Paper Short Abstract:

Intensive bovine breeding practices compromise animal and environmental health and have fuelled breed and bloodline extinctions. Australian heritage breed farmers exemplify an alternative model, foregrounding love within a politics of conservation that seeks to safeguard agrobiodiversity health.

Paper Abstract:

‘Domination, domestication, and love are deeply entangled’, observes Anna Tsing (2012: 141). While for millennia humans and livestock have largely enjoyed mutualistic relationships, in recent decades the dynamic has shifted towards domination, with the livestock industry exploiting animals as unidimensional commodities. Within the neoliberal focus on increasing performance for economic gain, cattle have been divided into dairy or beef breeds, and selectively bred for milk volume, or rapid growth and muscling, respectively. Production increases have been extraordinary, yet have come at a cost to animal welfare, agrobiodiversity and the environment. Biodiversity is critical for health at the genetic, species and ecosystem levels, yet the homogenisation of bovine bloodlines has resulted in the extinction of 184 cattle breeds globally, with many more under threat.

In response, Australian heritage breed cattle farmers are working hard to preserve the old breeds, whose bloodlines and histories are enmeshed with their own. Living interdependently, often over generations, results in strong emotive ties with animals, who heritage breed farmers consider family, even while they instrumentalise their bodies to support their livelihoods and breed conservation. In this paper, I explore the animal health and ecological detriments of intensive breeding practices, and suggest heritage breed farmers exemplify an alternative to the dominant mastery model. I argue that their love for their particular breeds and bloodlines is proving the cornerstone of breed conservation in Australia, providing a key safeguard for healthy agrobiodiversity into the future.