ABSTRACT
Animal science has largely developed, especially in the United States, as a driver of national development but, more importantly, as a manufacturer of greater profits, particularly for the owners of large farms, pharmaceutical and feed companies, breeders, processors and retailers. This chapter includes some introduction to concepts that help understand the technoscience that is an important driver of the industrial livestock sector. The basic framework includes the animal body through the lens of Foucault, the animal body as commodity using Marxist theory, and a political economy of science after Jack R. Kloppenburg and other sociologists and historians of agricultural science. The animal science enterprise treats animals as flesh, milk and egg machines – replaceable parts in a parade of breathtaking magnitude to slaughter. The commodified livestock body is colonised through discursive and management practices that for the most part ignore the vitality and the social and emotional life of the animal.
