Modifying and commodifying farm animal welfare: The economisation of layer chickens

As the profile of farm animal welfare rises within food production chains, in response both to greater consumer ethical engagement with the lives of animals and to the market opportunities afforded to supply chain actors by this engagement, farm animal welfare (which we might define as the qualities of life of sentient beings) is increasingly being modified under the processes of ‘economisation’ (Caliskan and Callon, 2009) and marketisation (Caliskan and Callon, 2010) from a basic condition of legitimation and productivity to a calculable commodity in itself, subject to assessment, scoring and qualification. Over and above regulatory or assurance scheme compliance, welfare conditions and criteria are being used as a component or distinctive selling point for food products, brands or even particular manufacturers and retailers within ‘value-added’ marketing technologies. To make our argument we focus entirely on the case of industrialised free-range laying chicken production practices and the retailing practices that have developed to create a market for eggs produced under this farming method. We argue that economisation and marketisation processes have major implications for the meaning, assessment and communication of farm animal welfare and, consequently, for the way in which consumption practices become pre-defined. We maintain that recent developments and shifts in the economization of animals through food chain actors' interpretations of consumer concern for ‘good’ welfare, coupled with advances in the reach of veterinary science, are leading to a co-shaping and co-modification – through an assemblage of procedures, technologies, performances and forms of assessments – of farm animal welfare as an economic ‘good’, and its materialisation in animal-derived food products. This has significant implications for the nature and communication of welfare ‘evidence’ and the manner in which it is articulated within an increasingly market oriented delivery framework.