The Transparency Trap: What if Visibility Demands Moral Justification? A Case Study on Dairy Farmers’ Perspectives on Communication and Exposure

Abstract This study examines how dairy farmers make sense of contemporary demands for transparency in the livestock sector. Transparency is commonly framed as the disclosure of information about how products are made, by whom, under what labour conditions, and with what environmental impacts. Transparency is commonly understood as the disclosure of information about how products are made, by whom, under what labour conditions, and with what environmental impacts, and is often presented as a means of increasing public trust and strengthening the legitimacy of agri-food systems. Yet the perspective of primary producers remains underexplored. Drawing on two focus groups with fifteen dairy farmers in Lombardy, Northern Italy, this exploratory case study shows that, from farmers' perspective, transparency entails additional costs in terms of time, labour, and moral and emotional exposure, adding to the everyday work of managing and caring for animals. Participants describe public visibility as ambivalent: necessary to explain agricultural practices, yet risky when images, technical procedures, or moments involving animal illness and death are interpreted outside their context. The analysis identifies four themes: transparency as a demand for moral justification; the need for institutional mediation and third-party credibility; experiences of exposure and ethical vulnerability; and selective forms of communicative openness. The findings suggest that greater visibility does not automatically generate trust; when responsibility for transparency falls mainly on individual farmers, it may become a form of unrecognised moral labour. The study therefore argues for understanding transparency as a distributed responsibility across the value chain, supported by institutions and associations able to create fairer and more shared interpretive contexts.