An Ethnographic Study of Animal Welfare Inspection in Ireland, Denmark, France, and Poland
In the regulation of animal welfare in farms and slaughterhouses across Europe, animal welfare inspectors encounter moral challenges that reveal the paradox at the heart of animal welfare. Focusing on the labour of inspection, an ethnographic study across four European countries shows how inspectors are enacting a version of animal welfare that is neither represented in the regulations they should uphold nor in their own abstract formulations of what welfare is according to them. Inspectors’ conceptualizations of welfare conflict with the material conditions of industrial agriculture which leads to frustration, disillusionment, and alienation, as inspectors cannot conduct the moral practice of care at the heart of animal welfare inspection. Funded by the EU Reference Centre for Animal Welfare-Pigs Mc Loughlin, E. T. (2022). The Challenges and Needs of Animal Welfare Inspectors on Farm and at Slaughter: An Ethnographic Study of Animal Welfare Inspection in Ireland, Denmark, France, and Poland. EURCAW-Pigs. https://edepot.wur.nl/581217 Mc Loughlin, E. (Forthcoming) Change the World Farm by Farm: The Moral Care of Audit amidst the Paradox of Animal Welfare Inspection in Europe |