An exploration of how 'cattle' workers conceptualize their job and justify working in a role that raises animals to be slaughtered for meat.

The industrial farming of animals allows consumers to keep an emotional separation between the animals themselves and the meat products they become. People working in this industry facilitate an animal-consumer disconnect, but the jobs they do often produce conflicting emotions and complicated feelings towards animals. While workers may view animals as thinking, sentient beings, they also see the use of those animals as justifiable, even “inevitable.” Based on interviews with cattle ranchers, this study describes the concept of “boundary labor” and examines how people working in these positions deal with the conflicts inherent in their work.

The ranchers engaged certain “emotional skills” to manage their relationships with animals. This involved a three-part narrative including: a sense of responsibility to animals and consumers; religious-based feelings of dominion; and a belief in the cycle of reproduction. Armored with these points of view, ranchers turn an emotion-filled activity (raising animals) into a relatively emotionless product (meat, dairy, or eggs). As the authors note, “Beef does not start as an inanimate commodity. It begins as a ‘sentient commodity.’ The emotional labor and boundary work of ranchers is central to the production of this commodity.”