Animals in the Anthropocene: From Land to Ocean

The human animal’s consumption of non-human animals has increased drastically over the last decades. On a global basis, this consumption consists of about 40 percent mammals, 20 percent poultry and 40 percent fish. Since 2012 the global consumption of farmed fish has been larger than that of wild fish, and the share of farmed fish has increased by 700 percent since 1990. At the same time more wild fish is also caught and consumed. The scale and the growth of this consumption raise profound discussions about the management of the ocean’s resources, the use of collectively owned marine areas for fish farming, and not least the environmental consequences of the industry. There is also a growing debate about fish welfare generally, in line with a growing awareness and knowledge about the fish’s ability to feel pain, and to think and act as an individual. This debate increasingly looks like the debate about other non-human animals. Which consequences are we to draw from this steadily growing knowledge? And what ethical challenges follow in the wake of the differential treatment of fish, other sea animals, birds and mammals?

Within industrial farming, there is an enormous amount of research being conducted, in the fields of animal breeding, genetics and material production facilities, in order to meet the demands for increased profitability. Non-human animals are used for research on cosmetic products, medicine, psychology etc.; research is conducted on animal behaviour (ethology), and not least on the environmental consequences of man’s use and management of non-human animals. How much of this research is genuinely independent of the businesses’ own priorities? What do we know about its history and tradition? What, for instance, has been the relationship, within the Norwegian context, between the academic milieu at Ås (Norw. Univ. of Life Sciences), on the one hand, and political and agricultural interests, on the other? And to what extent does our recently acquired knowledge contribute to changing attitudes to non-human animals?

We also invite contributions on the economic and industrial forces that, nationally and globally, govern, define and develop the whole complex of industrial farming, and that in practice has an enormous influence on the management of huge resources on land and at sea, that is resources that are not privately owned. What consequences have the concentrations of capital in steadily growing companies over the last twenty to thirty years had for the opportunities for political control, the struggle for animal rights and for saving the environment? What is the relationship between business interests, lobby groups and political decision making? Have politicians and nation states in effect given up control?

The animal-industrial complex spends enormous sums of money on marketing, with verbal and visual communication to its customers, and have thus succeeded in creating a massive growth in the consumption of animal products over several decades. What characterizes this communication? What rhetoric is being used, and what credibility does it have in light of today’s environmental issues and the increasing knowledge about the inner life of animals? How can literary representations offer insight into the relationship between human and non-human, including the ethical challenges associated with this relationship?

Other possible perspectives may be, but are not limited to:

• Animal husbandry and breeding in light of the environmental crisis
• Animals as industry
• Ethical challenges of hunting
• Human management of wild animals
• The ethics of animal husbandry
• Animals in education and upbringing
• Posthumanism and the animal turn
• Animal welfare vs. animal rights
• The animal as an individual
• Animals in ethics and religion
• Animals and health
• The wild and the tame
• Animals and/as culture
• Animals in culture and literature
• Fish vs. other animals
• Economy and business interests vs. animal protection and animal rights
• Meat consumption, dietary recommendations and lobby power