ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the findings from a research on government-supported farm animal welfare science programs in the US and the European Union. Therefore, first it reviews pertinent scholarship, including Agamben's theorizing of bare versus social life and foundational for him, Foucault's concept of biopower. Then it gives an overview of the US and European trajectories of farm animal welfare regulation in order to demonstrate the longstanding role of the state in governing the treatment of these animals, this role increasing beginning in the twentieth century. Finally, it describes in more detail the empirical cases three government supported farm animal welfare science research vehicles that illustrate the development, relative to US and European societies and the state, of these animals as welfare-possessing subjects. These overarching similarities in farming practices contrast with the differing welfare and legislative trajectories reviewed and have laid the foundations for the government-sponsored research vehicles.
