Building 'cowshed cultures': A cultural perspective on the promotion of stockmanship and animal welfare on dairy farms
Journal article
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http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2374942Utgivelsesdato
2012Metadata
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Sammendrag
Improving animal welfare is an important part of the development of the agricultural industry, particularly
at a time when intensification and the encroachment of factory-style production systems is
making the maintenance of human-animal relations increasingly difficult. Animal science deals with the
issue of improving stockmanship by focusing on the relationships between attitudes and behaviour,
under the premise that improved attitudes will lead to improved behaviour. From an analysis of 42
interviews with owners, sharemilkers and workers on dairy farms in New Zealand we present a different
view, seeing behaviour instead as part of a self-reinforcing culture in which animals, humans and the
physical structure all contribute to the development of farm specific ways of doing and being.We further
suggest that changing one stockperson’s attitude alone is insufficient to ensure a change in the culture as
other actors e including animals and non-human actors e reinforce any existing culture that has
developed, making both attitudinal and behavioural change difficult. We conclude by discussing the key
importance of designing farm systems and structures that promote positive interactions between
animals and humans and suggest that this, rather than simply promoting knowledge and attitudinal
change, is likely to be the most effective way of maintaining stockmanship in the face of an industrialising
agriculture.
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