Milking Welfare: Bovis Sacer and the Inclusive Thanatopolitics of the Dairy Farm

Abstract

Agricultural technologies in dairy farming facilitate increased animal productivity while simultaneously supporting appeals to animal welfare. Dairy producers operationalise these technologies to shape cows’ subjectivities to be compatible with industrial production and consumer preferences. Through this subject formation, cows are incorporated into human society as political subjects, a shift that signifies a reorientation of bovine discipline and exploitation on the farm. This emergent political subjectivity is conceptualised here in the archetype of the “bovis sacer”, an inversion of the “homo sacer” concept that describes an unkillable but sacrificial subject. We examine, primarily in Europe and North America, how welfare certification, labelling schemes, and agricultural technology in the dairy industry facilitate material and discursive changes in producer and consumer relations before exploring how these industrial transformations bring about this shift in bovine subjectivity.