Environment and Planning A 1998, volume 30, pages 1219-1234

Mad cows and hounded deer: political representations of animals in the British countryside

M Woods Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Aberystwyth SY23 3DB, Wales; e-mail: zzp@aber.ac.uk Received 20 March 1997; in revised form 2 October 1997

Abstract. The author explores the place of animals in rural politics. Recognising that rurality is socially constructed by its participants, he examines how animals are represented in constructs of the rural and in political debates arising from contests between conflicting constructs. In particular, two case studies are discussed—one concerning an attempt to ban staghunting on public-owned land in Somerset; the other concerning the so-called 'BSE crisis' in Britain in 1996. In both cases representations of animals are mobilised in support of discourses of rurality and nature and particular political objectives. Yet, although animals are central to these debates, they are also voiceless and powerless and remain marginalised from the political process.

Introduction This paper is an exploration of the place of animals in rural politics. Recognising 'rurality' as a socially constructed category, contested through local and national politics, I examine how animals are represented in such political processes. Two cases—an attempt to ban staghunting on council-owned land in southwest England and the so-called 'BSE crisis'—are discussed to demonstrate how animals are repre­sented in different ways at different levels and by different actors to support particular political objectives.

'The rural' is no longer regarded by academics as a functionally defined territory, but rather as a space in which actors perform the social, cultural, and political practices that support particular constructs of 'rurality' (Cloke and Milbourne, 1992; Mormont, 1990). Tensions between different groups to regulate rural space lead to the emergence of 'rural conflicts' over issues such as housing development, footpath rights, quarrying, and mining (Mormont, 1987; Murdoch and Marsden, 1994). These rural conflicts are not just enacted within civil society, but also become entangled within political and governmental networks, as they concern local state activity, and as campaigners use political action to further their own agenda.

Constructs of rurality are structured by myths and ideologies of nature, nation, community, lifestyle, and landscape, and filled with props: trees, hedgerows, plants, buildings, people, and animals (Bunce, 1994; Short, 1991). In academic discourses the identification of the rural as an agricultural space—populated by livestock—or as a natural space—populated by 'wildlife'—were important factors in attempts to func­tionally define the rural. The same identifications are prominent in policy discourses of the rural, with intervention to protect 'rural society' linked to supporting agriculture, including livestock farming, and policies for protecting rural landscapes including conservation programmes for certain species of 'wild' animal. Conversely, the identi­fication of 'wild animals' with the rural has enabled policy discourses of the urban which have justified the control of animals in the city (Philo, 1995).

Equally, animals are central to lay discourses of the rural. Jones (1995) illustrates how animals are part of how residents of a Somerset village understand 'rurality', quoting references to "animals grazing the fields", getting "stuck behind cows on their way back

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from milking", and 'hearing' sheep and birds, as key signifiers of rural life. Similarly, Bell (1994) quotes a Hampshire villager defining 'country' as meaning—amongst other things—sheep, cows, badger and fox holes, rabbits, woodpeckers, and deer.

Fundamental to the enrolment of animals in social constructs of rurality is the question of how 'nature' is conceptualised and approached. The modern relationship to nature is structured by deep-seated cultural assumptions in which nature is taken to be an unproblematic concept (Eder, 1996; Williams, 1980); yet Fitzsimmons (1989) argued that nature should not be externalised from human relations, but that 'social nature' should be recognised as being produced and reproduced through the social relations of production. As such it is imbued with political significance. Whatmore and Boucher (1993), however, in critiquing Fitzsimmons, counter that nature should not be reducible to social relations, but that nonhuman entities and processes should be recognised as existing independently of human social agency, embedded in particular times and spaces (see also Benton, 1989). Furthermore, they highlight the question of how nature is represented, and in particular, how the social construction and representation of nature in policy and public discourses produces particular political outcomes (see also Harrison and Burgess, 1994). Hence Eder (1996), Wilson (1992), and others, have discussed how political responses to contemporary environmental crises are informed by a dominant discourse which measures nature in terms of utility. Moreover, Burgess (1993) points out that 'representing nature' is a double-edged phrase, implying on the one hand 'speaking on behalf of nature', and on the other, symbolising nature in cultural artifacts and processes. Both these meanings are relevant in the cases discussed in this paper, with human actors claiming to speak on behalf of nature, through the mobilisation of discourses of nature as represented through particular cultural symbols, notably animals.

Thus ideas of nature inform the incorporation of animals into rural politics at a number of levels. First, there is the relationship between nature and animals, with animals universally being constructed as part of nature but the exact form of that relation being disputed. If nature is constructed in terms of its utility to humans, animals too tend to be conceptualised in relation to humans; whereas alternative discourses of nature may attribute animals with rights and value independent of their relations with humans. Furthermore, as animals are constructed as part of nature— although some animals may be represented as being 'more natural' than others—so animals are employed by humans to represent nature.

Second, there is a relationship between nature and rurality. For Fitzsimmons (1989), the association of nature with rurality is a fundamental by-product of the construction of nature in opposition to 'society', 'culture', and 'civilisation'. Thus as Cloke et al (1996) observe, "while nature cannot be conflated with 'countryside' the latter, nevertheless, represents one commonly identified spatialization of nature" (page 554). Yet such an identification can follow different forms, with different implications. One influential discourse within Eurocentric culture has conceptualised the cultivated countryside as a space of 'tamed wilderness', managed by humans according to the divine command of stewardship (Short, 1991). Stewardship meant controlling and cultivating nature, exploit­ing it for human needs, such that the rural was positioned as a space of production in the service of human progress. The model of stewardship informed a political discourse, justifying private property and paternalism, with the landowner's obligations extended beyond the physical environment to embrace all elements of rural society (Everett, 1994). The rural was imagined as an organic 'natural' system, in which landowners, tenants, workers, and animals all had their naturally (and divinely) ordained places and worked together to sustain an environment geared to meeting human needs.

Yet Eurocentric cultural tradition has also nurtured an alternative discourse of nature as something to be respected and protected (Short, 1991). The wilderness is

Political representations of animals in the British countryside 1221

represented as a sacred space, and as a transitional space between the wilderness and the city the countryside becomes a place in which humans can experience and commune with nature. In its contemporary incarnation this discourse provides a motivation for tourism, counterurbanisation, and popular conservation movements (Halfacree, 1994; Wilson, 1992). The rurality being pursued in this discourse is an equally manufactured space which is required to meet the consumers' expectations of what nature is and what the rural should be like. The landscape, animals, and indigenous population are all expected to perform particular roles according to the pastoral myth of the rural idyll.

Thus, third, the relationship between animals and the rural is informed by the diverse social constructs of nature and rurality. The transformation of the wilderness into a cultivated space equally demanded the 'domestication' of certain animals (Serpell, 1996), involving a categorisation of animals, according to their ascribed role in the organic rural system of production, which in turn impacted on the spatial ordering of the countryside. There emerged 'working animals'—dogs, cats, horses— which assisted humans in the stewardship of nature and which were kept spatially closest to humans; 'livestock'—cattle, sheep, pigs, fowl—whose function was to provide food and which became enclosed within specially created agricultural spaces such as fields and farmyards; and 'wild animals'—those animals, such as deer, foxes, and badgers, which were considered as providing little to the system of production (except perhaps as a source of food in the case of deer and rabbits), and which therefore needed to be controlled through hunting, because of the threat they posed to crops and livestock, and their transgression of the human-ordered rural space. This is not to say that farmers do not have an aesthetic appreciation of animals, indeed, Bell quotes one farmer describing how he was 'excited' by "a flock of sheep on the move or looking at really lovely beef cattle" (1994, page 91), but animals are also part of a process of production, integral not only to the landscape, but also to the local economy.

In contrast, for those people coming to the countryside to 'experience' nature, animals are imagined in an almost wholly aesthetic sense, divorced from the dirty noxious aspects of agriculture and the harsh predatory order of nature. Rather animals are expected to act as 'props' for an imagined rural idyll, such that the countryside becomes a space of consumption or spectacle in which there is an essential distance between the animals who 'perform' and the people who watch or listen. Furthermore, the presence of wild animals is judged to increase the 'authenticity' of the natural experience, such that they become creatures to be protected not controlled, and activities such as hunting are recast as being 'against' nature.

Animals are central not only to social constructs of rurality, but also to the discourses and practices deployed in political contests between constructs. Indeed, animals are frequently evoked in rural conflicts. For example, one side in a footpath dispute may regard it as a right of access for consuming the countryside through a walk, the highlight of which may be a glimpse of a rabbit or deer or a particular bird; whereas for the landowner the footpath might be perceived as a threat to their live­stock, through loose dogs or unclosed gates or litter. On a larger scale, animals are an explicit part of political debates surrounding issues such as hunting and agricultural practices, as will be discussed in the two case studies which constitute the remainder of this paper.

Hounded deer: staghunting in Somerset The contested place of animals in the British countryside is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in regard to hunting. At one level a form of pest control—illustrating the distinction drawn in the organic conception of rurality between those animals which

1222 M Woods

contribute productively to the system and those which threaten its efficiency and therefore must be controlled—hunting has assumed a role as a symbolic ritual of rurality which transcends its practical justification. For hunt supporters it is not just a mani­festation of the organic rural system, but a celebration of it (Bell, 1994; Thomas, 1983). Hunting literature alludes to hunting as a 'natural' activity—following natural hunter instincts, performing the natural control of a wild animal population which has no ability to control itself, and thus carrying out the biblically ordained human stewardship of nature (for example, see Evered, 1902; Lloyd, 1970). The domination of humans over nature is emphasised by the sporting rules which draw out the experience of the hunt and elevate the status of the quarry "to that of a worthy opponent in an amusing game of life and death; an opponent who enjoys nothing more than pitting his own strength, speed or cunning against that of a well-armed human" (Serpell, 1996, page 202).

The hunt is equally a social ritual, bringing together a dispersed population at hunt meetings, dog shows, and other fundraising activities such as whist drives and hunt balls, and forming a 'communion of localism' (Newby et al, 1978), through which participants socially define their 'rural community'. Thus it is also a political ritual, creating 'insiders' and 'outsiders' through requirements for economic and cultural capital, and continuing to evoke the discourse of a 'natural order', once used to justify the domination of the aristocracy and gentry over rural society (Newby, 1987; Woods, 1997).

This representation of rurality, and the part hunting plays in it, is contested, however, by opponents of hunting.(1) Explicitly, campaigners employ images which reflect a popularly held lay discourse of the countryside as a 'haven' for wildlife. This is illustrated by a League Against Cruel Sports leaflet showing a fox cub with the caption: "Bright-eyed and inquisitive, this young fox is at home in the British country­side where it has every right to live in peace" (my emphasis). Implicitly, the accusation that hunting is cruel challenges the positioning of hunting as part of an organic rural system and as a natural activity.

Historically, the conservative political culture of rural Britain has militated against challenges to hunting at a local level. The political debate proceeded at a parliamentary level,(2) punctuated by occasional situated clashes between hunt members and oppo­nents, where the protesters were usually dismissed as urban day-trippers (Bonham Carter, 1991). However, as the traditional political hegemony has been broken down, and as counterurbanisation has restructured the population of many rural areas, hunting has become an important issue in local politics.

One example of this was an attempt by Somerset County Council to ban staghunting on land it owned on the Quantock Hills in 1993. The hunting of deer with hounds is a long-established tradition in western Somerset, with two hunts operating locally—the Devon and Somerset Staghounds on Exmoor and the Brendon Hills, and the Quantock Staghounds on the Quantock Hills. It is estimated that 7.6% of the local population live in households containing either a hunt member or subscriber (Cox et al, 1994); and that 1.1% of the local workforce are employed in jobs directly or indirectly associated (1) 'Opponent' is used here in a very loose sense. An opinion poll conducted by MORI for the International Fund for Animal Welfare in July 1997 found that 67% of the British public supported a ban on staghunting, and 58% on foxhunting. However, only a small proportion are actually involved in actively opposing hunting, either through membership of antihunting groups or through letter writing to councillors, MPs, and the media. (2) The League Against Cruel Sports was founded in 1924 as the Humanitarian League. Attempts to outlaw hunting were made after the election of a Labour government in 1945. A bill to ban staghunting was defeated in 1945, and a second bill to ban foxhunting withdrawn as part of a deal which established the Committee on Cruelty to Wild Mammals. The Committee reported in 1951, recommending that both foxhunting and staghunting be allowed to continue (Scott Henderson, 1951).

Political representations of animals in the British countryside 1223

with staghunting (Winter et al, 1993). Antihunting campaigners have been active in the area since the 1960s when the League Against Cruel Sports established deer sanctuaries. The idea of banning staghunting on council-owned land was first raised by a Liberal councillor in 1986, at a time when no party had an overall majority. The proposal was initially stalled and then abandoned following the election of a Conservative administration in 1989. However, in May 1993 the Liberal Democrats gained control of the council and shortly afterwards proposed a ban on staghunting on council-owned land at Over Stowey Customs Common. This narrow strip of land runs along the crest of the Quantock Hills, bisecting the area most commonly hunted by the Quantock Staghounds and the ban would have effectively meant the cessation of their activities.

After a short intensive campaign by both sides, the proposal was passed by members of Somerset County Council on 4 August 1993. Hunt supporters immediately launched a campaign to overturn the ban and in February 1994 the High Court ruled that the council had acted outside their powers and revoked the ban. The case is recounted in more detail elsewhere (Woods, 1998); in this paper I want to focus on how representa­tions of animals were mobilised by both sides in the conflict to support their constructs of rurality and their political objectives.

At the core of the argument were the red deer (Cervus elaphus) of the Quantock Hills. These are not indigenous to the area, but were introduced in the mid-19th century by the Devon and Somerset Staghounds explicitly for the purpose of hunting. By the turn of the century the deer herd on the Quantocks had grown to such an extent that a separate hunt, the Quantock Staghounds, was formed. It is estimated that there are now around 4750 red deer on Exmoor and around 800-900 on the Quantock Hills (Langbein and Putman, 1996). As herbivores, deer are known to cause damage to trees and crops, and this is used by the hunts as a justification for their activities, alongside 'managing' the herd to cull weak and misformed deer. The hunting season is staggered to reflect the deer's reproductive cycle, such that older stags are hunted from August to late October, hinds (females) are hunted from November to the end of February; and young, 'Spring stags' from March to the end of April, with a closed season between May and the beginning of August. On average about 50 deer are killed by the hunt on the Quantocks each season, representing approximately 5% of the deer population (Langbein and Putman, 1996).(3)

Beyond these simple biological and historical facts, however, the deer were defined differently by the two sides in the debate. For the antihunting campaigners the deer are part of a natural realm which exists quite independently of its exploitation by humans:

"Beautiful creatures are not put on this earth to provide fun and games and monetary profits for humans" (Letter to the Somerset County Gazette 12 May 1995).

Deer are represented as animals which have no natural predators—at least not in modern Britain—and for whom being chased in a hunt is an unnatural and consequently distressing and 'cruel' experience:

"If you think about it, an animal doesn't know it's going to die when it's being chased, but it's running for a reason if it's being chased, and it's running because it's unnatural to run—[hunters] say it's a natural form of control—it's totally unnatural for the deer and the fox to run because they are the top of their food chain anyway, they don't have any predators, they're not used to being chased, it's totally unnatural—so they run basically through fear" (League Against Cruel Sports spokesperson).(4)

(3) This is a quarter of the cull required to maintain zero growth in deer numbers. (4) Unless otherwise stated, quotes are from interviews conducted as part of doctoral research on local politics in Somerset, based at Bristol University and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

1224 M Woods

This representation of the deer—or the fox—running through fear contrasts directly with the picture traditionally painted in the hunting literature, where the chase gives the animal a 'fair chance' to escape, and where the animal "has as good a reason to be satisfied with the result of a run as his pursuers" (Gaskell, 1906). By suggesting that the animal runs only through fear, and that the actual chase itself is an act of cruelty, the antihunting campaigners are representing the deer as being completely defenceless; hence justifying the actions of the campaigners in 'speaking for' the deer using their human agency.

The hunters, however, define the deer differently, disputing the antihunting cam­paigners' claim that deer feel extreme stress and fear. In particular, the opponents of the proposed ban on the Quantock Hills highlighted the findings of the Scott Henderson Report of 1951, which concluded:

"Inevitably, some suffering is involved, but it is no greater than that involved in any other practical methods of control" (Scott Henderson, 1951, page 63).

This point is reemphasised by hunt supporters in acknowledging that some stress may be caused to the deer:

"We may cause stress to the animal as we hunt it, but that's debatable, but what we do know is that at the end of the day the animal is either alive and undamaged, tired but unhurt otherwise, or it is dead. That can't be said with shooting, there are still too many animals left wounded" (Quantock Staghounds spokesperson). At the time of the debate the Scott Henderson Report was the only major inde­

pendent inquiry into hunting wild animals and its conclusion allowed hunt supporters to claim that their arguments were backed by 'scientific evidence'. However, throughout the period of debate surrounding the county council's proposal, research into the effect of hunting on deer in Somerset was being conducted by a team of Cambridge scientists led by Professor Patrick Bateson, who had been commissioned by the National Trust after calls for staghunting to be banned on land it owned. Hunt supporters and opponents were both cooperating with the Bateson inquiry and both sides asserted that its findings would vindicate their position. Bateson reported in April 1997, con­cluding that "hunts with hounds impose extreme stress on red deer and are likely to cause them great suffering", and that hunting with hounds "can no longer be justified on welfare grounds".(5) The National Trust immediately banned staghunting on its territory, but the findings were challenged by hunt supporters who announced that they were to seek a second opinion from other scientists.(6) Notably, though, the arguments mobilised by the prohunting Countryside Alliance in opposition to proposed parliamentary legislation to outlaw hunting in the summer of 1997, largely avoided issues of animal welfare and use of scientific knowledge, and focused instead on representing hunting as a fundamental part of rural life.

Although the hunting lobby argued that hunting with hounds is the least cruel form of control, the 'need' for control remained unproblematised, reflecting the second aspect of the hunters' definition of the deer, which positions both the deer and the human hunters within an organic natural system over which humans have the respon­sibility of stewardship. Hunting is therefore constructed as being natural:

"God created the hunter and the hunted; the lion and the wildebeest, the fox and the rabbit, the sparrowhawk and the sparrow ... . The human race is the dominant species on earth—the predator in chief. We therefore have the power and the duty to save species threatened with extinction, and to control the numbers of species

(5) Quotes from the Bateson Report are taken from the Somerset County Gazette (Barron, 1997). (6) The National Trust owns 1037 acres on the Quantock Hills and as with the county council ban the consequence of its action was effectively to prevent the Quantock Staghounds from operating.

Political representations of animals in the British countryside 1225

(including our own) which are too numerous and therefore threaten the balance of nature" (letter to the Somerset County Gazette 19 May 1995).

"Hunting obeys natural law; it is instrumental in keeping a balance between predators and the preyed upon" (letter to the Somerset County Gazette 23 June 1995). Thus, hunt supporters draw upon a mixture of Christian theology, an holistic

ideology of nature, and a faith in science to produce a representation of the deer which enables them to argue that hunting is in the best 'interests' of the deer. In attempting to influence the policy process, however, hunt supporters and opponents both refined their representations of the deer to accord with their perceptions of the dominant policy discourses. First, recognising the prioritising of scientific discourses within govern­mental policymaking, both sides claimed that their representations of the deer were based on 'scientific evidence' and translated their representations into the form of 'scientific knowledge'—notably quotations from 'scientific' reports such as the Scott Henderson inquiry. Significantly, an opinion that the council's action was not informed by scientific evidence was a key factor in the High Court's ruling that the ban breached the Local Government Act of 1972, which did not allow councils to ban legal activities on ethical or moral grounds.

Second, hunt opponents reasoned that elected councillors would be more respon­sive to lobbying from the general public than from pressure groups. However, in order for the antihunting campaign to secure and mobilise the support of the public, their representation of the deer needed to be translated into simple emotive images. This was achieved through the use of video and still photography portraying deer in situations which conveyed the impression of pain, suffering, and cruelty at the hands of hunts. Typical of these was an advertisement placed in the local press by the International Fund for Animal Welfare in the week before the council vote, featuring a photograph of a stag cornered by the hunt on a shed roof. With its vivid image of a deer forced out of its natural environment and trapped in a human built environment, the picture reproduced precisely the representation of deer as defenceless animals which was central to the antihunting argument.

Hunt supporters equally used photography to support their representations—whilst pointing out how images could be manipulated by their opponents. The hunting lobby's main appeal to public opinion, however, has been to emphasise the centrality of hunting to their construct of rurality. This is an extension of the representation of deer and humans as both part of an organic natural system, with the activity of hunting now represented as being a fundamental part of an organic rural social system:

"Hunting is important to country people who live in comparative isolation; they need hunting as a focal point for socialising with others in similar circumstances" (letter to the Somerset County Gazette 23 June 1995).

"It's a lot more than stopping hunting—it's the whole tradition of the Quantocks" (Master of the Quantock Staghounds, quoted in Somerset County Gazette 2 July 1993). One implication of this representation is that people who oppose hunting cannot be

real 'country people'. As one hunt supporter argued following an incident in which an injured hind was found on League Against Cruel Sports land:

"The League would like us all to think that it cares for animals—but real country people, be they farmers, gamekeepers or anybody connected with hunting, would not have allowed this deer to suffer for so long" (letter to the Somerset County Gazette 23 March 1996). The distinction apparently being drawn in this statement is that 'real' country people

do not just 'care' for animals, they 'understand' them (see also Bell, 1994). This includes not only understanding how to deal with injured animals, as the letter-writer suggests,

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but also understanding the different places which different animals occupy in the rural system. Identities are ascribed to the fox and deer that are hunted, the livestock which need protecting, and the animals which assist in the hunt—the horses and hounds. Because they are defined only in this way, hunt supporters were able to suggest that horses and hounds would need to be put down if hunting were banned—a representation emphasised through the presence of staghounds draped with placards reading "What will happen to me?" at a prohunting demonstration outside County Hall.

An alternative construct of rurality was mobilised by hunt opponents which defined the 'rural community' more inclusively, but in which humans as a whole were distanced from the natural environment. In this discourse, hunting was not a fundamental tenet of an organic rural system, but an obstacle to the 'peaceful' consumption of the rural landscape—and appreciation of nature—by humans through leisure activities such as walking:

"Freedom of choice is also denied to the general public, to whom parts of Exmoor and the Quantocks become inaccessible during a hunt. An idyllic day's rambling is transformed into something akin to a stroll down the fast lane of the Ml, owing to the presence of the 'conservation-minded' hunt and their associated motorised convoy of followers" (letter to the Somerset County Gazette 16 July 1993).

"Quite apart from the horrific cruelty meted out to the red deer, many of us are increasingly concerned at the extent of the environmental damage inflicted on the relatively small area of the Quantocks SSSI by hunt horses and vehicles. Great swathes are continuously being carved into the hills, leaving atrocious conditions for ramblers and others who also wish to use the hills" (letter to the Somerset County Gazette 28 October 1994).<7> This idyllic construct of rurality places a distance between humans and animals

because, although the humans want to see and hear animals performing roles which fit the ideal of the rural idyll, they do so from a distance, and wish to be protected from the dirtier, more noxious, more violent aspects of nature. It is noteworthy that one of the incidents which provoked most debate in the letters columns of the local newspaper about staghunting was an occasion on which a deer was chased onto a public road in view of traffic. Yet the logic of this position pushed to its extreme could lead us to question whether animals are actually necessary to this construct of rurality? Could the rural idyll be experienced in the way desired without the presence of real animals in any significant number? This dilemma was articulated by one correspondent to the Somerset County Gazette after the High Court had found the council's ban to be unlawful. Noting that the deer had only been introduced for the express purpose of hunting, they suggested that the deer should be removed from the Quantock Hills:

"Of course the Quantocks would be a poorer place as a result. Of course it would severely affect the quality of life of those who enjoy walking in the hills with the occasional glimpse of the stags. But this has to be weighed against the certainty that at least the pain, terror, suffering and ignominious slaughter had at last come to an end. No longer would hill walkers, picknickers and children innocently enjoying themselves be confronted by the horrific, gruesome spectacle of the hunt 'managing' a deer to its death" (letter to the Somerset County Gazette 11 February 1994). Representations of animals, their interests, and their places within nature and

constructs of rurality are hence prominent features in the debate over staghunting in Somerset—as articulated by the attempt to ban hunting on Over Stowey Customs

(7) SSSI stands for a Site of Special Scientific Importance—a level of protected landscape.

Political representations of animals in the British countryside 1227

Common. However, although such representations played a par t in mobilising public opinion and in influencing decisionmakers, they may also be argued never to have been tested. The intervention of the High Court prevented the various predictions of the consequences of ceasing hunting to be proven over time. As such, the deer were also denied their only opportunity—unconsciously—to confirm or dissent from the representations forced upon them. Thus, although the debate was one conducted on behalf of the deer, it was one settled entirely within the human world, on the strength of human arguments.

Mad cows: the 'BSE crisis' of 1996 In March 1996 the British government officially acknowledged the existence of a possible link between the cattle disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and Creutzfeld Jakob disease (CJD) in humans. The announcement sparked a period of intensive political debate as the 'safety' of British beef came under scrutiny, and as the subsequent fall in beef sales threatened severe economic consequences for farmers. The so-called 'BSE crisis' is hence not a located conflict between two sides with recognisable boundaries, as in the previous case study, but rather embraces a wide range of political and quasi-political debates and campaigns.

Both BSE and C J D are neurological diseases of the type transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) which involve the gradual destruction of brain tissue. TSEs have been identified in a number of species, most notably sheep, where the disease scrapie has been known for over 200 years (Winter, 1996). The first case of BSE, however, was suspected only in 1983 on a farm in Surrey, with the first officially confirmed case recorded in 1986 (MAFF, 1996a).

Between November 1986 and May 1996 a total of 161795 cases of BSE were confirmed in the United Kingdom (MAFF, 1996a). At least 54% of dairy herds and 34% of breeding herds have been affected by the disease. By December 1987 scientists had attributed the cause of BSE to the inclusion in cattle feed of meat and bonemeal derived from scrapie-infected sheep and this practice was banned in July 1988 with a programme instituted to slaughter all cattle suspected to be infected with BSE. The epidemic peaked in 1992 with 36772 cases confirmed in that year. By 1995 incidence had fallen to around 10 000 cases a year, leading Taylor (1996) to conclude that the disease was beginning to be eradicated. (8 )

The conclusion that BSE had been caused in cattle by scrapie-infected feed provoked concern that BSE could be similarly transmitted to humans through the consumption of infected beef. The human form of TSE, C J D has been recognised since 1920, affecting mainly elderly people. However, since 1990 there has been an unusually high occurrence of C J D amongst younger people and farmers in Britain. In March 1996 the scientists at the National C J D Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh confirmed that ten of these cases were suffering from a different strain of C J D from that previously recorded, concluding that exposure to the BSE agent was "the most plausible inter­pretation" (Will et al, 1996, page 925).

Reaction to the announcement was dramatic. On 27 March 1996, the Commission of the European Union prohibited the export of cattle, beef, or bovine products from the United Kingdom (European Commission, 1996); and in Britain, consumer demand for beef fell by 2 0 - 3 0 % , although demand later stabilised at 94% of the previous level (Palmer, 1996). In order to meet E U criteria for the lifting of the export ban, the British government introduced a wide-ranging programme for the eradication of BSE, the key

(8) Up to May 1996, 1555 cases of BSE had also been confirmed in 14 countries outside the United Kingdom. The majority of cases occurred in cattle born in the United Kingdom.

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Number of confirmed cases

I I 0-3000

[ | 3000-6000

6000-9000

9000-12000

12000-15000

Figure 1. 1996b).

Confirmed cases of BSE by county, November 1986-10 May 1996 (source: MAFF,

element of which was a ban on the sale of meat from cattle over 30 months old and the cull of all cattle above that age. Over a million cattle were slaughtered in the first six months of the scheme (Cabinet Office, 1996).

The impact of both the BSE epidemic and the cull of older animals was spatially uneven. As figure 1 shows, 45% of confirmed cases of BSE were found in just eight counties—mainly in southwest England. To some extent this reflects the distribution of farming types, but even when calculated as a percentage of a county's total cattle population, the impact is spatially uneven with sixteen counties, all in southern England, experiencing BSE in over three quarters of their dairy herds. (9 ) The impact of the cattle cull was again concentrated in the southwest, with Devon, Dorset, Cornwall, and Somerset accounting for a quarter of the cattle registered for the scheme in November 1996 (figure 2). In these worst affected counties the potential economic impact was severe, and local politicians were prompted to act, both as lobbyists supporting local farmers and as agents of the state in anticipation of business bank­ruptcies and job losses. Thus, although not a 'rural conflict' in the same sense as the staghunting debate, the BSE crisis became an important issue in the local politics of many rural areas.

As with the hunting debate, animals are at the core of the BSE crisis, arguably as ' innocent victims'. Cattle were first subjected to an epidemic now attributed to human interference with their feeding practices; and later more cattle were prematurely

(9) The 16 counties are Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent, Surrey, East and West Sussex, and the Isle of Wight (source: Independent Agrochemical Observer web-site http://inet. uni-c.dk/~iaotb/).

Political representations of animals in the British countryside 1229

Registered cattle

I I 0-4000

4000-8000

i&S&l 8000-12000

12000-16000

16000-20000

Figure 2. Cattle registered for cull by county (England and Wales only), as on 8 November 1996 (source: Cabinet Office, 1996).

slaughtered in order to meet human political objectives. The animals in this story are truly defenceless—unable to resist the disease or the cull, or to contribute to the debate about their future. Yet the (involuntary?) 'participation' of cattle in political networks is fundamental to the campaigns and strategies of the European Union, the British government, local councils, the agricultural lobby, and other actors in the affair. As the BSE crisis progressed, cattle were represented in a number of different forms, in different contexts, to different audiences.

First, cattle were represented in the form of scientific knowledge. At this level, cattle are considered not as individual animals with their own life histories, but are reduced to a generalised biological organism which can be investigated scientifically in order to establish Tacts' about the disease and hence make recommendations about its control. Such representations were vital to the success of campaigns which had to appeal to the prioritising of 'scientific knowledge' in public policy discourses (see also Winter, 1996). The British government refused to acknowledge the possibility that CJD could be contracted through eating beef until their own scientists had produced 'evidence' to support the assertion. The production of such scientific knowl­edge in March 1996 was the critical moment in the development of the affair. Yet from a scientific perspective the conclusion was extremely tentative, the scientists stating that "we emphasise that we do not have direct evidence of such a link and other explanations are possible" (Will et al, 1996, page 925). This margin of uncertainty allowed the agricultural lobby to mobilise their own scientific representation of the cattle, which claimed that "British beef is safe" and that "there is no scientific proof that BSE can be transmitted to man by beef"—messages that were reproduced through leaflets issued by the National Farmers Union (NFU). Moreover, it allowed the

1230 M Woods

agricultural lobby to challenge the cull of cattle over 30 months old on the grounds that it had no 'scientific justification', and was hence, in the words of the Vice-Chair of NFU Wales, "totally abhorrent" (Richards, 1996).

Second, cattle were translated into economic representations, discussed not as 'animals' but as financial values. This representation was mobilised by the agricultural lobby to campaign for the lifting of the export ban and to secure the highest levels of compensation for cattle destroyed. Cattle were represented either in terms of the financial loss suffered by the farmer, or in terms of their current market value—such that in this parlance, animals that could not be sold became 'worthless', denied any kind of intrinsic 'worth' as a living creature beyond their economic value. At the same time, the attributing of a financial value to cattle through the compensation scheme—86 pence per kilogram for cattle slaughtered under the Over Thirty Months Scheme—allowed the economic representation of cattle to be translated into a total sum spent by the British government, and as such became a measure of how seriously the government was dealing with the problem. Thus cattle were inevitably enrolled into negotiations between British ministers and the European Union over the export ban, but only in the form of statistics of cattle culled and compensation paid.

Because of the dominance of the economic representation of cattle, the coverage of the BSE crisis in the agricultural press was surprisingly dispassionate. Only occa­sionally did letters and qualitative journalism allow a glimpse of a more emotive representation of the crisis. The emotion was mainly for the plight of the farmer, not the cattle, emphasising the hard isolated life, but there was also a recognition that cattle exist as more than a market value or a biological organism, and that farmers regard cattle as more than simply a source of income:

"Working as a dairy and beef farmer seems the hardest way to earn a living. These farmers regard their cattle as an extended family—they have known nothing else. Every animal is a friend, regardless of the endless hard work entailed" (letter to Farmers Weekly 24 May 1996, my emphasis). There is no delusion about the animals' place in this representation. The cattle

are being farmed for a purpose, and will be slaughtered for beef. But it is again an evocation of the discourse of the rural as an organic natural system. Here the farmer and the cattle are working together to contribute to the food chain. It is in the farmers' eyes a natural activity—albeit one modified by the domestication of cattle— and it is an activity that requires a close relationship between the farmer and the cattle, for the farmer to 'understand' the cattle, and for them to feel that their efforts have a 'worthwhile' result. To this way of thinking, the arbitrary slaughter of all cattle over 30 months old was, in the words of one farmer "legally and morally wrong" {Western Mail 20 May 1996).

For many farmers the injustice of the cull was compounded by the conditions of its execution. Although 45% of cattle registered for the cull came from eight counties, only a quarter of the abattoirs used were located in those same counties (MAFF, 1996b). Cattle were hence subjected to long road journeys before their slaughter, prompting a Wiltshire farmer to ask as his cattle were transported to an abattoir in Yorkshire: "Where are the animal rights protesters now?". His question was echoed by a corre­spondent to Farmers Weekly:

"The animal rights lobby has made its beliefs known to the farming community and, over many years, has caused disruption, damage and injury to the business and its workers. For no logical reason, farmers are now forced by the EU to slaughter hundreds of thousands of healthy bovines but I have not heard or seen any sign of protest from the activists" (letter to Farmers Weekly 17 May 1996).

Political representations of animals in the British countryside 1231

It is perhaps noteworthy that the one reported protest by an animal rights group, Compassion in World Farming, focused not on the cull of elderly cattle, but on the much smaller programme to slaughter male calves {South Wales Echo 26 June 1996).

Furthermore, the construct of the organic rural system also implies that the 'crisis' cannot be regarded as being contained within the farming community, but that it is inevitably a crisis for the whole countryside. This partly reflects the loss of jobs in agriculturally related industries (see Brown, 1996; Burton and Young, 1996; Dnes, 1996), but it also suggests that the crisis fundamentally threatened the fabric of rurality by undermining the farmers' stewardship of the countryside:

"It's drastic action we want now and we need it immediately. Otherwise this crisis will cripple not only the beef industry but the whole rural community" (Pembroke­shire farmer quoted in Western Mail 12 April 1996).

"The beauty of the Welsh countryside is the result of sustained stewardship by the farming community and any serious decline in farm numbers must, inevitably, threaten the unique quality of the mountains and valleys of Wales . . . . The spectre now hanging over rural Wales in any serious decline in farming's fortunes is a terminal haemorrhage of our rural areas which could change forever the character of the Welsh countryside" (Thomas, 1996).<10) In particular, the crisis was seen as threatening the perceived 'purity' of the rural.

Traditionally, discourses of rurality have constructed the countryside as a pure, clean, healthy space in contrast to the dirt and 'vulgarity' of the city (Matless, 1990; Short, 1991; Woods, 1997). However, the 'infection' of rural areas with BSE—and the position­ing of the rural as the source of a possible human CJD epidemic—suggested an alternative representation of the rural as a diseased space. Furthermore, the colloquial dubbing of BSE as 'mad cow disease' invited associations with discourses of human madness, where the insane are isolated and alienated from society (Foucault, 1971; Philo, 1986). It was perhaps with these concerns in mind that the Leader of Somerset County Council talked about protecting the 'image' of the county:

"We must do everything we can to support farmers and help them win back their customers because there is an enormous amount at stake—not least the image of Somerset as a safe and healthy place for people to come on holiday" (Leader of Somerset County Council, quoted in the Somerset County Gazette 29 March 1996). Conversely, the association of rurality with purity was mobilised by the agricultural

lobby with the hope that representing the countryside as a clean pure space would help to convince consumers that beef was safe to eat. Leaflets and advertisements issued by the NFU depicted healthy-looking cattle in lush, clean, peaceful settings. As the campaign became focused on the European Union, such images were combined with patriotic rhetoric, including the use of the Union Jack; and pictures of gentle grazing cattle were replaced by pictures of bulls, representing national strength and resistance/11}

Thus the cattle were not only being represented as animals with a life beyond their function as providers of meat, but also as signifiers of an idyllic, pastoral British rurality.

Hence, although the BSE crisis was not a situated rural conflict in the same sense as the Quantocks staghunting debate, it did develop into both a national and a local political issue through which representations of rurality were mobilised and contested. Repre­sentations of cattle were enrolled and mobilised by government ministers, opposition

(10) The writer is deputy chair of the Farmers Union of Wales. (11) Indeed, one could point to the irony of the Holstein Friesian breed being represented as a signifier of British patriotism and sovereignty in John Major's 'beef war' of noncooperation with the European Union, satirised in The Independent's headline: "For beef, Major and St George" (28 May 1996).

1232 M Woods

politicians, scientists, and agricultural lobbyists in support of their own political objectives. Yet at the same time, the cattle were curiously marginalised within the debates, their representations in the form of statistics, scientific knowledge, or economic value, being devoid of any real sympathy for the cattle's position. As with the hunting argument, despite the apparent centrality of animals, the BSE crisis has been a debate conducted within the human world, won and lost on arguments of human interests.

Conclusion I have discussed how animals are central both to constructs of rurality and to rural conflicts. The case studies explored are just two snapshots of politics in contemporary rural Britain, but they nonetheless illustrate how rural politics have become oriented around contests between conflicting social constructions of rurality— contests which in turn draw on wider discourses of nature and the place of animals in the countryside.

What is significant about both examples is the way in which they both suggest a change in the direction of the political current with regard to constructions of rurality. The attempt to ban staghunting on the Quantock Hills was a landmark event in Somerset politics because it was the first time that a local authority had adopted an overtly antihunting stance. Landowners and farmers had traditionally dominated local elites and the discourse of the rural as an organic natural system had been hegemonic in local governance. Only when new political leaders emerged independent of the established elites, drawing upon alternative discourses of rurality, did local state policy begin to change (Woods, 1997). A similar transition has occurred elsewhere in rural Britain, and the legal judgment on the Somerset case had repercussions for over 160 councils which had imposed similar bans on hunting.

Equally, the doom-laden rhetoric of 'crisis in the countryside', which characterised the media's comment on the BSE crisis, reflected not only the decline in agriculture's economic strength, but also farmers' frustration at their lack of influence on European and national policymaking. Record levels of dissatisfaction of traditionally Conserva­tive-voting farmers with a Conservative Minister of Agriculture, and a suggestion by the Farmers Union of Wales that it might stand candidates in a general election both indicated that the agricultural lobby was no longer able to secure the support for its construct of rurality amongst policymakers that it once was able to (see Moore, 1991; Smith, 1989).

After decades of being regarded as a political backwater, rural politics has emerged into a period of considerable instability and dynamism. As the influence of traditional agricultural Conservative elites has declined—and that of in-migrant new middle-class fractions increased—so has the influence of the concept of the rural as an organic natural system declined and that of the rural as a space of consumption or spectacle gained relevance in policy discourses. Certainly, both strands of thought are evident in the two case studies. The supporters of the Quantock Staghounds drew heavily on ideas of stewardship and of hunting as a fundamental cohesive in rural life in their campaign against the county council ban. Similarly, in demanding more government action in response to the BSE crisis, the agricultural lobby was able to suggest that the whole countryside was under threat—not just the livelihoods of individual farmers—by again emphasising the notion of stewardship. Meanwhile, hunt opponents represented stag-hunting as being an unnatural activity which interrupted the peaceful consumption of rurality by hill-walkers and day-trippers; and the concern of the leader of Somerset County Council—the same politician who proposed the staghunting ban—for the image of the county as "a safe and healthy place for people to come on holiday" in the wake of the BSE scare, emphasised the importance to his policy objectives of the rural as a space of consumption and spectacle as well as a space of production.

Political representations of animals in the British countryside 1233

The politics of rurality and the place of nature within it, extends beyond agriculture and hunting into a whole range of issues including access rights, economic and residential development, road building, conservation, live animal transportation, and modern farming practices. It has consequences not only for the politics of rural areas, but also for the economy, land use, patterns of in-migration and population change, the social life of rural communities, and the way in which people perceive and describe their rural lifestyles. In all these areas the contestation of rurality almost invariably involves the mobilisation of animals, either as the object of debate, or in support of particular configurations of the countryside. Yet this mobilisation is always without consent and on human terms, to further human interests, in human debates. Animals are central both to the meanings of rurality, and to their contestation in the political process, but this centrality brings with it neither voice nor power, and animals remain perhaps the ultimate 'neglected rural other'.

Acknowledgements. This paper is partially based on doctoral research on local politics in Somerset, funded by the ESRC and supervised by Paul Cloke at Bristol University. A version of this paper was presented to the RGS-IBG Conference in Exeter, January 1997, and I am grateful to conference participants for their comments, as well as to Sarah Whatmore and three anonymous referees.

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