Issue 8: Farm animal welfare: Perspectives from Latin America and Africa

Do advocates ever wonder whether farm animal welfare means exactly the same thing to an individual in Kenya as to someone in Kentucky in the U.S. or in Kent in the U.K.? To a global meat corporation? To a pig farmer in Brazil?

This issue of Academic Studies Without Tears - featuring eight academic studies (three from 2021, three from 2020, one each from 2019 and 2018) - takes one on a journey across the southern part of the globe to see how farm animal welfare plays out in different settings there, from Chile to Namibia. What are their perceptions and practices with regard to farm animal welfare? How seriously do they take it?

As the authors of the paper on farmers managing intensive pig farms in Brazil write, "Animal welfare is a complex concept and, as such, researchers often dispute how to best portray the different angles involved. For the pig farmers participating in this study, it was no different."