Pets and protein: : placing domestic livestock on hobby-farms in England and Wales

The place of animals in human geography is currently the subject of considerable discussion, focusing on the spatial variation of human–animal relations, and on the ways in which categories such as ‘human’, ‘animal’, ‘wild’ and ‘domestic’ are produced. In this paper I begin to consider some of the ethical dimensions of human–animal relations in livestock farming, using the notion of ‘situated morality’ (Lynn, Ethics Place Environ. 1 (1998b) 223–242) to examine hobby-farming as a particular set of social and agricultural practices in which farm animals are encountered as simultaneously ‘friends’ and sources of food. The paper considers how the socially constructed categories of ‘livestock’ and ‘pet’ become blurred in this marginal form of agricultural production. The paper draws on evidence from field research with hobby-farmers in England and Wales, and on textual material, to demonstrate the ethical ambiguity of human–animal relations on hobby-farms. The paper shows how such relations are associated with specific discourses, practices and places, and demonstrates the importance of spatiality and embodiment in understanding situated moralities.