Exploring the Framing of Animal Farming and Meat Consumption: On the Diversity of Topics Used and Qualitative Patterns in Selected Demographic Contexts

Abstract

Simple SummaryIn various contexts, people talk about the farming and consumption of animals using different arguments to construct and justify their (non-)acceptability. This paper reports on a qualitative research among consumers with different backgrounds in urban and rural areas in The Netherlands and Turkey. We present an elaborate methodology for qualitatively researching everyday-life talk about animal farming and meat consumption. We explain how we collected and organised topics people refer to, and looked at the possible relation of complete argumentations with the researched contexts. The resulting long list of topics includes animal welfare arguments, but shows that in everyday-life many others are used, such as health, taste, money, religion, and environmental impact. Our research indicates several ties between mentioned topics and the researched contexts—the most noticeable pattern being the difference between respondents in cities and rural areas. However, in contrast to what literature suggests, single contextual features, like country or gender, offered relatively little insight into the differences that showed up in the complete argumentations. This, we argue, does not imply that context does not matter, but rather that so many cultural and personal contextual aspects play a role that singular contextual features cannot sufficiently explain framing.AbstractIn various contexts, people talk about animal farming and meat consumption using different arguments to construct and justify their (non-)acceptability. This article presents the results of an in-depth qualitative inquiry into the content of and contextual patterns in the everyday-life framing regarding this issue, performed among consumers in various settings in two extremes in the European sphere: the Netherlands and Turkey. We describe the methodological steps of collecting, coding, and organizing the variety of encountered framing topics, as well as our search for symbolic convergence in groups of consumers from different selected demographic contexts (country, urban-rural areas, gender, age, and education level). The framing of animal farming and meat consumption in everyday-life is not a simple one-issue rational display of facts; people referred to a vast range of topics in the categories knowledge, convictions, pronounced behaviour, values, norms, interests, and feelings. Looking at framing in relation to the researched demographic contexts, most patterns were found on the level of topics; symbolic convergence in lines of reasoning and composite framing was less prominent in groups based on single demographic contexts than anticipated. An explanation for this lies in the complexity of frame construction, happening in relation with multiple interdependent contextual features.

Citizens’ and Farmers’ Framing of ‘Positive Animal Welfare’ and the Implications for Framing Positive Welfare in Communication

“…The ‘free from negatives’ frame was mainly demonstrated by participants with a farming background. Similarly, Nijland et al [6] found that individuals from rural areas are more likely to frame farming in ‘realistic’ terms with a focus on the extrinsic value of animals (e.g., production). Thus, those with a farming background, due to their socialisation within the welfare norms and values of farming communities, may prioritise the elimination of negative factors affecting welfare (e.g., health issues), as many farmers do [36,37].…”

“…Consequently, the way in which information is presented (e.g., the words or phrases used in communication and the salience of positives and negatives) can influence and change how an individual interprets and evaluates something and the choices they make in response [5]. However, this knowledge has not yet received extensive consideration within animal welfare science [6]. This is a noteworthy issue as (i) the internal frames in thought an individual holds can influence how they interpret and respond to research evidence and information and (ii) the way in which research evidence is described and framed in communication may determine the actions animal welfare stakeholders take [5,7], thus affecting the lives of farm animals.…”

Public attitude toward and perceptions of dairy cattle welfare in cow-calf management systems differing in type of social and maternal contact

“…In fact, there are reports of US consumers reducing dairy consumption due to welfare concerns (McKendree et al, 2012). While animal welfare continues to be a growing concern among consumers, it is one of many considerations (e.g., ethics, health, food quality, taste) consumers have regarding animal products (Beardsworth et al, 2002;Codron et al, 2005;Grunert et al, 2018;Nijland et al, 2018).…”

An Ecolinguistic Perspective on Framing of Animals in Quranic Discourse

“…It helps to reflect how animals have been framed in the selected divine discourses (ones that are not definitely by humans). According to Nijland, Aarts, and Woerkum (2018) framing of animals is a contested issue as frames are most likely context-sensitive, thus the present study examines it from a new contextual perspective i.e. religion.…”

“…Christmas, Wright, Morris, Watson, and Miskelly (2013) investigated various techniques used to frame biodiversity elements in common public conversational discourse. Nijland, Aarts, and Woerkum (2018) conducted a study in the selected European context to identify and analyze framing techniques used to refer to frame animal farming and meat consumption. Their study reports various frames that are used to talk about animals in relevance to various complex cultural and personal contexts.…”