Ecological Biopower, Environmental Violence Against Animals, and the "Greening" of the Factory Farm

The promulgation of pollution control regulations governing factory farms has led to a striking new way of representing and intervening in the bodies of farmed animals: the body is being represented as a source of pollution, and various technological interventions, from genetic engineering to dietary changes, are being deployed to reduce pollution at the source. In this article I analyze this new technoscientific project through the theoretical lens of ecological biopower. Focusing on the industrial pork sector's efforts to keep the cost of complying with nutrient management regulations in check, the article examines the case of “environmental nutrition,” a dietary strategy that aims to reduce the excretion of nutrients from the bodies of swine. By highlighting whose diet is being changed in this approach and whose is not, I argue that environmental nutrition is as much about avoiding the exercise of ecological biopower over human beings as it is about exercising ecological biopower over farmed animals. I also argue that the pressing need to reduce the environmental impacts of factory farming is being used to justify new forms of violence against animals

Consider the Vulture: An Ethical Approach to Roadkill

Roadkill is disgusting. Many people just want it removed from the roads as quickly as possible, and they don’t care where it goes. In Pennsylvania, most of the deer carcasses that are collected from the roads end up in landfills. But is this a respectful way to treat the dead? And what about the vultures and other scavengers who would otherwise eat the carcasses? We need an ethical approach to roadkill that considers the vultures as well as the deer

Which Animals Do We Study?

An examination of taxonomic bias in the field of animal studies

People Watching: The Sociology of Erving Goffman

Syllabus for an undergraduate course on Erving Goffman

Living with Transgenic Animals

This article examines Farm Sanctuary’s failed effort to save the Enviropigs. In the Spring of 2012, after losing the main source of funding for its Enviropig project, the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada, killed the last sixteen members of this line of transgenic pigs, despite Farm Sanctuary’s offer to place them in permanent homes. The university claimed that transferring the pigs to a sanctuary would have violated laws and policies governing the disposition of transgenic laboratory animals. Through a detailed account of this case, this paper reflects on what it means to create a subcategory of laboratory animals who are categorically ineligible for life after the laboratory

Animals & Society

A syllabus for an undergraduate animal studies course

Reversible DNA micro-patterning using the fluorous effect

We describe a new method for the immobilisation of DNA into defined patterns with sub-micron resolution, using the fluorous effect. The method is fully reversible via a simple solvent wash, allowing the patterning, regeneration and re-patterning of surfaces with no degradation in binding efficiency following multiple removal/attachment cycles of different DNA sequences