Meat and dairy production and consumption are the subject of ongoing public debates that touch on various sustainability issues such as biodiversity loss, climate change, animal welfare, and social and health aspects. Despite extensive discussions specifically relating to the environmental impacts of livestock farming in conjunction with animal welfare aspects, there have been no substantial changes in production or consumption patterns. Moreover, the focus of extant research is usually on consumers' responses to public concerns around livestock production. In this study, we shed light on the discrepancy between the normative discourse and action of relevant value chain actors with the help of Bandura's theory of moral disengagement, which allows us to identify mechanisms that contribute to the perpetuation of unsustainable production and consumption patterns. In particular, we focus on the shifting of responsibility between actors in the normatively charged field of sustainable livestock production. We collected 109 media interviews on meat and dairy production and consumption from the years 2020–2022, including interviews with actors from agriculture, processing industries, and food retail. Using qualitative content analysis, we investigated the role of moral disengagement in the media discourse on meat and dairy production and explored differences between actors in terms of moral disengagement. We found that shifting of responsibility shows a quasi-circular dynamic of being shifted from all actors to all, in our case most frequently to consumers, politics, and (diffuse) economic forces. In addition, our analysis showed the use of social justifications, beneficial comparisons, and euphemistic labelling to be common mechanisms of moral disengagement, constituting a collective problem within agri-food systems.

中文翻译：

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媒体关于肉类和奶制品生产系统的讨论中的道德脱离

肉类和乳制品的生产和消费是持续公开辩论的主题，涉及各种可持续性问题，例如生物多样性丧失、气候变化、动物福利以及社会和健康方面。尽管专门针对畜牧业的环境影响以及动物福利方面进行了广泛的讨论，但生产或消费模式并没有发生实质性变化。此外，现有研究的重点通常是消费者对公众对畜牧生产的担忧的反应。在这项研究中，我们借助班杜拉的道德脱离理论揭示了相关价值链参与者的规范话语与行动之间的差异，这使我们能够识别导致不可持续生产和消费模式永久化的机制。我们特别关注可持续畜牧生产规范化领域参与者之间的责任转移。我们收集了 2020 年至 2022 年有关肉类和乳制品生产和消费的 109 份媒体采访，包括对农业、加工业和食品零售行业参与者的采访。通过定性内容分析，我们调查了道德脱离在有关肉类和奶制品生产的媒体话语中的作用，并探讨了行为者之间在道德脱离方面的差异。我们发现，责任的转移呈现出一种从所有参与者转移到所有人的准循环动态，在我们的例子中最常见的是消费者、政治和（分散的）经济力量。此外，我们的分析表明，使用社会理由、有益比较和委婉标签是道德脱离的常见机制，构成农业食品系统内的集体问题。