Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Farmers Under Pressure. Analysis of the Social Conditions of Cases of Animal Neglect

  • Articles
  • Published:
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this paper we analyse how risk factors in highly industrialised agriculture are connected to animal neglect. With Danish agriculture as a case study, we use two types of data. First, we use register data from Statistics Denmark to map how risk factors such as farmers’ financial and social troubles are connected to convictions of neglect. Second, we analyse narratives where interviewed farmers, involved in cases of neglect, describe how they themselves experienced the incidents. We find that while livestock farmers in general have a low risk of animal neglect problems, a small percentage of them face severe financial difficulties, divorce and psychiatric problems, which are connected to an increased risk of being convicted for the neglect of farm animals. The narratives bring forward themes of pressure related to financial trouble, technological break down, family problems, stress and a growing concern among the farmers towards the governmental control in farm animal production. We discuss how these factors can be used to identify and help farmers with a high risk of being convicted of livestock neglect.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. “Farmer given lifetime ban for animal cruelty”, Farmers Weekly, Great Britain, August 2010

    “30 dages betinget fængsel for vanrøgt”,Danish Newspaper website, epn.dk, June 2011

    “500 varkens maanedlang dood in stal”, National TV News, Netherlands, June 2010.

References

  • Aadahl, S. (2007). Good lives, hidden miseries, an ethnography of uncertainty in a Finnish village, Research Reports no. 250. Department of Sociology, Helsinki University.

  • Andrade, S. B. (2012). Levekår i dansk landbrug [Living Conditions in Danish Agriculture]. SFI Report Series 12: 29. Copenhagen: National Centre for Social Research.

  • Anneberg, I., Vaarst, M., & Sørensen, J. T. (2012). The experience of animal welfare inspections as perceived by Danish livestock farmers: A qualitative research approach. Livestock Science, 147(1–3), 49–58.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Becker, G. (1994). Metaphors in disrupted lives: Infertility and cultural constructions of continuity. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 8(4), 383–410.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Becker, G. (1997). Disrupted lives—how people create meaning in a chaotic world. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boogaard, B. K., Boekhorst, L. J. S., Oosting, S. J., & Sørensen, J. T. (2011). Socio-cultural sustainability of pig production: Citizen perceptions in the Netherlands and Denmark. Livestock Science, 140(1–3), 189–200.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cloke, P., & Goodwin, M. (1992). Conceptualising countryside change: From post-Fordism to rural structured coherence. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 17, 321–336.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Conger, R., & Elder, G. H. (1994). Families in troubled times: Adapting to change in rural America. New York: A. de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coyne, J. C., & Downey, G. (1991). Social factors and psychopathology: Stress, social support, and coping processes. Annual Review of Psychology, 42, 401–425.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Danish Agriculture & Food Council (2008). Agriculture in Denmark: Facts and figures 2008. Varde, Denmark: Danish Agriculture and Danish Agricultural Council.

  • Elder, G. H., & Conger, R. (2000). Children of the land: adversity and success in rural America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eurostat (2005). Farm structure. Historical results. Surveys from 1966/67 to 1997. Luxemburg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.

  • Facchini, F., & Berton, R. M. (2012). Bachelor farmers in France: An explanation by evolutionary psychology. Applied Behavioural Economics, 1(2), 26–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flynn, A. C., Marsden, T. K., & Smith, E. (2003). Food regulation and retailing in a new institutional context. The Political Quarterly, 74(1), 38–46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Forsberg, E. M. (2011). Inspiring respect for animals through the law? Current development in the Norwegian Animal Welfare Legislation. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 24, 351–366.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fraser, D. (2008). Understanding animal welfare: The science in its cultural context. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fraser, C. E., Smith, K. B., Judd, F., Humphreys, J. S., Fragar, L. J., & Henderson, A. (2005). Farming and mental health problems and mental illness. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 51, 340–349.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gunderson, P., Donner, D., Nashold, R., Salkowicz, L., Sperry, S., & Wittman, B. (1993). The epidemiology of suicide among farm residents or workers in 5 north-central states, 1980–1988. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 9(3), 26–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (2007). Ethnography: Principles in practice. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harfeld, J. (2010). The question of the farm animal: Welfare, ethics, and public policy in modern animal agriculture. Aarhus: Faculty of Theology, Aarhus University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hemsworth, P. H., & Coleman, G. J. (2010). Human-livestock interactions: The stockperson and the productivity and welfare of intensively farmed animals. Wallingford, UK: CABI.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hendrickson, M. K., Heffernan, W. D., Howard, P. H., & Heffernan, J. B. (2001). Consolidation in food retailing and dairy. British Food Journal, 3(10), 715–728.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hendrickson, M. K., & James, J. S. (2005). The ethics of constrained choice: How the industrialization of agriculture impact farming and farmer behaviour. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 18(3), 269–291.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hinrichs, C. C., & Welsh, R. (2003). The effects of the industrialization of US livestock agriculture on promoting sustainable production practices. Agriculture and Human Values, 20(2), 125–141.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • James, H. S, Jr. (2005). The ethical challenges in farming: A report on conversations with Missouri corn and soybean producers. Journal of Agricultural Safety and Health, 11, 239–248.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jarvinen, M. (2000). The biographical illusion: Constructing meaning in qualitative interviews. Qualitative Inquiry, 6(3), 370–391.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jarvinen, M. (2004). Life histories and the perspective of the present. Narrative Inquiry, 14(1), 45–68.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jenkins, R., & Kovess, V. (2002). Evaluation of suicide prevention: A European approach. International Review of Psychiatry, 14(1), 34–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Knorr, B. (1991) ‘Ethics: The American Farmer. Farm Futures. January 10–13.

  • Krystallis, A., de Barcellos, M. D., Kügler, J. O., Verbeke, W., & Grunert, K. G. (2009). Attitudes of European citizens towards pig production systems. Livestock Science, 126(1–3), 46–56.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lensink, B. J., Veissier, I., & Florand, L. (2001). The farmer’s influence on calves’ behaviour, health and production of a veal unit. Animal Science, 72(1), 105–117.

    Google Scholar 

  • Linzer, D. A., & Lewis, J. B. (2011). poLCA: An R package for polytomous variable latent class analysis. Journal of Statistical Software, 42(2), 1–29.

    Google Scholar 

  • Malmberg, A., Hawton, K., & Simkin, S. (1997). A study of suicide in farmers in England and Wales. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 43(1), 107–111.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mutersbaugh, T. (2005). Just-in-space: Certified rural products, labor of quality, and regulatory spaces. Journal of Rural Studies, 21(4), 389–402.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ochs, E., & Capps, L. (1996). Narrating the self. Annual Review of Anthropology, 25(1), 19–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Phillips, C. (2009). The welfare of animals. Animal Welfare, 8, 55–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pig Research Centre. (2011). Interpig 2009—resultater og international konkurrenceevne. Notat nr. 1102.

  • Raftery, A. E. (1993). Bayesian model selection in structural equation models. In K. A. Bollen & L. S. Long (Eds.), Testing structural equation models (pp. 163–180). Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rappaport, A., & Himschoot, R. A. (1994). Ethics perceptions of American farmers: An empirical analysis. Journal of Business Ethics, 13(10), 795–802.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rasmussen, K., Carstensen, O., Lauritsen, J. M., Glasscock, D. J., Hansen, O. N., & Jensen, U. F. (2003). Prevention of farm injuries in Denmark. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 29(4), 288–296.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reisner, A. (1992). An activist press: The farm press’s coverage of the animal rights movement. Agriculture and Human Values, 9(2), 38–53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rollin, B. E. (2003). Farm animal welfare: Social, bioethical, and research issues. Iowa: Iowa State University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sandoe, P., & Christiansen, S. (2010). Ethics of animal use. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shanin, T. (1971). Peasants and peasant societies: selected readings. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Statistics Denmark. (2010). Landbrug 2010. Statistik om landbrug, gartneri og skovbrug. Copenhagen.

  • Steffen, V. (1997). Life stories and shared experience. Social Science and Medicine, 45(1), 99–111.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stuart, D. (2009). Constrained choice and ethical dilemmas in land management: Environmental quality and food safety in california agriculture. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 22(1), 53–71.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, P. B. (1998). Agricultural ethics: Research, teaching, and public policy. Iowa: Iowa State University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tiplady, C. M., Deborah-Anne, B. W., & Phillips, C. J. C. (2012). Public response to media coverage of animal cruelty. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics. doi:10.1007/s10806-012-9412-0.

  • Verbeke, W. A. J., & Viaene, J. (2000). Ethical challanges for livestock production: Meeting consumer concerns about meat safety and animal welfare. Journal of Agricultural and Enviromental Ethics, 12(2), 141–151.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the participating farmers for telling their stories. We also wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers, senior scientist Mette Vaarst, Aarhus University and professor Margaretha Järvinen, University of Copenhagen and The Danish National Centre for Social Research for their valuable comments and suggestions for improving the article. Also thanks to Giddi Smolders and Sylvia Travers for help in identifying cases of neglect in the Netherlands and in England.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. SFI, The Danish National Centre for Social Research, Herluf Trolles Gade 11, 1052, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Stefan B. Andrade

  2. Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5, 1014, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Stefan B. Andrade

  3. Department of Animal Science, Aarhus University, P.O. 50, 8830, Tjele, Denmark

    Inger Anneberg

Authors
  1. Stefan B. Andrade
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Inger Anneberg
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Inger Anneberg.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Andrade, S.B., Anneberg, I. Farmers Under Pressure. Analysis of the Social Conditions of Cases of Animal Neglect. J Agric Environ Ethics 27, 103–126 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-013-9456-9

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-013-9456-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation