The Science and Social Science of Animal Welfare

Or, why is a cultural geographer studying mutant mice?

18th March 2009

Gail Davies

UCL Department of Geography

Some geographical concerns

• Geography as a synthetic discipline– looking at connections, but also looking at the gaps

• Geography as a spatial discipline– why things happen where, and what spaces are created for things

to happen.

• My past work has focused on the geography of science, expertise, the media, animals, and ethics– A history of natural history film-making - creating ‘Life on Earth’

from Bristol in the UK. – Options for the future of organ transplantation - bringing people

and experts together to deliberate and inform policy– And most recently, studying the bio-geographies of genetically

altered mice

Researching the biogeography of GA mice

• Mice are ‘on the move’ in the contexts of post genomic research– Internationally – in the development, operation and implications of

international mouse resources– Bodily – in the development and refinement of mouse models of

human disease– And in policy– in the growing attention paid to the implications of

this research at different sites including: international funding, national government priorities, local ethical review and so on.

• Studied through: interviews, attendance at conferences, online exchanges and literature reviews.

Some sites in the bio-geography of GA mice

FIMRe: Federation of International Mouse Resources (2006) Mammalian Genomics, 24, 9.

Mapping the complexity of GA mice

• International settings– UK, USA and Singapore have different scientific, regulatory and cultural

histories, and different relations between scientific, regulatory and NGO actors.

• Diverse institutional contexts– Public/private research contexts and institutional processes of ethical and

peer review add further diversity. • Challenges to standardization

– In agreeing protocols, in moving animals, in developing stable phenotypes, and in understanding and implementing the 3Rs.

• Pursuit of the 3Rs is a key context to the use of animals in science in the UK, and elsewhere. Yet, these complexities and interrelations mean it can be difficult to stand outside the system to model it and identify key points for gains in the 3Rs.

Tracking some welfare concerns

• The challenges of refinement: – Improving production, characterising phenotypes, and circulating

welfare information about GA animals

• The challenges of reduction: – the scale and challenges of co-ordinating this effort to reduce

duplication of efforts and animals

• The challenges of replacement: – Understanding, and at times questioning, the rationale for the

different elements of this research effort

Dealing with uncertainty over welfare assessments and cage enrichments

• Empirical approach: “It just opens up a whole heap of questions again, does a whirling mouse for example want a tube? I’d have to do the experiment, it would probably make its life more miserable because it keeps bumping into the tube or something like that, but that doesn't mean there isn't some way you can make its life better.” (UK welfare researcher 1, interview 2008)

• And institutional ‘gaps’: “Every year we request that NIH provide funding for these very issues and often it will be “NIH focuses on human health concerns“. Yet they’re [biomedical researchers] the ones up here at these conferences saying “we can’t do anything until we have more evidence”. And there’s no funding. It’s very frustrating”. (US campaigner, 2008)

Dealing with uncertainty over welfare assessments and cage enrichments

• Precautionary stance: You are asking some different things because it’s a modified animal and that’s also the major reason why I advanced the general view that no animal should be used in any commercial way at all unless it has been properly checked” (UK welfare researcher 2, interview 2008).

• Promoting tacit knowledge: ‘it’s not something that I consciously do but if you look back through most, well you can pull it out in all of what I do, a lot of it is about empowering the animal technicians. They are the animals’ eyes and ears, they are the ones that can speak for them, so “you do know what you're talking about, you have got a valid point to make, don't sit there and not ..” Because they’re the ones who come up with the ideas for enrichments, they have to get approval for them but don't be afraid to try and voice it. And of course we’re then saying, if the message is coming top down as well as bottom up, we hope that somehow we meet in the middle and we’re aiding and abetting change to filter its way through if you like. ’ (UK welfare campaigner, interview 2009)

Some other interdisciplinary projects and concerns

• The forthcoming European Broiler cage ban (Dr Emma Roe)– Oral histories of stock person knowledge practices and tracking

day to day practices, to understand and reduce injurious pecking

• The introduction of Robotic milking machines (Dr Lewis Holloway)– Tracking changing relations between machines, animals, herds

and existing farming practices

What role might the social sciences have in the interdisciplinary study of animal welfare?

• “What is a sheep – a source of revenue, an organic and self-renewable resource, a grazing unit, a system of biochemical transfer leading to patterns of muscle and fat development, the symbol of a nostalgic rural economy and society when things were ‘better’ and slower-paced or even an actor in a spatialised socionatural network? […] Objects, like sheep, do not belong solely to one disciplinary family and not to another. They are ‘common objects’ and as such, serve to constitute the building blocks of an interdisciplinarity that enjoins the ‘social’ and the ‘natural’.” (Henry Buller, 2009, ‘The lively process of interdisciplinarity’ Area)

Acknowledgements

• This presentation arises from a research fellowship funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council on ‘Biogeography and Transgenic Life’ (grant number RES-063-27-0093). I am grateful to the ESRC for this support.