Value-Scapes of Death: Livestock Veterinarians and the Regulation of Farm Animal Life in the Netherlands

Abstract

This article examines the crucial role of veterinarians in making animal death valuable, enabling productive life, and managing uncontrolled dying. Based on ethnographic fieldwork on dairy farms in the Netherlands, and considering veterinarians as gatekeepers of the food chain, health practitioners, and governance actors, I articulate the "value-scapes" of food production that shape which animals die, when, and how, and whether death is desirable, a waste, or a warning. Veterinization here narrates how veterinary expertise is shaped by diverse societal concerns like food security, public health, animal welfare, and ecological sustainability, and knotted into shifting and multifaceted formations of Dutch-European animality.

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