Kim Baker (University of London, Goldsmiths)
Intercourse-Intervention: Working Relationships on Indoor Intensive Pig Farms
Long standing public anxieties concerning the ethics attached to livestock handling and care have recently been exacerbated by serious disease epidemics, advances in the biosciences involving radical genetic manipulation; and the economics of globalised meat marketing. These concerns suggest two opposing dynamics in views of livestock production; excessive control of living animals, and loss of control in relation to perceived shortcomings in contemporary farming methods.
Using audio visual data derived from extended ethnographic fieldwork
on intensive pig production units, this presentation aims to unsettle
conventional understandings of 'factory farming'. My research suggests
that within industrial livestock production contexts the effects
exercised by increasingly standardised technological interventions
should not be assumed to be wholly exploitative or negative for the
animals involved. Instead I propose that the working relationships I
have observed between stockmen and pigs are heavily reliant on
alternating phases of intensive engagement and subsequent
disconnection.?
