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Citizens, Consumers and Animals: What Role do Experts Assign to Public Values in Establishing Animal Welfare Standards?

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Abstract

The public can influence animal welfare law and regulation. However what constitutes ‘the public’ is not a straightforward matter. A variety of different publics have an interest in animal use and this has implications for the governance of animal welfare. This article presents an ethnographic content analysis of how the concept of a public is mobilized in animal welfare journals from 2003 to 2012. The study was undertaken to explore how experts in the discipline define and regard the role of the public in determining animal welfare standards. Analysis indicates that experts in animal welfare constitute different types of citizen and consumer publics around specific types of animal use, framed by different theories of value. These results suggest a need for greater clarity about the roles and responsibilities of experts and publics in animal welfare reform processes. Clearly citizens and consumers can both contribute to promoting higher welfare standards, but an over-reliance on market mechanisms and consumer behaviour to assign value is beset by moral hazards, foremost being the risk of disarticulating the concept of animal welfare from the public good.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank John Hadley for his constructive comments on early drafts of this paper and Swantje Lorrimer-Mohr for her assistance in compiling the empirical materials used in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Values, Ethics, and the Law in Medicine, The University of Sydney, Medical Foundation Building, K25, 94-96 Parramatta Rd., Sydney, 2006, Australia

    Chris Degeling

  2. Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Jane Johnson

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Correspondence to Chris Degeling.

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Degeling, C., Johnson, J. Citizens, Consumers and Animals: What Role do Experts Assign to Public Values in Establishing Animal Welfare Standards?. J Agric Environ Ethics 28, 961–976 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-015-9571-x

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