Legitimating Visions, Mitigating Risks: Industrial and Agrarian Strategies to Resolve the Enigma of Animal Welfare

The tension between industrial and agrarian systems is well traveled territory in both environmental and rural sociology, but the needs, interests, and experiences of animals as meaningful subjects in the context of these systems has received far less attention. In this paper, we accordingly analyze how public understandings of risk and legitimacy are actively negotiated by industrial and agrarian meat producers in the aftermath of animal welfare controversies. More specifically, we examine how animal welfare is enacted through these two paradigms, respectively, by analyzing Temple Grandin’s industrial slaughter reforms and on-farm (agrarian) slaughter. We argue that all concerned meat producers must make difficult decisions about which animal welfare risks they wish emphasize or de-emphasize, and that neither system can eliminate these risks entirely.