Industrial livestock farms

Abstract

Industrial livestock farms were icons of rural modernisation promoted by the nation-state. Meat became an icon of wealth and success in the industrial society. Like the mass production of cars, meat production in industrial livestock farms was an icon of agriculture’s successful modernisation and industrialisation. This has now changed. Animal rights activists successfully campaigned that animals also have rights, which are not fundamentally different from human rights. Industrial livestock farms and the policies to restrict them based on concerns over animal rights and environmental pollution are now contested icons in cosmopolitan and parochial identity discourses. For the former, they are repugnant icons of the necessity of the transformations towards a more sustainable society. For the latter, they are icons of the success of the hard-working local farmers and the incursions threatening local communities’ livelihoods and autonomy. Reported examples of animal abuse, epidemics, and farm fires are analysed to show how these fit into the cosmopolitan identity discourse. How accounts of livestock farmers struggling with environmental protection policies and animal rights protests are used in parochial identity discourses is also analysed.