Methane emissions from sheep and cattle production have gained increasing profile
in the context of climate change. Policy and scientific research communities have
suggested a number of technological approaches to mitigate these emissions. This
paper uses the concept of co-production as an analytical framework to understand
farmers’ evaluation of a ‘good animal’. It examines how technology and sheep and
beef cattle are co-produced in the context of concerns about the climate change
impact of methane. Drawing on 42 semi-structured interviews, this paper
demonstrates that methane emissions are viewed as a natural and integral part of
sheep and beef cattle by farmers, rather than as a pollutant. Sheep and beef cattle
farmers in the UK are found to be an extremely heterogeneous group that need to
be understood in their specific social, environmental and consumer contexts. Some
are more amenable to appropriating methane reducing measures than others, but
largely because animals are already co-constructed from the natural and the
technical for reasons of increased production efficiency.