SentientMedia.org
December 2018
By genetically selecting more robust but less mentally alert or emotional animals, we deprive them of the possibility of living according to their nature.
Image from Jo-Anne
McArthur/We Animals
Last week it was announced that scientists have developed a silicon food
supplement for poultry, potentially allowing producers to continue, even
speed up, the fast growth of modern strains of meat chicken without the
associated lameness and skeletal problems. The aim of this feed supplement
is to address not only welfare but “economic concerns for the poultry
industry”, the researchers stating that this new food science will allow
farmers to “increase the production efficiency of the world’s most commonly
consumed meat”.
Sanding square pegs to fit round holes
Is this really “good science” on factory farms? Rather than striving to
change our exploitative farming systems, we’re changing the integrity of the
animals so that they fit more comfortably within them. The welfare problems
faced by intensively-farmed animals are well documented and, over recent
years, there have been attempts to enrich environments to provide these
individuals with some capacity for a quality of life. However, for the
majority of farmed animals, the captive environment continues to restrict
natural behaviors, causing them distress which leads to physical and mental
pathologies.
Fundamentally, these animals do not naturally ‘fit’ and the overriding
solution has thus far been to subject them to what Bernie Rollin calls
‘‘technological sanders’’: antibiotics, feed additives, hormones, and air
handling systems that allow producers to “force square pegs into round
holes… so the animals do not die and produce more and more kilograms of meat
or milk.”
Selective breeding for specific genetic traits to increase productivity has
been particularly detrimental to animals’ health and wellbeing, as have
‘standard farming procedures’ that improve economic gains but cause physical
pain and distress.
On the flipside, when traits are selected that benefit the welfare of the
animal, conventional breeding or scientific modifications have the potential
to help that animal cope with its environment. This post explores not just
the welfare effects of using science to change animals, but also the ethical
consequences of modifying the animal rather than the environment: ‘sanding
the pegs’ rather than squaring the holes.
The stress and pain of intensive environments
Over the last two decades, behavioral research has confirmed the obvious
intuition that an animal’s feelings, including pain, fear, and pleasure,
impact the degree to which he or she can cope with their situation.
For Animal Welfare professor Donald Broom, this is the very definition of
the welfare of an animal: “its state as regards its attempts to cope with
its environment”. Yet it’s no secret that the majority of animals in
intensive farming systems struggle to cope psychologically and physically,
the stress of confinement and restraint of natural behaviors producing
behavioral and physical pathologies, while standard agricultural procedures
like dehorning and castration cause physical agony as well as mental
distress.
Ninety percent of caged hens in the US, for instance, allowed only an
iPad-sized space, are unable to retire privately to lay their eggs. This
natural nesting behavior that has been shown to be more important to a hen
than eating after 72 hours of starvation.
Social media has given the public unprecedented access to exposés of
animal abuses perpetrated on farms, notably recent UK welfare breaches at
Red Tractor-assured Rosebury Farm, where workers were filmed swinging
piglets against the wall. Yet when an HBO documentary showed Ohio farmers
enacting the same acts of violence, as well as using forklifts to strangle
pigs, the pork industry claimed this was ‘common agricultural practice’, a
defense corroborated by veterinarians and accepted in court.
In America, anything defined as a common agricultural practice is exempt
from animal cruelty law. These everyday ‘standard practices’ of western
farming challenge animals’ freedom from discomfort, fear, frustration, and
distress. While veterinarians may insist that animals’ basic nutritional and
medical needs are met in our modern farming systems, consider the prevalence
of ‘normal’ restrictions on natural species-typical behavior; behaviors
shown to help animals cope and, better still, to promote positive affective
states.
The majority of America’s 5.5 million breeding sows spend their lives
confined to gestation crates, unable to turn around let alone socialize or
mud-bathe. Feed restriction is a common practice in poultry, dairy cow, and
pig farming. The AVMA confirm that animals have been shown to experience
negative affective states as a result of these “routine management
procedures” which also include hot iron branding without anesthesia and
restraint using electroimmobilization. To remove the off-putting ‘boar
taint’ of intact meat, castration is standard practice for virtually all 50
million male piglets in America, causing minutes of intense pain and severe
discomfort weeks later.
Another standard practice is dehorning of adult cattle or disbudding of
calves, more often than not conducted without pain management. Even with the
use of a local anesthetic, it’s been shown that pain isn’t completely
alleviated during or after surgery, unsurprising when we consider what this
procedure involves.
To disbud a calf, a 600-degree iron is pressed against the head to burn
through the nerves and blood vessels that would normally allow the horn bud
to develop. Alternatively, caustic paste may be used to chemically burn off
the horn buds, making the pain easier to manage – when the burning paste
doesn’t run into the calf’s eyes.
Image from Jo-Anne
McArthur/We Animals
Equally horrifically, crude instruments may be used to physically gouge
out horns or buds, or wire used to saw off horns. As with all these
routinely cruel farming practices, the reasons for dehorning are primarily
economic: to protect leather and meat products from damage. It’s possible to
use naturally hornless (“polled”) breeds but farmers have been traditionally
resistant to this because these cattle, particularly in dairy farming, are
perceived as less productive.
Let’s talk a bit more about dairy. Another stressor integral to the farming
industry is the premature separation of the dairy cow from her calf. A
long-time dairy farmer describes this practice as “one of the biggest
affronts against animal welfare in the dairy industry, as evidenced by the
bawling of both cow and calf.”
Most intensively farmed animals are restrained and subjected to acute and
chronic stressors relating to space and environment, nutrition, invasive
husbandry procedures, degree of opportunities to express normal behavior,
including social behavior, and also during transportation and slaughter.
Unable to remove themselves through natural behavioral responses (i.e., to
run away), they instead experience a neuroendocrine response to the stress,
an increase in stress hormones like cortisol disrupting their normal hormone
secretion. The animal may consequently employ body reserves normally used to
regulate key biological functions like immune competence, reproduction,
metabolism, and behavior, which means stress can result in a wide array of
pathologies, including autoimmune disease, hypertension, failed
reproduction, affective disorders and major depression, the animal unable to
compensate for the insult caused by the stressor.
There’s a lot of bad science out there about changing animals on factory
farms
Modern agriculture has augmented these problems by changing animals in such
a way that they are even less likely to be able to cope: that is, by
selectively breeding animals for genetic traits that benefit profitability
alone. The last decades have seen “an unprecedented intensification of
selection for increased production, which has significant side-effects on
behavior and welfare.”
Modern strains of pigs have larger muscle blocks, more anaerobic fibers and
smaller hearts than their ancestors, while some cattle breeds such as the
Belgian Blue exhibit double muscling, which means they are often unable to
birth naturally, requiring C-sections which are highly invasive.
The extra weight all these animals carry means they’re more likely to become
distressed, and even die, during normal activity. Our modern-day broilers
are similarly products of intensive genetic selection, gaining weight
rapidly with minimal food. A 5lb chicken would take 84 days to raise in the
1950s; today, this time period has been almost halved. These birds’ hearts
and lungs can’t support their rapid growth and 26-30% of broiler chickens
have gait defects that impair their walking ability.
The evidence strongly suggests these chickens are in chronic pain.
Furthermore, in order to survive long enough to be viable breeders (without
becoming overweight), the parent flocks must be denied the food their
ravenous appetites seek to support their unnatural growth rates. Hence these
birds suffer the constant stress of chronic hunger.
The dairy cow is a further example where conventional breeding
dramatically improves production but causes extra stress on the animal. The
milk yield of dairy cows has risen steadily over the last thirty years, with
50% of this increase attributable to genetic selection for milk production
efficiency.
The genetic component underlying milk yield positively correlates with
incidence of lameness, mastitis, reproductive disorders, and metabolic
disorders: more biological resources go into production, and less are
available to support normal biological functions such as the immune system
and reproduction.
Similarly, our domestic hens produce around 300 eggs a year as a result of
generations of selective breeding, more than twenty times the egg production
of their wild relations. Forming and laying a single egg is an arduous
process, taking the hen 23-27 hours, so this hyperactive reproductive system
puts enormous stress on her body.
Consequently, the domestic laying hen is the only nonhuman animal that
spontaneously develops ovarian cancer and she is at risk of prolapse, which
can lead to death by hemorrhage or shock. A long-term experiment by Bill
Muir at the University of Guelph selectively bred laying hens for super
productivity, and demonstrates a further welfare issue in physical
selection: the most productive hens were also the most aggressive, the
biggest ‘bully’ achieving her productivity by suppressing the other hens.
Bullying behavior is a heritable trait and, after six generations, the hens
were so belligerent that they literally killed each other. By inadvertently
selecting undesirable behavioral traits alongside productivity, the
agricultural industry has necessitated poor welfare practices such as beak
trimming and isolated housing.
Is there “good science” in animal farming?
What if we instead breed or modify animals to cope more easily with the
stress of confinement? In the past, genetic selection for better welfare has
been held back by the seemingly conflicting demands of welfare and
commercial production. However, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)
state that there is an “urgent need” to give more weight to fitness and
welfare traits in the criteria used for genetic selection, even when these
conflict with selection for food yield. Silicon-pumped chickens are just one
example of changing the birds to experience better welfare in modern broiler
systems.
In 2012, Dawkins and Layton saw the potential to select poultry with high
welfare traits without reducing rapid growth rates. They argued that the
conflict between good welfare and productivity can be reduced by making use
of all available genetic variation from existing breeds. Positive as this
sounds, just like the silicon supplement scientists, these researchers only
address the physical health of the bird, making no mention of the social and
psychological stress these birds continue to feel in overcrowded,
artificially-lit, enclosed environments.
Lewis Bollard, leading the Open Philanthropy Project’s strategy for Farm
Animal Welfare, identifies the biggest welfare issue in intensive farming as
the imbalance between the animal’s psychological desire to express natural
behaviors and his or her immediate environment.
Another use of “good science” to enhance the physical well-being of the
animal applies to the cruel practice of dehorning or disbudding that we
looked at earlier. It’s now possible to introduce the polled gene into
productive breeds like Friesian and Celtic cattle. Many polled cows will
carry a second horned allele which they may pass down to their calves;
however, new testing can identify cattle carrying two polled genes and
guarantee that they can breed with horned cattle and still produce polled
offspring.
This test is now available at the University of Queensland and can be done
cost-effectively as a ‘bundle’ which can be customized for each breed. Most
traditional Hereford breeders have introduced the polled gene to their herds
in response to commercial preferences. In 2017, 77.8% of calves were born
polled compared with 69.7% in 2016, a positive indicator of change.
Furthermore, it may be plausible to speed up this process using genetic
engineering. Recombinetics are fast forwarding selective breeding to create
hornless Friesian dairy cows, this gene-editing company crossbreeding
hornless mutations of beef cattle breeds such as the Angus and “turning off”
the gene that provides for horns.
In the past, public fear and FDA regulations have prevented such animals
from entering the food market. However, as regulatory oversight potentially
moves to the USDA and gene editing tools like CRISPR and TALEN remove the
nightmarish connotations of ‘combining’ animals using transgenesis
techniques of old, the immediate creation of hornless cattle might become
viable.
Of course, stress responses aren’t just related to the physical trigger,
whether that be a broken leg or a severed horn. The individual’s temperament
is also a key factor in his or her ability to cope. Affective states are
adaptive and have evolved by natural selection: domestication of our farmed
animals has already resulted in a greater tolerance of environments that
would be stressful to wild species.
An example is modern dairy cattle production, which discourages maternal
behavior (excepting milk production, of course): it’s widely accepted that
selective breeding has gradually selected against the strong maternal
instinct, reducing the stress of calf separation for the mother. While there
has been no good experiment to prove this, John Webster states that
anecdotal evidence suggests an Indian water buffalo will not let her milk
down unless her calf is present. This indicates that the expression of
maternal behavior in cattle that have not been selectively bred is
significantly stronger.
We can accelerate this process of domestication by artificially selecting
and breeding animals that have a reduced stress response to intensive
rearing conditions. Selecting animals with a reduced stress response has
been at the core of the domestication process in both companion and farmed
animals, the selection of less timid or aggressive animals for breeding
resulting in smaller adrenal glands that are less active.
The tamer the animal, the less active the adrenal gland in secreting stress
hormones. Thus both the ‘placid’ family dog and ‘docile’ farmed cow are far
removed from their wild ancestors in temperament as well as physiology.
Over the years, it’s been possible to select and breed individual farm
animals with higher stress thresholds, greater ability to end the stress
response fast, and low response to additional stressors. While some
individual variation is unavoidable, there’s overwhelming evidence that
genetics significantly contribute to stress responsiveness in vertebrate
animals. For instance, certain pigs possess ‘passive’ rather than ‘active’
coping strategies to stress, Rosalind Hursthouse discussing how
“exceptionally stupid” variations of naturally intelligent and emotional
pigs have been bred to feel less stress in intensive environments. Selective
breeding has also aimed to eliminate the gene associated with porcine stress
syndrome (PSS).
For poultry, selective breeding for stress resistance was first considered
in the 1950s, and later six generations of chickens were successfully bred
by W.B. Gross based on low-plasma corticosterone response to social stress.
Muir and Craig subsequently developed genetic selection programmes to handle
‘hysteria in laying hens’, attempting to eliminate the pathological anxiety
phenotype from the breed. Significant improvements in levels of fearfulness
and abnormal behavior have been achieved by selecting populations against
these traits.
When animal science gets it wrong
Despite these developments, there’s no firm consensus as to whether
modification of stress responsiveness can significantly benefit an animal
within an intensive rearing environment. Gross’ chickens were less stressed
socially, but they showed similar responses to non-social stressors as birds
that had not been selected.
Our intensive farming systems subject animals to a really wide range of
stressors, and Bollard believes chickens require far more than we can
naturally select for to be truly comfortable in confinement: “Despite the
best efforts of farmers to breed the original animal out of them, they have
not reached the point where birds do not feel the desire to extend their
wings or to perch or to dust-bathe, or do other things that are severely
constrained in these environments.”
Even if science advances so that we do reach this point, the ethics of
addressing welfare in this way are severely questionable. Matthias Kaiser
considers the extrinsic ethical concerns of genetic modification in terms of
‘consequences’: reducing stress responses might allow animals to cope more
effectively with the environmental stressors of confinement, but we need to
consider why we need to manipulate animal genetics to enable them to cope.
Selecting against abnormal medical pathologies like PSS in pigs is very
different from breeding out the normal anxiety that any animal would
experience in the stress of captivity.
For Pottinger, the more appropriate strategy to reduce the stress
experienced is to modify the animal’s environment to reduce the stressors.
He believes genetic selection should only be an option “when no further
improvements in the rearing environment can be achieved.” Given the increase
in new research on positive affective states and related enrichments, it
seems depressingly defeatist to imply that we have reached this stage. A
morally troubling consequence of breeding animals to fit our existing
systems might be a reduced incentive to improve these environments.
Most often it is economic and practical restraints that prevent
modifications to existing systems. By contrast, creating stress-resistant or
physically stronger animals that can cope with increasingly challenging
conditions has the potential to benefit farmers economically. We’ve seen
that an animal experiencing stress can suffer from failed reproduction,
altered metabolism, and suspension of immune competence, all potentially
reducing profitability for the farmer.
Reducing the “biological cost of stress” while maintaining the productivity
of current intensive systems has obvious financial advantages. This is
evident in the fact that, despite poor welfare associated with increased
growth in broilers, there’s pressure on those concerned with genetic
engineering to make such animals grow even faster, hence the silicon
proposition. Breeding against the stress response in these birds or pumping
them full of bone strengthener should not offer an excuse to do this.
Profitability is not an ethically justifiable barrier to enhancing
environments, nor is it a morally sound reason for producing
stress-resistant animals. Indeed, philosopher Ben Bramble worries that by
making seemingly beneficial welfare decisions for our own sake, and not for
the sake of animals, we ignore the moral issue at stake. By modifying
livestock to enable them to cope within existing systems, we’re not
addressing the morally dubious part of humanity that’s responsible for our
perpetuation of intensive farming.
The fact that animals naturally struggle to cope in intensive systems
suggests that there is something inherently wrong with the environments, not
with the animals. The priority must be to improve these environments, rather
than reshape the animals to fit within them.
Another consideration is that while breeding against negative affective
states, we’re failing to introduce positive ones. Jonathan Latimer argues
for the removal of intensively farmed animals’ ability of tactile sensation
through genetic ‘disenhancement’, allowing “for idleness without physical
suffering.” Yet he’s only addressing half the story of animal welfare, the
capacity to suffer, and downplays the significance of animal capacity for
pleasure.
As argued in the comments section on Latimer’s essay, suffering involves
more than the ability to experience pain. Reducing a cow’s maternal feeling
might alleviate the despair of separation-distress, but it also deprives her
of the pleasure she experiences in bonding with her calf and denies that
calf his mother’s comfort. Furthermore, a certain amount of stress is
necessary to facilitate learning and allow the animal to experience
‘exhilaration’ (increased awareness, improved cognition, euphoria, and
enhanced analgesia) so long as that stress doesn’t turn into distress.
Reducing an animal’s capacity to respond to stress potentially deprives it
of what Panksepp defines as the ‘seeking’ impulse, a major source of life
energy. Diminishing the arousability of the affective system thus produces a
similar psychological state to the persistent lowering of response to
stimuli, comparable to human depression. This important welfare concern may
not be problematic to many farmers or producers, but it’s hard to feel
comfortable with breeding livestock who already have the ‘learned
helplessness’ of those subjected to unrelenting negative stimulation. Is
this moving towards the creation of masses of depressed animals, simply to
suit our purposes?
Shapiro already compares modern broilers to “meat-producing machines”: to
reduce their capacity to feel pain in response to undeniably painful
conditions or to feel an affective state, negative or positive, would seem a
dangerous reversal of progress in our acknowledgment of animals as living,
feeling sentient beings.
Thus far, we have used science to improve efficiency in the most unethical
of ways: we’re pushing farmed animals to their limits of productivity,
breeding chickens to grow fatter, cows to produce more milk, hens to lay
more eggs, beef cattle to grow more muscle; all to the detriment of their
physical and mental welfare.
Many welfare scientists will argue for new advances like silicon
supplements for chickens and selective breeding of animals to favor genetic
traits that allow them to better cope with the physical and emotional
stressors in their captive environments. Selecting against abnormal
pathologies like PSS has obvious benefits for the animal.
However, selecting against what is essentially a normal stress response to,
or physical effect of, an abnormal environment is problematic, adapting the
compromised animal rather than the system. What if by breeding animals that
are tailor-made for intensive environments, we are justifying the
perpetration of what are ultimately immoral systems, systems that prioritize
economics over the wellbeing of sentient beings?
Ultimately, by genetically selecting more robust but less mentally alert or
emotional animals, we’re reducing negative affective states but potentially
depriving the animal of the capacity to experience positive ones. In light
of recent emphasis on the latter in animal welfare science, this is surely a
step backward.
Number of animals killed in the world by the fishing, meat, dairy and egg industries, since you opened this webpage.
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