Creating Moral Sentiments and Attitudes towards Farm Animals Saara Kupsala

Creating Moral Sentiments and Attitudes towards Farm Animals

Saara Kupsala

Dissertation submitted in part completion

of the MA in Environment, Culture and Society

Lancaster University

September 2002 Abstract

This dissertation analyses how moral sentiments and attitudes towards farm animals are created in late modern societies. It is analysed how farm animals are constructed as fellow beings, towards which people feel moral responsibilities, and as distant others, which are outside of a moral community. It is argued that several policy and consumption changes indicate that moral concern towards farm animals has increased from the 1970s onwards. Moral relations to farm animals are analysed in three contexts: in the contexts of consumption, production and science. It is argued that moral concern of urban consumers has increased in late modernity because media have increasingly provided spaces to contest animal welfare issues. The second reason is that the association between meat and health has weakened and thus instrumental uses of animals are seen less justified than previously. When moral attitudes towards farm animals are analysed in the second context, in the context of production, it is claimed that the rationalisation of food industry and farming tend to create moral indifference towards animals among employees and farmers. In particular, several differences in moral relations between extensive and intensive farmers are found. Finally, it is argued that farm animal sciences tend to create both moral concern by constructing animals as beings with complex welfare requirements and moral indifference by constructing animals as objects without mental experiences. However, from the 1970s onwards, farm animal welfare issues have begun to get more central place in farm animal sciences.