Drawing together the latest research and a range of case studies, Henry Buller and Emma Roe guide readers on a fascinating journey through animal welfare issues 'from farm to fork'. Animal welfare offers a vital lens through which to explore the economies, culture and politics of food. This is the first text to provide a much-needed overview of this strongly debated area of the food industry.
Buller and Roe explore how animal welfare is defined, advocated, assessed and implemented by farmers, veterinarians, distributors, and consumers. From the practicalities and limitations of establishing a basic standard of care for livestock, to the ethics of selling welfare as a product in the supermarket, this indispensable book offers empirical insights into a key aspect of the global food system: the lives, deaths, and consumption of animals which are at the core of the food chain. It is a must-read for students and scholars of animal welfare, agro-food studies and human-animal relations in disciplines such as geography, politics, anthropology, and sociology as well as animal behaviour, psychology and veterinary science.
Henry Buller is Professor of (more than) Human Geography at the University of Exeter. He has written well over 100 books, articles and reports on social science approaches to animal welfare, animal geography, human-animal relations, rural development, food and environmental studies. He is currently undertaking research in the antimicrobial resistance and, in particular, diagnostic procedures in livestock farming systems with research projects in the UK, Tanzania and Thailand. He was a key member of the EU funded WelfareQuality® research project (2005-2010) and, more recently, the EU funded H2020 project 'Hennovation'. He was editor of the rural social science journal Sociologia Ruralis from 2002 to 2014 and has been an appointed member of the UK Farm Animal Welfare Council for a number of years and has chaired the DEFRA/FAWC 'Welfare at Killing Committee'.
Emma Roe BSc PhD is Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Southampton. Beginning her career studying embodied consumption practices, she moved into the study of farm animal welfare through working on the EU WelfareQuality® research project between 2004-2009. She has established herself as one of the leading academics in the governance of food retail and food service markets for higher welfare food products and the ethics and politics around sentient materialities and somatic sensibilities in food/animal/human research. She continues to work closely with animal welfare expertise in the animal science and food industry community.
