Veterinarians' discourses on animals and clients

Veterinarians have obligations towards both the animals they treat and their clients, the owners of the animals. With both groups, veterinarians have complicated relations; many times the interests of both groups conflict. In this article, using Q-methodology as a method for discourse analysis, the following question is answered: How do Dutch practicing veterinarians conceptualize animals and their owners and their professional responsibility towards both? The main part of the article contains descriptions of four different discourses on animals and their owners and on veterinarian professional responsibilities that prevail among veterinarians. The factual images veterinarians have of animals and their owners are connected to different moral questions and solutions to these questions. © Springer 2005

‘Animals just love you as you are’ : experiencing kinship across the species barrier

This paper explores how affective relationships between humans and animals are understood and experienced. It argues that, although the context of close relationships with pets has changed, affective relationships between humans and animals have a long history. The affinities between people and their pets are experienced as emotionally close, embodied and ethereal and are deeply embedded in family lives. They are understood in terms of kinship, an idiom which indicates significant and enduring connectedness between humans and animals, and are valued because of animals’ differences from, as well as similarities to, humans. Kinship across the species barrier is not something new and strange, but is an everyday experience of those humans who share their domestic space with other animals. Rather than witnessing a new phenomenon of post-human families, multi-species households have been with us for a considerable length of time but have been effectively hidden from sociology by the so-called species barrier

Corporate social responsibility and farm animal welfare: towards sustainable development in the food industry?

In recent years, CSR has grown in importance as supermarkets and corporate retailers have responded to consumer concerns over the growing prominence of a range of issues linked to environmental sustainability and farm animal welfare (FAW). Improvements in FAW can be aligned closely with the three pillars of sustainable development—social, economic and environmental sustainability. Animal agriculture has a significant impact on climate change and is in direct competition with humans for water, food, space and other scarce resources. Factory farming also spreads pathogens, with the potential to increase infectious diseases, and also significantly underlines livelihoods in rural communities. Corporate retailers are now seen to be socially and ethically accountable to both their immediate stakeholders and wider society, and it is this situation that has brought about the increased use of CSR as a means of promoting their efforts in this area. As well as making significant improvements on the social and environmental issues, there is great potential for better FAW to improve business performance by increasing efficiencies of production, sustainable procurement and consumption practices, whilst enhancing food safety. In is in this context that the Business Benchmark for Farm Animal Welfare (BBFAW) has emerged to examine how companies work to improve FAW. The benchmark evaluates the performance of supermarkets and corporate retailers in this area by examining a range of CSR related publicity materials. This chapter draws on research from a number of recent EU projects on FAW to assess how, if and in what ways the BBFAW helps supermarkets and corporate retailers to further sustainable development through CSR