Farm animal welfare: a regulatory history

A plea for historical continuity:

• The 1968 act and the subsequent welfare codes simply extended to farms the type of measures laid down in earlier legislation for protection of animals in transit.
• Major change did not take place until c1980 (at the earliest).

i) The legislative picture

• By 1960, farm animals protected by a patchwork of legislation:
• In public spaces (1822, 1835 1849, 1911)
• In transit (1869, 1894, 1927, 1950 Acts)
• At slaughterhouses (1954, 1958)

In public spaces:

• In public spaces:
• Included in broader legislation (1911) to prevent animal cruelty and avoidable suffering
• Responsibility of the Home Office & Local Authorities.

In transit:

• In transit:
• Provoked by growth in transport, associated disease spread and humanitarian concerns
• Responsibility of state vets & Local authorities

ii) Intensification & the animal body

• Drive to increase productivity and critique of practices date from at least the 19thC
• eg urban dairies

• Eg inter-war ‘progressive’ dairying

ii) Intensification & the animal body

• Q:
• So why did state-led welfare interventions not happen earlier?
• A:
• Such practices were seen as ‘bad farming’
• State intervention not considered: nature would restore order, eg by disease.

ii) Intensification & the animal body

• Post-WWII
• New definitions of good and bad farming
• Changing nature of intensification
• Larger scale; indoor
• Farm becomes a factory (or a cattle truck?)

• P Brassley, ‘Output and technical change in 20th century British Agriculture’, Ag Hist Rev 48 (2000), p62

ii) Intensification & the animal body

• Post-WWII: new critique
• No longer expect redress from nature
• Farmers are harming nature with aid of science (Carson, Silent Spring, 1962)

ii) Intensification & the animal body

• 1964: Harrison’s Animal Machines
• Not the first critique of factory farming; but the first to prompt MAFF action
• unemotional tone
• attacked MAFF defences.
• huge publicity
• political pressure.
• Officials look to transit regulations for inspiration

iii) The concept of welfare

• Pre-1960s, key terms are animal protection, cruelty, suffering and humanity
• Welfare used mainly in relation to ‘welfare societies’
• Use of welfare increases early 60s.
• Enters mainstream following 1964/5 Brambell committee inquiry ‘into the welfare of animals’

iii) The concept of welfare

• What did it mean?
• For Brambell committee:
• physical and mental wellbeing
• For MAFF officials, farmers and many vets:
• the converse of suffering
• a new name for animal protection

iii) The concept of welfare

• Doesn’t the new legislation / codes implement a new concept of welfare?
• Closely resemble transit regulations & drawn up by the same people (vets).
• MAFF’s legal understanding is that welfare = ‘absence of unnecessary pain or distress’: FAWAC told to work within this definition.

From animal protection to animal wellbeing

• Driven by Harrison
• institutionalised by FAWC (1979)
• Aided by scientific research (Dawkins)
• Re-iterated by 1980-1 agriculture select committee

Conclude

• The early history of FAW regulation in Britain amounted to a re-branding exercise:
• From the protection of animals in transit….to the promotion of animal welfare.

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