Governing farm animal welfare, governing stockmanship: a sociological analysis of the formulation and on-farm implementation of the EU group sow housing legislation

EU pig welfare legislation required European pig farmers to shift from individual to group housing of pregnant sows by 1 January 2013. This requirement was principally designed to meet the sows’ needs for locomotion and interaction with conspecifics. This paper explored how the legislation affected everyday sow-farmer interaction, which influences farm animal welfare to an important degree. We started by analysing conceptualisations of sow welfare and sow-farmer relations as implicated in the EU Directive and the scientific advice that informed it. Contending that these conceptualisations largely overlooked co-developments in sow housing systems and sow-farmer relations, we subsequently introduced an alternative analytical framework that builds on sociological, practice-oriented theories. We then applied this framework to analyse 19 qualitative interviews with pig farmers from Belgium on the on-farm introduction of group sow housing, and observations in these farmers’ group housing systems. We found that farmers’ practical, experience-based understandings of good animal-stockperson relations informed farmers’ choices for particular group housing systems to an important degree. Furthermore, we discerned that the effect of these choices on everyday sow-farmer relations differed, in the longer run, in at least three analytically distinct (negative, neutral to moderately positive, and positive) ways – according to if and to what degree the novel infrastructure allowed and motivated sows to portray, and farmers to perceive and act upon subjective and individual sow behaviour and needs. When failing to anticipate on this dynamic integration of legislation in on-farm contexts, opportunities are being missed to work towards preventing negative and promoting positive animal-farmer relations and concomitant animal welfare impacts when designing animal welfare policy. Most fundamentally, then, our study underlines a need to rethink the current focus in animal welfare science and policy on infrastructural criteria without attending to emergent co-developments in barn infrastructures, animal-farmer relations, and the well-being of animals and farmers