Negotiating welfare in daily farm practice:how employees on Danish farms perceive animal welfare

Little is known about how employees on husbandry farms perceive animal welfare and about factors influencing the relationship between them and the animals in daily work. Today, Danish farms are mainly family-owned, and the employees are often of other nationalities, and one third are unskilled. The aim of this paper is to document how employees perceive animal welfare and to discuss how they deal with ethical assumptions in daily work. The paper reports the findings of qualitative interviews with 23 employees from five Danish farms (mink, dairy and pig production). Employees emphasise physical aspects of animal welfare relating to feed, water and health. However, some employees described naturalness, which is known to be of importance to the public, as an area that could be negotiated. Some issues, like pain, were also negotiated, especially pain imposed on the animals by the employees themselves. Getting used to impose pain in daily work was described as a working condition in the job which one had to accept. A negative relationship among employees and managers as well as lack of credit also related to animal welfare and were described as creating a worse situation for the animals.
Little is known about how employees on husbandry farms perceive animal welfare and about factors influencing the relationship between them and the animals in daily work. Today, Danish farms are mainly family-owned, and the employees are often of other nationalities, and one third are unskilled. The aim of this paper is to document how employees perceive animal welfare and to discuss how they deal with ethical assumptions in daily work. The paper reports the findings of qualitative interviews with 23 employees from five Danish farms (mink, dairy and pig production). Employees emphasise physical aspects of animal welfare relating to feed, water and health. However, some employees described naturalness, which is known to be of importance to the public, as an area that could be negotiated. Some issues, like pain, were also negotiated, especially pain imposed on the animals by the employees themselves. Getting used to impose pain in daily work was described as a working condition in the job which one had to accept. A negative relationship among employees and managers as well as lack of credit also related to animal welfare and were described as creating a worse situation for the animals.