As the profile of farm animal welfare rises within food production chains, in response both to greater
consumer ethical engagement with the lives of animals and to the market opportunities afforded to
supply chain actors by this engagement, farm animal welfare (which we might define as the qualities of
life of sentient beings) is increasingly being modified under the processes of ‘economisation’ (Caliskan
and Callon, 2009) and marketisation (Caliskan and Callon, 2010) from a basic condition of legitimation
and productivity to a calculable commodity in itself, subject to assessment, scoring and qualification.
Over and above regulatory or assurance scheme compliance, welfare conditions and criteria are being
used as a component or distinctive selling point for food products, brands or even particular manufacturers
and retailers within ‘value-added’ marketing technologies. To make our argument we focus
entirely on the case of industrialised free-range laying chicken production practices and the retailing
practices that have developed to create a market for eggs produced under this farming method. We argue
that economisation and marketisation processes have major implications for the meaning, assessment
and communication of farm animal welfare and, consequently, for the way in which consumption
practices become pre-defined. We maintain that recent developments and shifts in the economization of
animals through food chain actors’ interpretations of consumer concern for ‘good’ welfare, coupled with
advances in the reach of veterinary science, are leading to a co-shaping and co-modification e through
an assemblage of procedures, technologies, performances and forms of assessments e of farm animal
welfare as an economic ‘good’, and its materialisation in animal-derived food products. This has significant
implications for the nature and communication of welfare ‘evidence’ and the manner in which it
is articulated within an increasingly market oriented delivery framework