Farm Animal Biotechnology

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This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/su13073674

This paper reviews the literature on the latest insights in interdisciplinary anthropological research on the evolution of animal domestication and breeding and puts them in the context of the contemporary ethical debate on animal welfare and the application of modern biotechnology to animal breeding.

Farm Animal Biotechnolog animal welfare anthropology ethics

1. Ethical Issues Related to Animal Biotechnology

In 2015, the best-selling author Yuval Harari ^[1] published an article in the UK daily newspaper The Guardian titled “Industrial farming is one of the worst crimes in history”. He argues that animal cruelty started with the agricultural revolution that led to the appearance of a completely new life-form on Earth: domesticated animals. The suffering of domesticated animals then worsened with the passing of generations.

He sees the root of the problem in the ignorance of farmers who would not be aware that domesticated animals have inherited many physical, emotional and social needs from their wild ancestors that remain unaddressed. In other words, domesticated animals in confinement live in an ‘unnatural’ state, which he believes is the source of all their suffering.

His views are partially derived from the seminal book Animal Liberation published in 1975 by the philosopher and utilitarian ethicist Peter Singer ^[2]. The book is widely considered to have contributed to the emergence of the animal protection movement as much as Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, published in 1962, helped jump-start the environmental movement.

Singer stated that animals and humans share the capacity to suffer pain and that this capacity justifies equal consideration in our treatment of different species.

In the 1970s, animal suffering in industrial farming was not widely recognized. Animal products were not considered to be different from any other commercial products. After all, domesticated animals have been selectively bred in response to the need to increase the availability of animal products in an increasingly urban society that no longer produces its own food. That is the reason why farmed animals in the countryside exist in the first place. In this context, Singer convincingly argued, however, that once a sentient being exists, we have an obligation to avoid causing unnecessary suffering to this being.

Since then, many public and private standards have been passed across the world to prevent unnecessary suffering in animal production ^[3]. International guiding principles for animal protection were developed in 2008 by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). The OIE counts 170 member states, which are expected to take them into account in national legislation. The OIE standards address specific welfare challenges, including the transport and slaughter of animals, production systems for cattle and poultry, the control of stray dog populations, and the use of animals in research. These standards are based on scientific evidence and the fundamental principles for animal welfare known as the ‘five freedoms’: freedom from hunger, thirst and malnutrition, from physical and thermal discomfort, from pain, injury and disease, from fear and distress, and to express normal patterns of behavior ^[4]. In addition, the OIE also publishes numerous specialized international standards that are directly or indirectly designed to improve animal welfare ^[5]. Moreover, a wide range of new technologies have been developed to implement the new requirements and sometimes even go beyond them ^[6].

Nevertheless, complying with strict standards of animal welfare requires additional means to be invested in welfare enhancing managing practices and technologies. Since the profit margins in the animal production industry are already quite narrow, there is a reluctance to adopt such measures unless governments are willing to actively support animal producers in their efforts to improve animal welfare by determining the optimum rather than maximum production levels ^[7]. Yet, many governments in low-income countries lack the means necessary to support transitions toward optimal levels of production that focus as much on animal welfare as on productivity ^[8]. As a consequence, quality animal products that stand for a good treatment of animals often remain niche premium products produced in high income countries but largely out of reach for poor consumers.

Large-scale improvements that could also improve animal welfare in low-income countries are therefore more likely to come from technological change designed to eliminate harmful practices, increase disease resistance, and promote sustainable intensification.

In this context, animal biotechnology may eventually make a substantial contribution ^[9]. For example, the use of modern biotechnology to render domesticated animals more resistant against disease in high- and low-income countries ^[10] may not just benefit the animal production system, but also contribute to a decrease in animal suffering ^[11]. Current research breakthroughs in modern animal biotechnology include resistance against mastitis ^[12] and pathogenic bacterial species, such as Staphylococcus aureus and Mycobacterium tuberculosis ^[13]^[14]^[15] in cattle, or resistance against the porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS), which causes huge losses and suffering in the pig industry ^[16]. Moreover, chickens resistant to avian influenza virus ^[17] or Atlantic salmon resistant to salmon lice ^[18] have the potential to massively reduce the use of environmentally harmful medications in the chicken and salmon industry, respectively.

Gene editing has also been successfully applied to produce hornless cows ^[19] or to ensure that pigs do not develop boar taint ^[20]. This allows the respective domesticated animals to avoid painful procedures such as dehorning and castration without losing any of the prior preferred characteristics. Gene editing may eventually also offer ways to eliminate other painful procedures such as tail-docking, debeaking, or branding. Moreover, gene-editing is one of the promising techniques applied to end the practice of male chicken culling in the chicken meat industry ^[21]. As a result, it could help avoid the killing of roughly 7 billion hatched male chickens per year worldwide ^[22].

Applying modern animal biotechnology in this context would largely comply with the so-called Principle for the Conservation of Welfare defined by the philosopher Bernard Rollin ^[23] to delimit the permission of applications of genetic engineering in animal breeding. It argues that genetically engineered animals should be no worse off, in terms of suffering, after the new traits are introduced into the genome than the parent stock was prior to the insertion of the new genetic material. Shriver ^[11] deduces from this principle that if we have an opportunity to prevent suffering or to avoid the creation of new suffering at little or no cost, and we fail to act on that opportunity, then we have done something wrong.

2. The Term ‘Speciesism’ and Its Career in the Humanities

Singer’s claim that our moral responsibility should go far beyond our species ^[2] makes more sense in a more affluent, globalized, and interconnected world. However, there is an increasing gap between merely voicing moral concern (activism) and effectively acting upon it (action). Since the humanities feel more affinity to activism than action in view of their considerable detachment from the world of practice, it is not surprising that the term ‘Speciesism’ has made an impressive career in academic papers to the extent that it has been elevated to a ‘psychology of speciesism’ ^[24]. It extends the bias of humans toward the unequal treatment of animals to many other political subjects such as the protection of minorities in society, as well as race and gender issues ^[25]. It is assumed that the ‘speciest’ assigns moral worth based on perceived species membership (human, white, male). As such, the ‘speciest’ has become a political metaphor designed to stand in for the dominant political faction that justifies its domination over others by pointing at perceived essential differences.

There are, however, advocacy groups for racial or sexual equality who argue that such reasoning confuses real differences (economic inequality restricting access to essential human rights) with false ones (a nurtured culture of victimhood). As such, it may have negative material consequences, and could tempt us to abandon our responsibilities toward others as well as the natural world ^[26].

Nevertheless, the field of Critical Animal Studies (CAS) has popularized the above-mentioned metaphors, analogies and psychological models in the humanities. It failed, however, to critically investigate its own anthropomorphic pre-conceptions related to speciesism ^[27].

Its metaphors have nevertheless been influential leading to a sort of ‘medicalization’ of the discourse on animal welfare, ‘diagnosing’ critics of the radical animal protection movement as ‘pathological’ in the sense that they would unconsciously be guided by the false belief of speciesism preventing them from accessing their ‘natural’ sentiments ^[28].

This resulting popularity of activism in academia may also indicate a powerful value transformation in postmaterialist societies in the 21st century ^[29]^[30]. Most views that were considered progressive or even subversive in the 1970s have become mainstream in society, and in academia in particular. This also led to a power shift, and, with it, to a new dominant and rather reactionary belief-system in society and academia that cannot be challenged without facing ‘microaggressions’ in the form of being accused of representing the former “dominant class” (associated with speciesism) with its alleged victim insensitivity ^[31].

3. Animal Ethics without Anthromorphism

Singer’s book Animal Liberation ^[2] and the numerous emotion-driven campaigns for animal protection and animal rights deserve credit for having created the public awareness that was necessary to induce policy makers to pass legislation designed to reduce unnecessary animal suffering. However, it may have also led to a sort of ethical overshooting or hypermoralism, as it manifests itself in Critical Animal Studies (CAS), an increasingly popular subject in the humanities. CAS scholars have been criticized for their implicit misconceptions and anthropomorphism that are also partially found in Singer’s original work ^[32].

However, is there an alternative in animal ethics one may consider of equal value and more in line with the realities in the practical world? The philosopher Baruch de Spinoza may be a candidate. Even though he lived three centuries before Singer, his approach to ethics has not lost any of its relevance and his description of human nature has been largely validated empirically by recent insights in neuroscience ^[33], experimental anthropology ^[34], and moral psychology ^[35].

Spinoza addressed animal rights concerns in Ethics, his most famous book ^[36]. Unlike his contemporary, Descartes, he did not regard animals merely as biological machines but understood them as sentient creatures that experience pleasure and pain ^[37]. One may therefore assume that Spinoza would have agreed with Singer’s demand to assign equal consideration of the treatment of animals. However, Spinoza does not display much sympathy for this idea in the paragraph on the slaughtering of animals in part IV of Ethics ^[37]. According to Spinoza, the nature of animals is different from the one of humans insofar as humans can make use of reason to embark on collective action. It enables them to convert nature into culture thanks to a unique form of shared intentionality that was not observed in any other animal ^[34].

In their universal desire to remain in existence, humans depend on the care of as well as on the cooperation with other humans. Humans also care for their domesticated animals and a relationship of mutual affection may exist in many cases. Yet, even though it is reasonable to treat these animals in a way that does not cause unnecessary suffering, they have been domesticated for a particular purpose, namely, to supply animal-based resources. Accessing these resources may require the slaughtering of animals. In this context, Spinoza argues that making use of animal resources is justified because humans need to meet their needs as much as omnivore animals need to meet their needs in the wilderness. Therefore, he argues that “We have the same right against them that they would have against us” ^[36]. This indeed raises the question why we regard the killing of an animal by a human as morally problematic, but not so when an animal kills a human. It reveals a misconception that is related to the unquestioned anthropomorphism in Singer’s term ‘Speciesism’ ^[2]. The term was used by Singer to point at our bias to merely care about the interests of those whom we consider belonging to our own species. However, from an anthropological point of view, humans had to limit their moral concerns to the human community on which their existence depended. That was also the realm in which they were able to assume responsibility in an effective way.

3. Global Humanitarianism Applied to Animal Welfare

The normative nature of the debates on animal welfare and animal rights in academia and society has led to a growing climate of intolerance toward more differentiated views that point at potential inconvenient trade-offs between costly domestic animal welfare measures and a growing share of import of animal proteins from countries with minimal or no animal protection laws.

The growing climate of intolerance also suggests that there is just one way that is morally acceptable: Since animals have the right not to be treated as property by humans, we should stop raising animals as property that is subsequently turned into meat products ^[38]. A meat-free society is assumed to be possible because meat consumption would be merely a tradition that does not meet any essential human needs anymore in the sense that there are ways to replace animal proteins through plant-based resources ^[38]. Such a view does not take into account that raising animals and using them as a ‘mobile’ asset for various purposes has always been an essential part of what makes us human, and still today, numerous nomadic tribes, who actually represent increasingly vulnerable minorities, make a living from owning, raising, consuming, and selling cattle.

In this context, raising animals goes far beyond meat consumption and the implied default scenario that ‘liberated’ animals would be free from pain is misleading. Domesticated animals have become dependent on being managed by humans. As such, they are also a product of human culture and this explains why we care about them—not just because they serve a particular use. Our specific obligations toward animals therefore entail treating them with respect and ensuring their well-being, while they exist, by continuously minimizing unnecessary suffering, also when ending their lives ^[39]. However, the responsible treatment of animals in everyday life is hardly a concern in the theoretical discussions on animal rights in academia.

Due to the detachment of real-world challenges in animal welfare, the academic debate is primarily about radical political demands, such as the call to end meat consumption, for example. This call has gained in popularity especially among ordinary young people who have grown up in affluence and are increasingly concerned about climate change and animal welfare. They are aware that such demands will be ineffective if the legal enforcement is limited to the nation state. As a consequence, they unite worldwide via social media with individuals and organizations who share similar concerns. As global movements, they are then able to put pressure on governments and international organizations to respond to their radical demands ^[40].

This type of global humanitarianism applied to animal welfare emphasizes the importance of giving every organism equal consideration, respect and dignity, as the Swiss constitution does. It reflects a shift of norms and values in an affluent post-material society that greatly benefited from economic globalization, and in which cooperation within the immediate community to meet essential material needs is no longer required. As a consequence, the perceived moral obligation in such societies becomes more abstract and utopic. It is no more about loyalty and solidarity within the community into which one was been born by fate. Instead, what used to be the norms and values that enabled cooperation within the extended nuclear family and the community in which it thrives, is now increasingly applied to every living sentient being on the planet, with special consideration to the vulnerable minorities, endangered species, and animals in captivity ^[27].

However, such an extension of morality from community to sentient beings at large may however not lead to less suffering by humans and animals in this world, but rather to the release of more aggression as a consequence of moral radicalization. According to Gehlen ^[41], ignoring the pluralistic nature of ethics and imposing a single abstract and universal concept of morality on the real world would ultimately require the destruction of the existing real world that is presumed to be governed by inferior types of morality or no morality at all. Throughout history, such attempts proved to increase rather than decrease human suffering because these abstract ethical concepts ignore the biological roots of morality ^[42]^[43]. Fairness and reciprocity are built-in human instincts that are linked more to our emotions and our unconscious than to our ability to reason and make conscious decisions ^[44]. Unlike classical normative ethics with its classical branches (de-ontic, consequentialist, discursive), the field of anthropology takes these scientific insights into account in its reasoning about the origins and the genesis of ethical principles that guide human action ^[35]^[45].

By developing an ethical approach that is based on the proper understanding of human nature, the anthropological approach to ethics is not normative ^[46]. It challenges the view that contemplating on how the world “ought to be” can be detached from a proper understanding on how the world actually “is”. As such, it is very much in line with the ethics of Spinoza ^[36]. It questions the normative view that moral behavior is unrelated to the human pursuit of enlightened self-interest.

As such, the anthropological approach to ethics is more practical, humane, and more aligned with the recent science-based insights on animal domestication gathered from the various fields of evolutionary sciences, such as genetics, archeology, and the study of the Anthropocene ^[47]^[48]^[49].

4. Niche Construction Theory (NCT) and Its Relevance for the Ethical Debate on Animal Welfare

The American evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin ^[50] was one of the first who argued that organisms do not just put up and adapt to any given external environment but rather actively shape it by constructing niches and habitats that are conducive to their needs. His argument eventually gave rise to the so-called human niche construction theory. It diverges from standard evolutionary theory (SET) in the sense that it recognizes that the evolution of organisms is not just guided by natural selection, but, in fact, co-directed by the ability of organisms to create niches ^[51]^[52]. In other words, offspring inherit not only genes, but also a modified locally selective environment relative to genetic fitness. Since niche construction is based to a great extent on biological mutualism, it is not just an adaptive response to resource depression, but also contains an active component ^[49]. Further, it is better able to explain why domestication and agriculture may have different regional trajectories with domestication often taking place at a much earlier stage ^[53]^[54]^[55]^[56]^[50]^[51].

In this context, the Cultural Niche Construction (CNC) by humans is especially powerful because it can rely on the inheritance of cultural knowledge, which is then partially transformed and passed on through numerous forms of social transmission and economic exchange ^[49]^[52]. The use of new instruments and technologies in archeology and genetics enabled the creation of high-resolution regional-scale records that support the emerging CNC hypothesis and challenge the single-factor explanatory frameworks as represented by the prime-mover accounts ^[49]. After all, the ability of humans to cooperate through shared intentionality ^[34] and to modify behaviors and pass them on through cultural transmission make them the “ultimate niche constructors”. This may also be what the philosopher Spinoza meant when he referred to the unique ability of humans to make use of reason ^[36]. As such, these empirical findings may again help enrich the ethical debate on animal welfare, since they challenge the popular view that animal domestication was a zero-sum game benefiting exclusively humans at the expense of domesticated animals. They also challenge the strictly normative orientation in the ethical debate and suggest a more naturalistic approach recognizing the impact of the extension of human cooperation on the evolution of moral thinking ^[32]^[33]^[34]^[35]^[57].

This cultural and economic expansion of human culture through trade and exchange since the emergence of early civilizations also shifted the perception of humans on the question of who deserves equal moral treatment. The extension of mutual dependence from the small nuclear family/community toward supra-regional networks of cooperation also led to a more inclusive understanding of moral thinking. In the age of globalization, t view that “we are all in the same boat” and therefore share the same fate moved from immediate kinship-based networks to life on this planet in general, and with it. This may help explain the popular contemporary demand for equal moral treatment of humans and sentient animals in general ^[58], as expressed by representatives of global humanitarianism. Consequently, global humanitarianism would not be possible without prior economic globalization. For early humans who made a living as hunters and gatherers, the idea of extending equal moral treatment toward humans beyond their kinship-based clan and as well as animals would not have made sense. This should not be interpreted as a sort of ‘moral inferiority’, but rather as a reflection of the different conditions in which life had to be mastered ^[58].

5. Concluding Remarks

The recent findings in anthropological research may help introduce a new type of ethics that is better informed about ‘the cooperative human’ ^[59], the distinct forms of mutualism found in the evolution of human–animal relationships and the importance of the historical and geographical context. As such, the emphasis of the anthropological perspective is more on the ethics of inclusiveness ^[60]^[61]. The demand for inclusive and sustainable growth is also one of the main pillars of the UN SDGs. If the remaining ten years to achieve the ambitious Agenda 2030 is really meant to become a ‘decade of action’, as the UN Secretary General Antonio Gutierres called it, then we may have to embrace this new ethical approach, because it is focused on effective outcomes in the world of practice.

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