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Robotic milking technologies and renegotiating situated ethical relationships on UK dairy farms

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Abstract

Robotic or automatic milking systems (AMS) are novel technologies that take over the labor of dairy farming and reduce the need for human–animal interactions. Because robotic milking involves the replacement of ‘conventional’ twice-a-day milking managed by people with a system that supposedly allows cows the freedom to be milked automatically whenever they choose, some claim robotic milking has health and welfare benefits for cows, increases productivity, and has lifestyle advantages for dairy farmers. This paper examines how established ethical relations on dairy farms are unsettled by the intervention of a radically different technology such as AMS. The renegotiation of ethical relationships is thus an important dimension of how the actors involved are re-assembled around a new technology. The paper draws on in-depth research on UK dairy farms comparing those using conventional milking technologies with those using AMS. We explore the situated ethical relations that are negotiated in practice, focusing on the contingent and complex nature of human–animal–technology interactions. We show that ethical relations are situated and emergent, and that as the identities, roles, and subjectivities of humans and animals are unsettled through the intervention of a new technology, the ethical relations also shift.

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Notes

  1. The gendered term ‘stockmanship’ is generally used by practitioners, although references to ‘stockwomen’ alongside ‘stockmen’ are not uncommon.

  2. This refers to the way that cows will tend to go through the milking process in the same order each day.

  3. Bulling is displaying behavior associated with readiness for mating.

  4. At the same time, some breeding companies supplying dairy bull semen for artificial insemination are now starting to offer semen from bulls selected as likely to father cows highly suited in body and temperament for robotic milking. See, for example, Semex’s promotion of ‘Robot Ready™’ semen (Semex 2012).

Abbreviations

AMS:

Automatic milking systems

EVEC:

Environmental virtue ethic of care

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank three reviewers and the editor of this journal for their constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper. We would also like to thank the audiences who heard various oral presentations of the paper and provided encouraging and helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull, HU6 7RX, UK

    Lewis Holloway

  2. School of Planning and Geography, Glamorgan Building, Cardiff University, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3WA, UK

    Christopher Bear

  3. University of Oxford, University Offices, Wellington Square, Oxford, OX1 2JD, UK

    Katy Wilkinson

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  1. Lewis Holloway
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  2. Christopher Bear
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Correspondence to Lewis Holloway.

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Holloway, L., Bear, C. & Wilkinson, K. Robotic milking technologies and renegotiating situated ethical relationships on UK dairy farms. Agric Hum Values 31, 185–199 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-013-9473-3

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