Justification Debates on Livestock Production in Germany

Debates on livestock production, animal welfare, and meat consumption have intensified significantly in many countries in recent years. In these debates, profound social and cultural tensions surface. On the one hand, livestock production and animal products are essential aspects of deeply ingrained habits, traditions, and identities. On the other hand, livestock production is increasingly perceived as morally problematic and a source of major social problems, including climate change, health risks, poor working conditions, and animal suffering. In sociology, these debates have not yet been systematically studied. Therefore, the project develops new theoretical and empirical perspectives on public debates about livestock production. A central assumption is that the emergence, persistence and intensification of livestock production debates can only be adequately understood if the arguments put forward are taken seriously in their plurality. Livestock production can be defended or criticized in very different ways for example with reference to religious feelings, traditions, scientific research, the popularity of lifestyles, economic imperatives, ecological consequences, or animal rights. In order to explore this plurality, the project draws on the Sociology of Critique and combines it with concepts from historical sociology and framing theory. Empirically, the project analyzes conflicts over livestock production in Germany over the last 50 years by looking at the public debates on three key legislative reforms (1972: amendment of the Animal Welfare Act; 2002: inclusion of animal welfare in the German constitution; 2023: introduction of a mandatory and state-run animal husbandry label). With regard to these debates, the project team examines 1) which justifications are put forward in the selected debates and by whom (synchronic perspective), 2) how the range and prominence of different justifications has changed over time (diachronic perspective) and 3) how the debates have been influenced by broader socio-cultural developments (contextual perspective). The research materials are taken on the one hand from the parliamentary processes in which the respective legislative changes are debated and passed (bills, parliamentary protocols, committee statements), and on the other hand from the extra-parliamentary debates in which, for example, trade associations, experts, NGOs or social movements express their positions (protocols of public hearings, press releases, open letters, social media posts, articles in member magazines). The project is innovative because it develops a novel theoretical perspective on conflicts in the field of livestock production and provides a systematic empirical analysis of a particularly important and instructive case.