or facilitates the achievement of both. The research will look, in particular, at how arguments for animal welfare are being incorporated into social, economic and environmental discourses of sustainability within England and will investigate specific examples where sustainable land management practices actively incorporate animal welfare aims. The specific objectives will be: first, to review the literature on rural sustainability, relevant livestock farming practices and management, animal welfare (both in social and scientific terms) and animal rights with a view to making interdisciplinary and cross-cutting connections in what is a largely distinct set of literatures; second, to investigate and assess the current 'contribution' of farm animals to definitions, conceptualisations and practices of rural sustainability through the notion of animals as 'vectors'; third, to examine the incorporation of welfare objectives in discourses, policies and practices of rural sustainability, including exploring the links and interactions between moral/social/health rationales, economic/food quality/well-being rationales and environmental rationales as farm animals become the 'targets' for sustainability; and fourth, to assess the land management implications of greater integration of animal welfare concerns into rural sustainability policy and practice.