How Free Is Sow Stall Free? Incremental Regulatory Reform and Industry Co‐optation of Activism

• Author: Gyorgy Scrinis,RACHEL Carey,Christine Parker
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12154

How Free Is Sow Stall Free? Incremental Regulatory

Reform and Industry Co-optation of Activism

RACHEL CAREY, CHRISTINE PARKER and GYORGY SCRINIS

This article critically examines how interactions between social movement activism, supermar-

kets, and the pork industry led to the voluntary adoption of “sow stall free” standards in

Australia. We “backwards map” the regulatory space behind “sow stall free” products to show

how the movement against factory farming became selectively focused on the abolition of one

form of confinement for sowsrather than on other forms of confinement and the conditions of

the sows’ offspring, thepiglets that are consumed. We argue thatthis facilitated an incremental

shift to “sow stall free” production, allowing the concept of pig welfare to be corporatized ina

way that maintains the dominant model of factory farmed pig meat production.

I. INTRODUCTION

The introduction of bans on sow stalls (also known as gestation stalls or crates) for preg-

nant pigs in Europe, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and some US states

1

suggests that

market activity driven primarily by economic growth can be checked by the activism of

social movements. Australia has not yet legislated to ban sow stalls. However, around

80 percent of the Australian sow herd is now in “sow stall free” production systems, and

“sow stall free” marketed and labeled products are widely available in supermarkets

(Australian Pork Limited [APL] 2017a). In late 2016, the industry body, APL,

2

went so

far as to call for a government-legislated ban on the use of sow stalls by the nation’s pig

producers (Locke 2016), a reversal of its earlier opposition to such a ban (APL 2011).

This article examines how interactions between social movement activism, supermar-

kets, and the pork industry led to the voluntary adoption of “sow stall free” production

standards across most of the Australian pork industry. We show how the social move-

ment campaign against “factory farming” of pigs selectively focused on the issue of free-

ing sows (breeder pigs) from confinement for strategic reasons. This enabled

supermarkets and the pork industry to buy into pig welfare by exploiting the representa-

tion of “sow stall free” as an animal welfare innovation. This “sow stall free” version of

pig welfare in turn allows the existing model of intensive pig meat production to con-

tinue without significant disruption. In this sense, we argue, it represents a form of

industry co-optation of animal activism.

This work was supported by a Discovery Grant from the Australian Research Council (grant number DP

150102168).

Address correspondence to: Rachel Carey, School of Agriculture and Food, The University of Melbourne,

Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia. Telephone: +61 3 8344 1567; Email: rachel.carey@unimelb.edu.au.

LAW & POLICY, Vol. 42, No. 3, July 2020

©2020 The Authors

Law & Policy ©2020 University of Denver and Wiley Periodicals LLC.

doi: 10.1111/lapo.12154

ISSN 0265-8240

The first part of this article describes our theoretical framework. We introduce the

concepts of “regulatory capitalism” (Levi-Faur 2017), “regulatory space” (Hancher and

Moran 1998), and industry “co-optation” (Jaffee and Howard 2010; King and

Busa 2017) to explain how industry, government, and social movement activists interact

with each other as they each seek to use regulation to create and contest market bound-

aries for their own purposes. In this article, the focus is on market-based governance

responses to social movement activism that aim to limit animal exploitation by

campaigning against “factory farming” (Harrison 1964). As the first part of the article

also explains, we use a “backwards mapping” research approach (developed by Parker

and coauthors: see Parker 2014; Parker, Johnson and Curll 2019b) to examine the regu-

latory space behind the claims on food labels.

3

The second part of the article briefly describes international developments in the gov-

ernance of sow stalls, which have included both government regulation and market-led

voluntary accreditation and labeling schemes. We then set out how Australia currently

regulates sow stalls and describe our methods for “backwards mapping” the regulatory

space behind the emergence of “sow stall free” production in the Australian market-

place. This methodology starts with what consumers see in the market (e.g., marketing

claims concerning animal welfare on pork and ham products) and traces back the net-

works of public and private governance throughout the supply chain that create and

support the claims on labels. Finally, this part critically evaluates the underlying produc-

tion practices against the claims made and governance processes used.

The third part of the article reports our findings. We show how the issue of sow stalls

emerged on the public and policy agenda in Australia as a result of normative pressure

from animal welfare activists, technological change, and regulatory developments in the

UK and EU. Government reluctance to ban sow stalls created the conditions for a

market-based response. Coles (one of Australia’s two major supermarkets) and the

industry body APL each defined their own standard for “sow stall free” production and

labeling. These “sow stall free” standards became a key device through which industry

could buy into and co-opt animal welfare activism targeting factory farming.

The fourth part of the article concludes that “sow stall free” does represent a small shift in

the very boundaries of the market. Unlike other well-known voluntary certification and label-

ing standards such as “fair trade,” “organic,” and “free range” (Jaffee and Howard 2010; Par-

ker, Carey, and Scrinis 2019a), “sow stall free” is not merely a market niche aimed only at

conscientious consumers. The vast majority of pig products sold in Australia are now pro-

duced to a “sow stall free” standard. The APL version of that standard will likely be

enshrined in new mandatory regulatory standards for pig welfare (Animal Health

Australia 2017), formalizing a change in the degree to which sows can be exploited as “animal

machines” (Harrison 1964). We argue that “sow stall free” labeling and marketing exploits

this small incremental victory for the animal movement in a way that subtly suggests a larger,

more transformative change has taken place. In this way, “sow stall free” corporatizes animal

welfare through the co-optation of activism against the factory farming of animals.

II. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK: REGULATORY CAPITALISM, REGULATORY SPACE, AND

INDUSTRY CO-OPTATION

A. REGULATORY CAPITALISM AND REGULATORY SPACE

David Levi-Faur (2017, 289–90) has argued that capitalism is constantly “being consti-

tuted, shaped, constrained and expanded” by “a patchwork of regulatory institutions,

©2020 The Authors

Law & Policy ©2020 University of Denver and Wiley Periodicals LLC.

INCREMENTAL REGULATORY REFORM OF ACTIVISM 285