Paper long abstract:

In animal welfare debate, ever more often, more markets are called upon to heal the market failures experienced in our livestock systems. The quality assurance schemes and certificates should assist in incorporating higher welfare standards to livestock production; whilst simultaneously providing consumers with reliable information for choosing the products. As specific socio-cognitive apparatuses they aim at reconfiguring both supply and demand for higher animal welfare products. In this paper I examine further how certificates may intensify this relation -- and participate in the 'economization' (Çalişkan and Callon) of animal welfare. I draw on my findings from the making of national quality system for pig production in Finland. This particular case draws our attention to how certificates may become practical devices for maintaining current market positions and production standards, rather than differentiating markets for higher welfare standards. The case also calls upon more analytical scrutiny to the mundane work of market maintenance. The results show how economization of animal welfare always needs to relate to knowledges and 'orders of worths' (Boltanski and Thévenot) in the existing, equipped markets. In this paper I elaborate how, in this case, such arranging made possible what pig welfare can and could become of. I also show how the articulation of the qualities set them under a new kind of scrutiny at the same time. The results highlight that this dynamic, overflowing feature is the very essence of any certificate or quality claim in the markets. In this respect, also the maintenance of markets for the Finnish pork may become even more laborious in future.