Committing to the Discomfort of Care and Curiosity: Investigations of Cows' Welfare, Lives, and Relationships

In this dissertation, I investigate cow welfare on grass-fed beef farms to, in part, question and examine the possibility of grass-fed beef farming in providing cows with more care than conventional beef farming. In connection with this, I analyze cow welfare to explore the agencies, subjectivities, and relationships of cows whose lives are taken in the name of food. I unpack grass-fed beef farmers' understandings and practices of cow welfare and use animal geographies, biopolitics, and critical food studies to unearth the ethical complexities of farmer-cow relations, which complicate and strengthen cow welfare's multidimensionality. Alongside working with farmers, I acknowledge and engage with cows as research subjects who teach me about their welfare, lives, and intimate relationships with others. Woven into my analysis of cow welfare is my exploration of the entanglement of caring, loving, profiting, and killing that underscores farmer-cow relationships. Within this context, I write about the different ways that I physically, mentally, and emotionally navigated this exploration as a vegan, feminist animal geographer committed to the discomfort of care and curiosity that an analysis of life, death, and relationality summoned within me. Through the process of navigating this discomfort, I offer my own ethics of care with animals.

Author dc:creator

• MacKay, Carley Michele

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Vandergeest, Peter
• Hovorka, Alice

• Ethics

Statement dc:rights

• Author owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10315/39072

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:yorkspace.library.yorku.ca:10315/39072