Values of Australian Meat Consumers Related to Sheep and Beef Cattle Welfare: What Makes a Good Life and a Good Death?

Abstract

There has been growing global interest in livestock animal welfare. Previous research into attitudes towards animal welfare has focused on Europe and the United States, with comparatively little focus on Australia, which is an important location due to the prominent position of agriculture economically and culturally. In this article, we present results from qualitative research on how Australian meat consumers conceptualise sheep and beef cattle welfare. The study was conducted in two capital cities (Melbourne, Victoria and Adelaide, South Australia) and a much smaller rural centre (Toowoomba, Queensland) using focus groups (involving 40.9% of participants) and mall-intercept interviews (59.1% of participants), totalling 66 participants. Qualitative analysis highlights that participants had clear ideas of what it means for an animal to live a ‘good life’ and experience a ‘good death,’ with their beliefs strongly tied to their expectations and cultural understandings of what Australian agriculture ‘should be.’ In response to open-ended questions, participants expressed attitudes that relied on romanticised visions of the ‘rural idyll’ as seen in frequent discussions about what is ‘normal’ for sheep meat and beef production, and relatedly, what count as ‘natural behaviours.’ Many participants rejected anything associated with the ‘other,’ classifying it as not ‘normal’: we argue that which is not considered normal, including intensive production, foreign ownership, and halal slaughter practices, appear to place participants’ conceptualizations of an animal’s ‘good death,’ and in turn the potential for a ‘good life,’ at risk.

Introduction

Debates about what makes food ‘good’ have been occurring in both scholarly and public domains in recent years (Ankeny 2012; Lewis and Huber 2015; Wilkerson 2016). Increasingly, good food is viewed not just as being safe, tasty, and nutritious, but also as being produced in a way that is considered good by society. Growing public interest in the welfare of food production animals has been attributed to increasing awareness of animal sentience (Broom 2014) and to increasing intensification of animal agriculture over recent decades (Buddle et al. 2018a). A range of animal welfare-related claims on meat products (Bray and Ankeny 2017; Malek et al. 2019) have now enabled consumers to ‘vote with their forks’ by boycotting certain products and ‘buycotting’ others (Michelletti 2011). In addition, food production methods are increasingly scrutinised by the media (Phillipov 2016; Carey et al. 2017; Sinclair et al. 2018) and by animal welfare activists via social media (Rodan and Mummery 2014; Buddle et al. 2017, 2018a).

Although community understandings of farm animal welfare have been extensively examined in Europe (Van Pouke et al. 2006; María 2006; Vanhonacker and Verbeke 2009; Vanhonacker et al. 2010; Verbeke et al. 2010), North America (Spooner et al. 2014; Muringai et al. 2017), and Latin America (Miranda-de La Lama et al. 2017; Vargas-Bello-Pérez et al. 2017), there has been comparatively less research in Australia (see Future Eye 2018 for an Australian Government-commissioned report). Recent media attention on animal production ethics (Buddle and Bray 2019), particularly the live export of sheep and beef cattle (Sinclair et al. 2018), and the labelling of animal products as free-range (Carey et al. 2017), indicates that public attention to animal welfare issues has been steadily growing in Australia. Although many Australians are removed from the production of food (over 80% of people live in major cities, see Australian Government 2015), the Australian red meat sector is a “significant contributor to the rural economy,” with the total value of Australia’s beef and sheep meat industries estimated to be AUD$17 billion annually pre-COVID-19 (Meat and Livestock Australia 2018, para. 4). Australia has one of the highest per capita meat consumption rates in the world (approximately 111 kg of meat per person annually: Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences 2016) with meat eating having long been considered essential to both Australian meals and identity (Santich 1995, 2014; Ankeny 2008; Chen 2016a). Furthermore, biosecurity restrictions on imported animal products have led to reliance on domestic production of cattle and sheep-meat mostly by grazing on native and improved pastures. Australia’s climate means that few sheep and beef cattle are housed; although the use of feedlots is common, producing 80% of beef that is sold through domestic supermarkets, cattle on average only spend around 10 to 15 per cent of their lives in a feedlot and the rest on grass (Salvin et al. 2020). A near duopoly in the retail sector gives retailers an arguably greater role than producers or consumers in how food becomes valued by consumers (Dixon 2003; Phillipov 2016, 2017). The significance of red meat production and consumption in Australia makes it distinct in critical ways as compared to systems in the Northern Hemisphere, and hence it is important to understand community attitudes to beef and sheep meat production in Australia.

Research on Australian community understandings of farm animal welfare has generally relied on surveys and knowledge-based assessments regarding specific practices (e.g., Coleman et al. 2016). In contrast, we examine Australian meat consumers’ understandings of what constitutes a ‘good’ life and a ‘good’ death for beef cattle and meat sheep, and explore how perceptions of animal welfare are culturally constructed in an Australian context. Our research approach is grounded in social constructivism, which explores subjective meanings that are “formed through interaction with others…and through historical and cultural norms that operate in individuals’ lives” (Creswell 2013, p. 25). Qualitative research methods can also highlight underlying motivations, values, or attitudes about an issue which cannot be revealed through closed-ended surveys (Malhotra 2006).

Materials and methods

This research was approved by the University of Adelaide’s Human Research Ethics Committee (H-2018-210) and conducted in accordance with the Australian national guidelines (National Health and Medical Research Council 2007, updated 2018). The research was conducted in Melbourne, Victoria (population of approximately 4.65 million); Adelaide, South Australia (population of approximately 1.2 million); and Toowoomba, Queensland (population of approximately 115,000). These locales were selected to capture understandings of animal welfare from a large capital city (Melbourne), a smaller capital city (Adelaide), and a regional centre (Toowoomba) to explore potential differences between populations and experiences. Consistent with qualitative approaches (Denzin and Lincoln 2011), this research used focus groups and ‘mall-intercept’ interviews (Bush and Hair 1985), with the latter employed to provide more balance to the overall sample in terms of demographics, particularly socioeconomic status. Three focus groups were conducted with 9 participants per group (27 participants or 40.9% in total) while 39 people (59.1% of participants) were involved in mall-intercept interviews. Participants for focus groups were recruited through community announcements and flyers distributed at public events such as university open days, and through social media including Facebook and Twitter. Only those over the age of 18 who identified as meat consumers and who spoke English were eligible to participate, with good balance of various demographics achieved by combining the focus group and mall-intercept interview methodologies.

Focus groups and interviews were conducted using a semi-structured script and included a series of discussion points about the welfare of sheep and beef cattle (the focus group and interview scripts are provided in the supplementary materials). Questions were open-ended to allow participants to discuss their own thinking and ideas, and use their preferred concepts and language, rather than restricting their responses by providing a series of predetermined answers from which to select, as is typical with survey-based methods (Creswell and Creswell 2018). Asking the same questions in each focus group and interview provided a foundation from which to compare results. The research was considered complete when thematic saturation was reached based on iterative analysis rather than predetermined measures (Charmaz 2006). Focus groups and interviews were digitally recorded and fully transcribed, with each transcript compared to handwritten notes to check for accuracy and then anonymised.

Each transcript was treated as a rich, narrative text where the first author inductively coded all responses in NVivo (Richards 2005) using methods similar to open coding (Strauss and Corbin 1990). However, our methods are not strictly based in traditional grounded theory (Corbin and Strauss 1990); instead, we used the generic inductive qualitative model (Maxwell 2005; Hood 2007) which blends the processes of description and interpretation during the generation of research questions, as well as purposeful sampling including demographic-based recruitment to strengthen our abilities to generalise cross-population and to other locations. Due to the qualitative nature of these research methods, we did not aim to generate strict representativeness or statistical significance (Hood 2007). Instead, we placed greater emphasis on what was said by participants rather than on how many participants made particular claims.1 Quotes used in the following results section are illustrative and typical of those coded to the theme developed during analysis.

Results

Overall, 66 meat consumers from the selected Australian locales participated in this research during 2015–16. Of these, 67% were women with ages ranging from 18 to 24 years to over 65. 50% were in Adelaide, South Australia; 31% percent were in Melbourne, Victoria; and 19% in Toowoomba, Queensland. We note that results did not differ across the three locales as perhaps might be expected elsewhere: unlike in some other countries, even people whom reside in larger cities are likely to have current or past contact with rural locales or past direct experience of agriculture based on migration history and basic geography. The overwhelming majority of participants self-identified as being of Anglo-Celtic descent, with only 4 participants (6%) identifying as being of an alternative ethnicity in our study. The dominance of Anglo-Celtic participants is important to note to contextualise our results and discussion, but is unsurprising given the relatively high percentages of Australians with this background, this study’s reliance on volunteers, and the inclusion of a regional centre amongst our study sites where non-Anglo-Celtics are much more uncommon.2

“That’s What I Expect, Anyway”

Each focus group or interview began by asking participants to describe the images that came to mind when they thought of beef and sheep meat farming. Subsequently they were asked to identify things that could negatively impact animal welfare or if they had particular concerns (one prominent theme, animal transport, has been considered in a previous paper, Buddle et al. 2018b, so we do not explore it in detail here). Participants’ descriptions of animals on farms, their ideas about animal diets and animal behaviours, and their ideas about what was not normal for animals, and hence what impacted on animal welfare, revealed that allowing animals to behave ‘naturally’ was considered ‘good’ by participants.

When asked to visualise sheep and beef cattle farming, most participants described animals “grazing in a paddock”, revealing that participants “expected” extensive3 production systems.

Cows in the paddock. That’s all I see. Sheep in the paddock. (Sally, female, 45–54 years, Adelaide)

Well basically sheep and cattle grazing in green farms with lots of room and space to walk around and enjoy themselves basically. That is what I expect anyway. (Tim, male, 55–64 years, Melbourne)

Diet and living environment were intrinsically linked for many participants, who highlighted the importance of grazing as a natural behaviour. The ‘goodness’ of extensive production systems was contrasted with more intensive systems that restrict animal movement and the abilities of animals to express natural behaviours.

I guess [sheep and cattle] are grazing animals. We know them as grazing animals. And grazing means walking around, eating little bits of stuff here and there so…If it can do its natural behaviour, yeah. Doing what is natural for an animal. (Henry, male, 35–44 years, Melbourne)

I think, you know … an animal should be able to enjoy the things it naturally does. For a pig is to wallow and do its thing and that and for a chicken to be able to scratch and fluff its feathers, … [for] cattle to be crammed into those veal crates and of course the piggeries even, it isn’t good. (Tilly, female, 45–54 years, Adelaide)

Participants also associated grain-feeding with animal confinement, emphasising a lack of choice for animals with respect to diet, and issues with animals being limited to foods that they would not ordinarily choose themselves.

I don’t like grain-fed. I feel like, at least if they are grass-fed they are out in the pasture, they’re not just in a little shed somewhere, locked in a cage being fed rubbish they wouldn’t normally eat. So I avoid grain-fed. (Sarah, female, 35–44 years, Adelaide)

When describing sheep and cattle production, the participants in this study described extensive production systems as ‘natural,’ ‘normal,’ and ‘expected’ in contrast to more intensive production systems where animal movement and dietary choice may be restricted. These findings align with previous research including opposition to animal confinement (see e.g. Miele and Evans 2005; Lassen et al. 2006; Sørensen and Fraser 2010; Boogaard et al. 2011b; Miele et al. 2011; Spooner et al. 2014; Coleman et al. 2016); the importance to consumers of animals expressing their ‘natural behaviours’ (Te Velde et al. 2002; Vanhonacker and Verbeke 2009; Vanhonacker et al. 2012; Spooner et al. 2014; Coleman et al. 2016), and preferences for grazing as part of good animal welfare (Verbeke et al. 2010; Spooner et al. 2014; Coleman et al. 2016). However, the expectation of extensive production methods for sheep and cattle in the Australian context is worth noting, given the frequent use of feedlots as mentioned in the introduction.

“Australian Family Farms Care for Their Animals”

The ‘good’ production systems that our participants described were connected with farms that were smaller in scale and family-owned, and represented what participants believed farming ‘should be’:

I suppose I have had my grandfather’s example of an old school farmer and I remember him talking with disgust about another farmer who overstocked … He was disgusted with that because he’s…old style, and he looked after his land. (Tilly, female, 45–54 years, Adelaide)

What is good farm animal welfare? And what is bad? Do you have a sense of that? How do you evaluate that yourself?

Every animal’s got a name [focus group laughter]. But some of them do do that, like not every animal maybe, but some of their favourite ones. I’m just being silly. (Susie, female, 45–54 years, Adelaide)

But I think that’s a good point because, yes treating each and every animal as an individual, living creature, that deserves a certain quality of life for the time that it’s alive and quality of death as well. Even if it doesn’t have a name, but I think that’s sort of the idea that you’re [implying]. (Chrissie, female, 35–44 years, Adelaide)

In contrast, larger farms were associated with commercial activity, and the replacement of farmers with managers:

I know there is [sic] a lot of family farms that really do care about their animals, but then you hear stories … about shearing where they just, like they’re cutting open sheep and they just like stitching them up without any kind of medication or anything and obviously the farmers must be aware of that and, so, I wonder if the commercial divide makes a difference…If the farmer really owns the farm and looks after the farm, or if the farmer’s just a manager, maybe. (Susie, female, 45–54 years, Adelaide)

Participants’ responses suggest that the relationship between humans and animals is an important part of ensuring good animal welfare. Higher levels of care were attributed to owner-operators who were viewed as involved in every aspect of raising the animal, as compared to employees or those involved during only one stage of production. This point is also raised by Wilkie (2010) who suggests that the scale and type of animal production can significantly impact the extent to which producers can realistically engage with their animals. Presenting the relationship between farmer and animal as one of intimacy and care also is crucial to the construction of products as ethical and humanely produced (Heath and Meneley 2010). In a similar vein, Staples and Klein (2017) describe the alleged intimacy between humans and animals on smaller, ‘more ethical’ farms, in contrast to the perceived (and possibly exaggerated, see Baker 2013) separation between animals and humans in intensive farming.

Participants also emphasised that farms owned and managed by Australians have better standards of animal welfare than those run by foreign companies and farmers. They claimed that Australian farmers care for the welfare of their animals and ‘others’ (often not explicitly defined) do not:

…a lot of farmers, especially Australian ones, kind of look out for the welfare of animals (Lucy, female, 18–24 years, Toowoomba)

Can you think of any practices that aren’t necessarily good for the animal’s welfare?

Not really, no. I think Australia [sic] are pretty good, umm. Better not talk about the overseas ones though. (Mark, male, 45–54 years, Adelaide)

So when you’re buying Australian, is that, because it’s local or also because we have good standards when it comes to animal management?

It’s numerous things. It’s helping our own farmers, ah it’s helping the country. Plus I don’t trust [pause] Asian food. I’m really anti that.

From a food hygiene perspective?

Oh everything. Everything. I just don’t think their standards are up to anywhere near our standards, both in killing, producing …I’d be racist if I went any further. (Iain, male, over 65 years, Melbourne)

“Happy not Knowing”

It was notable that many participants avoided the topic of slaughter until it was directly introduced and tended not to focus on details about slaughter practices related to the meat that they consume. Participants indicated that they had limited knowledge about slaughter and would rather leave it that way:

I think I am happy not knowing because I know what it was like on the farm and I mean I can just generally think what it would be like. I mean it is a trauma to the animal, it is a trauma to the people who look after the animal. (Susan, female, 55–64 years, Melbourne)

However, participants noted that slaughter was necessary for meat production.

When you think about sheep and beef cows and their welfare; do you ever associate the slaughter process?

Yeah, you do, hey. You do. That’s the hard part to answer. It’s really, really hard cause we don’t [sic] to see it. No one [does]. And then people, I don’t even know how they can stand doing it. How can they work in that environment? A place like that. You know what? It’s got to be done. Unfortunately, it has to. How are we going to survive, to eat? I’m pretty sure you like eating your meat…and I know you, you’re the same way as me, we all feel for our animals, but the job’s got to be done. (Paddy, male, 35–44 years, Melbourne)

Participants were willing to consume meat despite not wanting to consider or know about slaughter, but also recognised the trauma that animals likely face during the process:

It’s quite cruel because the animal is a living thing ah they have life and sense and feeling but we are just slowly killing them it’s just like…eww. (Tristan, male, 18–24 years, Melbourne).

“It should be Done Quickly”

Despite not wanting to know about the details of the slaughter process, participants unanimously stated that slaughter of livestock should be performed as quickly and humanely as possible, echoing previous research from Europe (Miele and Evans 2005) and Canada (Spooner et al. 2014).

[Slaughter] should be done quickly. Get it over and done with for the poor animals, you know so they’re not suffering. (Paddy, male, 35–44 years, Melbourne).

Many participants suggested that animals not only had a right to a good life, but also a “good death:

There are issues around having a good life and serving a good death. Or as good as possible. (Marian, female, 55–65 years, Melbourne)

I think they should just be allowed to be animals right up until the day we have to kill them, you know what I mean? So they have a nice life. Like you, you need to honour that someone’s, that you, you are taking something’s life, we should give it a nice life right up until the time you have to take it. (Sarah, female, 35–44 years, Adelaide)

Some participants also described the impact that they believed stress to have not only on animal welfare, but also meat quality. Although stress is known to have a direct negative effect on meat quality (Meat and Livestock Australia n.d.), participants expressed the connection in more general terms.

A lot of time they are forced to take the animals long distances which often means putting them into, jamming them into trucks and putting the animals under an enormous amount of stress which I think is bad for the animals, it is bad for the meat or the meat quality. (Marian, female, 55–64 years, Melbourne).

Most participants considered the practice of stunning prior to slaughter to be an essential part of a ‘good death’ for livestock animals:

How any person can stand there and like, kill a live animal is beyond me. And as mum says halal meat is even worse. When they what, slit their throat and let them bleed to death.

So it, it’s different between the two processes. However, you think both are cruel?

Oh very. Yeah. One is kinder than the other though. At least one has been hit with a stun gun, before you know, they’re killed, as such.

They’re not aware of it.

Yeah which is kinder… halal is just disgusting. And how anyone can sit there and eat a piece of halal meat, knowing that this animal went through an enormous amount of pain is beyond me. I wouldn’t eat it. (Olivia, female, 25–34 years, Toowoomba)

Many participants were concerned about animal treatment in destination countries that receive live exports from Australia, and particularly halal slaughter, which was often described as “disgusting.” Such reactions were used as justifications for banning live export, as participants considered Australia to have better slaughter practices than the predominantly Muslim destination countries. As an alternative to live export, participants often suggested that animals should be slaughtered in Australia and exported as prepared or processed meat, and considered this option to be economically viable and as creating jobs for Australians while removing the cruelty that they associated with the live export industry:

I feel that the live animal export is a major issue as far as I am concerned personally and everyone in my circles. I think we can do far more for this country by bringing onshore the abattoirs and processing situations and if the Muslim countries insist on having our live animals then I am afraid it should be a closed door and we seek other markets that do accept our processed meat. (Joyce, female, over 65 years, Adelaide)

Discussion

In terms of animal welfare, all participants in this study had clear ideas about what makes a ‘good life’ and a ‘good death.’ Although they do not want to engage with the details about slaughter (likely for psychological reasons as discussed below), they have deep concerns about halal slaughter and related practices as being inhumane and cruel. Most participants associated animals doing and eating what is ‘natural’ with higher animal welfare, and linked such conditions to ‘expected’ and ‘normal’ ideas of livestock production. Many placed high value on Australian family farms and Australian farmers, in part because they believed that animals receive better treatment than on farms run by non-Australians. Although these themes may appear to be distinct from one another, we contend that they are embedded in long-standing cultural understandings and expectations of what Australian agriculture, particularly livestock production, ‘should be’ according to Anglo-Celtic Australians (the dominant background of our participants) and are associated with processes of ‘othering’ those of non-Anglo-Celtic background and Muslims in particular.

In this study, we targeted meat consumers, which permitted us to assess what they wanted to know about the processes associated with meat production. It was striking that while most did not want to consider or think about slaughter, they recognised the trauma that animals likely face during the process. This kind of affected ignorance, “generated by what one knows but does not want to hear” (Schwartz 2018, p. 1), involves the refusal to think about or consider a practice, particularly if the practice may be immoral (Williams 2008). In addition, many of our participants’ responses reflect the “meat paradox,” which refers to the cognitive dissonance that arises for many between the recognition that consumption behaviours harm animals, and the enjoyment that results from eating meat as part of their diets (Herzog 2010; Joy 2010; Piazza et al. 2015; Dowsett et al. 2018). Even with increasing levels of ambivalence and moral aversion towards killing animals for a variety of reasons, and a rise in the number of people adopting plant-based diets (de Padilha et al. 2022), many in modern societies are still fond of consuming meat (Leroy and Praet 2017). Loughnan et al. (2014) note that cognitive dissonance can be resolved either by rejecting meat consumption entirely or through various psychological manoeuvres, both of which bring moral beliefs and attitudes into alignment with behaviours.

Meat-eaters have been noted to use four justificatory categories to ease discomfort with the slaughter process, known as the 4Ns: meat is natural (part of human biological nature); normal (how we ought to behave based on our customs and traditions); necessary (nutrients found only in meat are essential for a healthy, balanced diet), and nice (people enjoy consuming meat) (Joy 2010; Piazza et al. 2015). While discussing slaughter as a necessary condition for eating meat, many participants in the current study explicitly emphasised various aspects of these principles of justification, for instance associating the consumption of meat with a healthy diet.

Despite its prominence in Australian culture, agriculture currently only employs approximately 1.3% of Australia’s population, contributing about 3% to the country’s economic output (National Farmers’ Federation 2020),4 figures that are significantly diminished from less than a century ago when agriculture was the largest economic sector (Davidson and Brodie 2005). Although most Australians over the past two centuries have lived in large urban centres, Australia continues to be imagined through the “frontier narrative” (as noted earlier by Furniss 1999), including an Australian variant of the rural idyll known as “countrymindedness” (Aitkin 1985; Cockfield and Botterill 2012; see also Bell 2006), which portrays the family farm as “hard-working settlers making an honest living off the land” (Cairns et al. 2015, p. 1189). Stereotypical depictions of the idyllic family farm with an Anglo-Celtic white male in a flannelette shirt and Akubra hat have been used in popular TV shows (Phillipov 2017, ch. 3; Phillipov and Loyer 2019) and many marketing campaigns in recent years (Chen 2016b; Phillipov 2016). For example, Coles supermarket’s seminal “Helping Australia Grow” campaign used family farm images to help “connect Coles’ methods of sourcing fresh produce to the qualities of embeddedness, trust and place [usually] associated with alternative food practices” (Phillipov 2016, p. 590). Chen (2016b) argues that such depictions of farmers “reinforce the moral status quo…thanks to popular ignorance about the realities of animal use and farm life” (p. 122) and obscure the “reality that farms in Australia today comprise large agribusiness enterprises as well as family owned and operated properties” (p. 115). Nonetheless, many current advertising campaigns still echo these romanticised and idyllic themes about Australian agriculture.

In many of the participants’ comments in this study, there was focus on concepts such as ‘expected’ and ‘normal’ in relation to the extensive production systems that are thought to be ‘good’ (and ‘natural’) for beef and sheep meat production in Australia. The comments describing expectations associated with extensive production systems draw heavily on the romanticised stereotypes noted above, and are in tension with the reality of the frequent use of feedlots in this sector as noted in the introduction. Importantly, these characterisations are distinct from popular understandings of agriculture in many other locales where the terminology used often refers to the ‘natural’ (such as in Sweden, see Saltzman et al. 2011). The types of ‘traditional’ values associated with the ‘natural’ in relation to farming in Europe (Verbeke et al. 2010; Boogaard et al. 2011a,c) are not present amongst this study’s Australian participants, but instead a distinct sense of what is ‘normal’ emerges here to describe what is ‘good’: that which is expected, typical, and acceptable.

What is not ‘good’ in the processes associated with death, according to our participants, is clear: halal slaughter. This focus raises a number of issues. Firstly, in Australia, all animals must be stunned prior to slaughter, unless permission is granted for ritual slaughter (Australia and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council 2007, 7.12[1]). These exceptions compose a very small portion of the overall number of slaughtered animals, and primarily are provided for Kosher production; most importantly, Islamic religious leaders in Australia have accepted pre-slaughter stunning practices as halal (Bergauld-Blackler 2016; Armanios and Ergene 2018; Loyer et al. 2020).5 Despite the ubiquity of pre-stunning slaughter in Australia, including in halal slaughter, participants described halal practices as not including pre-slaughter stunning and hence causing a ‘bad’ death.6

On the surface, these concerns echo previous research indicating that Europeans (Vanhonacker et al. 2010) and Canadians (Spooner et al.2014) also consider pre-slaughter stunning to be important for animal welfare. They also are based in part on lack of awareness about slaughter processes in general, which relate to participants’ preferences to not consider these processes in any detail and the lack of regulatory transparency in this domain (see Loyer et al. 2020 for a review). In addition, concerns about halal slaughter are clearly associated with concerns about the live export trade (see Buddle et al. 2018b for more detail on Australians’ perceptions of livestock transport including in conjunction with live export), which was an issue that received considerable media attention in the few years prior to this research (Buddle and Bray 2019). Problems with welfare practices in the context of live export of livestock to Australia have been supported by graphic and troubling exposes, such as in the ABC TV Four Corners program, “A Bloody Business” (Doyle 2011), as well as frequent campaigns by animal welfare organisations (e.g., RSPCA n.d.). Live export was not a focus of the current study.7 However, no matter what our views may be on live export practices, it is important to note that Fozdar and Spittles (2014) argue that representation of mistreatment of Australian cattle in the program drew on deeply embedded Orientalist traditions of seeing so-called Western behaviours as civilised, while viewing Eastern practices as barbaric.

What is of primary interest for our interpretation is that the concerns expressed in this research by many participants about halal slaughter in Australia appear to be associated with broader concerns about Islamic practices (see Senate 2015) and bias against non-Anglo-Celtic migrants as ‘other.’ Several of the quotes provide clear examples of ‘othering’, which occurs when there is a difference in beliefs or behaviours between two social or cultural groups, particularly when it is perceived that there are potential risks associated with the ‘other’ group. Most striking perhaps are the comments that emphasise participants’ visceral reactions to halal slaughter which in effect describe some practices associated more generally with slaughter in Australia (e.g., exsanguination or bleeding out which occurs in all forms of slaughter), but which they use to draw a distinction between halal and ‘standard’ slaughter practices.

It is clear from many of our participants’ comments that concerns about halal slaughter are not associated with accurate knowledge or direct experiences. However, these comments do reflect deeper trends in current Australian culture, and the weaponisation of halal as part of an anti-Islamic movement (Wong and Millie 2015), particularly in the use of emotive language and the association of certain practices to people themselves in participants’ responses. There is significant stigma in Australia associated with the Islamic faith (40% of respondents in a major survey had a negative attitude towards Muslims when asked anonymously: see Markus 2019).8 Discrimination against those of colour and different races extends far back in Australian history: the informal measures and formal regulations that collectively are known as the “White Australia policy” effectively limited non-British migration to Australia from 1901 till the post-World War II period when the policy relaxed to allow refugees from continental Europe; this policy was not formally eliminated until the mid-1970s (Tavan 2005). Even after the enormous growth in migration and settlement of Muslims in Australia over the past 30 years, Islam is still viewed by many as culturally incompatible with the so-called Western ideals on which Australia was founded (Mansouri 2020). The increased numbers of arrivals of asylum seekers and refugees9 in the 1990s onward (Kabir 2005) and the recent “Operation Sovereign Borders” campaign by the Australian Government (2018), along with ongoing fears of Islamic extremist terror attacks (Fahd 2017), have contributed to discrimination against Muslims. As seen in the participants’ responses quoted above, such concerns and fears shape views on animal welfare, and particularly what makes for a good animal life and death.

Consumer anxieties about food frequently involve processes of ‘othering’ (Jackson 2010), including what has been termed “culinary xenophobia,” or fear and distrust of foreign food (Santich 1996, 232; Edwards et al. 2000; Anderson and Benbow 2015). Our findings expand on this scholarship to explicitly include food-related behaviours including production practices. Such practices can bring people together, but also can set people apart, performing exclusionary roles that can lead to culinary xenophobia and reinforce ‘otherness’ (Wright and Annes 2013). Culinary xenophobia provides opportunities for identity formation and a way of establishing unity in the face of difficulty or disaster, particularly by distributing or shifting the blame to separate ‘us’ from the risky other (Milne 2013).

We contend that our participants perceive that an animal’s ‘good death,’ and in turn the potential for a ‘good life’, are what is at risk here. Providing animals with good lives by allowing them to live what was termed ‘naturally’ (i.e., normally and in line with participants’ expectations) and a good death by minimising stress, were key concerns of many participants, and were linked to meat quality and even safety. The factors associated with animals living naturally were tied to a traditional, rural idyll, which as noted above is largely a symbolic landscape, although it is closely associated with national identity in this Australian context. Thus we contend that the values that many of our participants (who were overwhelmingly Anglo-Celtic) held about providing farm animals with good lives and good deaths are deeply entangled with these ideas of identity and what it means to be Australian. These values are expressed through the reflections of a rural idyll in expressions of what is ‘normal’ for sheep meat and beef production in Australia, but also in relation to the rejection of that which is variously viewed as ‘other,’ including intensive production, foreign ownership, and halal slaughter.

Declarations

Conflict of Interest

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.