The experience of animal welfare inspections as perceived by Danish livestock farmers: A qualitative research approach

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Abstract

Animal welfare control carried out by the authorities by using unannounced on-farm inspection has been expanding in Denmark during the past 10 years. In the EU among others, third-party audit and inspection of animal welfare connected to private labels or as a requirement from the food industry is a growing field. The present study was conducted to bring the farmers' experience of the inspection of animal welfare legislation into the discussion about on-farm animal welfare assessment, and the perceived need for third-party audit. Subsequent to unannounced farm inspections, 12 farmers were interviewed using a semi-qualitative interview technique. The results show that the farmers on the one hand perceived animal welfare inspections as necessary and inevitable, mainly based on a belief that not all farmers comply with the law; at the same time, farmers felt that inspections were generally unfair. In addition, they expressed the view that the inspections were carried out in very different ways between farms. Therefore, the farmers believe that the animal welfare inspection creates a feeling of certainty, because it protects the sector, but also at the same time, produces uncertainty. The analysis also shows a challenge in the communication between the farmers and the inspectors about animal welfare, related to conflicts between languages from different domains. It is suggested that more room for reflection on animal welfare should be taken into account in the future.

Introduction

In the EU and in many other countries, third-party auditing and inspections of animal welfare have become common in relation to legislation, private labels or requirements from the food industry (Fraser, 2006, Sorensen and Fraser, 2010). In Denmark, the animal welfare control, which has been carried out by the authorities in unannounced on-farm inspections since 2004, has become an area for debate among Danish farmers and the farmers' organisations. Issues include the extent to which on-farm inspection is needed, how inspection should be carried out and how inspections influence the farmers' daily lives and their understanding of animal welfare.

In recent years, on-farm animal welfare assurance programmes have involved assessment schemes, both linked either to legislation, as we see in this study or to third-party audits related to labelling and product-differentiation programmes as seen in the USA and Europe (Fraser, 2006). In either case, understanding how the farmers experience animal welfare inspection contributes to the understanding of the social construction of animal welfare in daily practice at the farms, and how animal welfare and inspection can be viewed as interlinked.

Because the governmental Danish inspection of animal welfare legislation is relatively new, limited relevant research has been carried out to date. The aim of this paper is to investigate farmers' experiences of inspection of animal welfare on their farms, and to discuss the ways they express this experience. The enquiry is explorative, aiming to seek new insight into the farmers' experience of inspection.

Section snippets

The context: on-farm animal welfare inspections

The EU regulation on animal welfare (Anonymous, 2011a), which is implemented in the Danish legislation (Anonymous, 2011b), gives a framework in which unannounced on-farm inspections are included. These inspections are carried out by the Danish authorities; they focus on the compliance of farmers, who cannot refuse them. From 1998 to 2003, on-farm inspections were carried out in 2% of holdings with pigs and calves. These inspections looked only at the relevant EU legislation and were notified to

Results

The experience of the inspection can be described through three themes, which seemed to be present at the same time in the same farmers, as illustrated in Fig. 1. On the one hand, farmers perceived animal welfare inspections as necessary. At the same time, they found them to be generally unfair. Theme 1 refers to the farmer's experience with the necessity of inspection of animal welfare, while theme 2 refers to the inspection process on the farm. Theme 3 contains the farmer's explanation for a

Discussion

In this study we aimed to investigate and understand how a group of farmers experienced unannounced animal welfare inspections as a part of their daily life on the farm. We did not investigate whether a representative sample of farmers liked or disliked on-farm inspection of animal welfare. The relevance of qualitative research approach is explored by Hjelmeland and Knizek (2010) in the field of suicidology. According to these authors, the concept of qualitative research encompasses a search

Conclusion and future perspectives

The study demonstrates that Danish farmers on the one hand experienced the inspections as necessary and inevitable and, at the same time, they in general felt that the inspections were unfair in terms of not being done according to the same standards, although the farmers also wanted room for interpretation of these standards.

In both cases, we conclude that the inspection will gain and lead to a better outcome if the farmer experiences a higher degree of involvement in and understanding of the

Conflict of interest statement

There are no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the participating farmers and inspectors for taking their time to involve the researcher in a vulnerable area. In addition, the authors are very thankful to professors and students from the Animal Welfare Group at UBC and at Agriculture Canada for commenting on the research when presented in their group, to Cand.Cur., PhD Bente Martinsen for taking time to discuss and reflect on the use of the phenomenology theories, and to Thorkild Olsen for commenting on the use of

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