Empowering Choices: Animal Welfare, Sustainability, & Innovations in Farming, Pet Care, & Food - Part 1
Erin McCann 00:00
Join us as we delve into pressing sustainability and animal welfare issues with Dr. Fritha Langford, a senior lecturer at Newcastle University in the UK. With 25 years of expertise in farm animal welfare, Dr. Langford offers unique perspectives to our discussion. We explore topics including the challenges and opportunities of groundbreaking innovations, like cellular agriculture, gene editing, artificial intelligence, and data analytics. These advancements hold immense promise in improving care, health and welfare of farmed animals, fish and pets and addressing sustainability concerns, giving us hope for a better future.
Drawing from Dr. Langford’s research, we discuss practical and actionable steps that veterinary clinics can take to overcome barriers in providing post-operative care for cats based on real world scenarios. We delve into the current state of fish welfare and explore strategies to enhance their well-being. Dr. Langford provides insights on how consumers can support ethical and sustainable practices in their food choices and pet care routines.
We examine critical considerations for decision-making involving various species, from chickens and pigs to cats, cows, dogs, fish, shrimp, and more -- all through the lens of sustainability and animal welfare. Dr. Langford also offers valuable advice for those interested in pursuing careers or studies related to animal welfare.
Tune in as we uncover one of the most significant climate-related changes we can make to support sustainability, benefiting our planet, our health, and the health and welfare of animals worldwide.
Hello, and thanks so much for joining. I am very excited that Dr. Fritha Langford, senior lecturer at Newcastle University in the UK, with a specialization and 25 years in farm animal welfare is joining us today. Fritha, thank you so much for being here.
Dr. Fritha Langford 02:18
Thank you, Erin. So pleased to be here.
Erin McCann 02:21
Your career has been dedicated to advancing research and understanding in a wide range of human and animal welfare issues, from dairy cows to cats. What do you believe are some of the most urgent challenges facing sustainability and animal welfare today? And how do they intersect?
Dr. Fritha Langford 02:42
Oh, it's a great question to start us off. Thank you, Erin. I do believe that sustainability and animal welfare are two parts of one of the biggest challenges that we're facing today. And that sometimes the sustainability or understanding sustainability issues, particularly to do with climate change, but also to do with biodiversity breakdown, and other forms of pollution are not necessarily taken as seriously as they should be by those in animal welfare.
So, I think it's really important to think about whatever animal we're talking about whatever animal it is under our care, be it a farm animal, companion animal, those animals in zoos, or animals in laboratories, we really need to think about how our changing climate is going to impact that relationship between them and us. And at present, I'm not seeing that move quite as quickly as I'd like it to move.
There are both mitigation aspects. So, thinking about the ways in which we change our relationships, particularly with farm animals, but also with other animals as well, to reduce the emissions that we're seeing in terms of climate change, and other aspects of environmental degradation. But also, there are things that we -- animal guardians, carers, keepers, farmers, laboratory users -- need to think about in terms of adapting our processes in order to protect animal welfare.
So, I see the intersection being in two different ways, really -- both thinking about the ways we can reduce our emissions from our animal relationships, and how that might impact us in the future, but also, how we protect animals from the worst excesses of what's going to happen during the changes that we're seeing from climate change.
Erin McCann 04:44
So much to what you just said, I want to make sure that I'm unpacking that in terms of some of the key themes. So, if I'm hearing you correctly, this connection between sustainability, climate, and animal welfare is not limited to one space. While we may often hear about these themes in particular contexts, especially when it comes to farmed animals, that this intersection and these frameworks really apply across the board.
Dr. Fritha Langford 05:10
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's remarkable, actually, how many emissions are created through some of the things that we do regularly with our animals. So, for example, medical treatments, obviously, we want to give medical treatments to our animals, but of course, they come with quite a high single-use plastic use. So, absolutely.
It's not just about farm animals, it's across the board in all different types of animals that we care for, that there's so many different things that we do with our animals, even when we're caring for them, that can create quite a lot of emissions from a climate change point of view. So, for example, the plastic use in veterinary medicine is enormous. Now, of course, I'm not advocating that we stop treating our animals, but thinking about perhaps unnecessary treatments, or thinking about mitigating those emissions in some way would be really important.
Other things are to do with, for example, breeding technologies. So, where we use breeding technologies in our companion animals, or in our zoo animals. For example, a lot of zoo animals, now we use artificial insemination, or even things like embryo transfer to be able to ensure that we have high-quality genetics in the animals that we keep within zoos. But in doing so, that comes with a much higher plastic count than it would do if we allowed ordinary breeding. So, there are all sorts of small examples within all types of animal situations that we perhaps even don't think about, that really can add up once you start investigating all of those different types of treatments.
Erin McCann 06:54
Makes perfect sense. And for each of these examples, there's also the animal welfare questions, right?
Dr. Fritha Langford 07:03
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And so all of them intersect with animal welfare, because the animals’ experience is most important here. So, when I'm talking about animal welfare, I'm really considering the animal’s experience has been first and foremost, the most important thing. So, what does that animal feel in the situation, in the housing, in the care that it's receiving? And that, to me, is fundamental for animal welfare. So, both the physical and the mental side of what they're experiencing is really important.
Erin McCann 07:35
Absolutely. And just for our listeners’ awareness, as we continue through this conversation, it sounds like you're encouraging us to think about the individual animal, even if we're talking about a group or a species as we go through these various examples and questions.
Dr. Fritha Langford 07:50
Absolutely. And sometimes that's very difficult when we're thinking about, particularly farm animals, when we're considering, for example, a shed of meat chickens, or broiler chickens, which might have upwards of 20 to 60,000 birds in one place, it's very difficult to consider the individual. But the individual is where animal welfare is at the individual experiences, and so that's the important thing.
Erin McCann 08:18
Thank you so much for that context. Absolutely. So, I want to draw on a few different examples that you’ve shared. And we can certainly come back to, we've talked about a number of different key areas of focus that we'll continue to come back to through the conversation. But to continue on with the themes that you were mentioning, in terms of farming -- as we look toward the future of farming, we see the emergence of alternative proteins and technologies like cellular agriculture and gene editing as two emerging areas of innovation right now. How can these innovations be harnessed to improve animal welfare, sustainability, and more? And are there any risks to animal welfare with employing these technologies?
Dr. Fritha Langford 09:07
Yeah, it's a fascinating time in which we live, isn't it, Erin? There's so many new technologies out there. And sometimes it's quite hard to keep abreast of them all really, and to understand where each of them are going because they offer different positives and potential risks.
So, you mentioned there about cellular agriculture, which is what we're describing there is harvesting cells from animals in order to grow them in an artificial environment to produce meat to be then eventually a food product for humans. It's a very interesting area. I think, at the moment, it's still extremely energy-heavy, so it's not a particularly sustainable food at present. And of course, one of the biggest questions from an animal welfare point of view: is it going to improve animal welfare? It certainly doesn't improve the welfare of the animals that those cells are being harvested from. So, we need to be considering those animals and how they are kept, how they are farmed, and whether they are having their cells harvested in life or post-mortem.
All of those questions are difficult to answer because some of these businesses are occurring in different countries across the world via perhaps some regulations aren't quite as tight as other places. So, it's not always straightforward to find the answers to those questions. Whether or not cellular agriculture will take off is more of a human question, isn't it?
A lot of people are slightly weirded out (for want of a better term) by the idea of eating meat that has not come from an animal, which is quite interesting when you think about the processes we have to go through in order to get meat from an actual animal. But I do think there's a lot of potential there to replace a lot of the meat that we perhaps don't think about so much.
We know that in the UK, for example, the huge majority of people eat chicken, massive majority people. So though the UK is one of the countries in Europe that has the highest proportion of vegetarians and vegans, we're still talking around about 90 to 93, or 94% of people eat chicken. So, a huge number of people. And all of those, around about 60% of people eat chicken at least three times a week, and they're not eating a whole chicken. Most of those people that aren't buying a whole carcass that has the, I suppose, the feeling of the bird has the has the memory of the fact that this was once a living animal. Most people consume chicken either that's already cooked within a café-type situation, or a fast-food joint, or whatever, or they're getting food that is already pre-prepared in some way. So, they are not having to deal with the carcass itself. And I think almost takes away the feeling that this is from an animal.
And to me, that seems the ideal place to start in terms of scaling up cellular agriculture. Because if you're not thinking of that meat as coming from an animal, anyway, perhaps swapping out for something that has been grown from a bunch of cells in a lab would be a really good opportunity. And we'll probably come to this as well later on, but in general terms, I think the animals that suffer most from a farming perspective, at least a land-based farming perspective, from poor welfare are chickens and pigs. And anything we can do to reduce our reliance on meat chickens is a great thing – I, personally think, bring it on. I would be very happy to see a scaling up and rolling out of cellular chicken, if that's possible, with the caveats that it would be important to think about where those cells are coming from, of course. And, if we can do it in a way that is a lot more efficient in terms of energy than it is at present.
Gene editing. Very interesting. There are all enormous benefits to gene editing.
Erin McCann 13:43
Fritha, I don't mean to interrupt you, I just want to make sure I'm summarizing a couple points that you raised your interest just to make sure our listeners are capturing all the important insights that you just shared.
So, if I were to provide a simplified summary -- please correct me if I've missed or mischaracterized anything here. Essentially, when we're talking about cellular agriculture, we're talking about growing meat from cells. And so, when we get back to our framework of thinking about the individual chicken’s experience, if one were to ask, what is the animal welfare for cellular agriculture compared to what is animal welfare for chickens today, as you mentioned, chickens are considered to have one of the poorest animal welfare experiences of any species and that includes a variety of concerns that essentially, in large part, result from fast growth.
And so essentially, we have bred chickens over time to grow faster from an industry perspective. And there are other considerations when it comes to the living conditions, as you mentioned, [chickens] are living in environments where they're living among many other birds, they may not have access to the outdoors, and they're growing very rapidly -- so they experience pain they have difficulty walking, there are a variety of different issues when it comes to the chickens’ lived experience.
And so, remembering number one: that even if the products that's out there on the market doesn't really resemble a chicken, that this is an animal, and that it is having its own lived experiences when we consider our own choices of whether to try cellular agriculture-based products or not, is an important part of that consideration process. And while today, cellular agriculture is still very early, so we need to think about a variety of considerations, including the fact that it's not yet particularly sustainable in that it's still in the research and development phase, and expensive from many perspectives compared to where the industry aims to be, that there is an important part, as you mentioned, in terms of where the cells come from. So, whether those cells are coming from living birds, or whether they're coming from birds that are no longer living. Am I summarizing those points accurately?
Dr. Fritha Langford 16:04
Yeah, that sounds perfect, I think it's really important to remember that we have bred chickens -- in some ways, it's quite amazing -- we have produced an animal that we can take from egg hatching to table in around 35 days. It's incredible. I'm not saying that that's necessarily a good thing, but it is incredible that we have done that. And we've done that mostly through selection, artificial selection, but still selection, as opposed to any form of genetic modification or anything like that. This is selecting for the quickest possible growth and the biggest possible feed efficiency. So those birds, they eat a lot, and they don't do much else.
What the problem is, is that they grow very fast, and they still have a baby chick apparatus underneath. So, they put on a lot of weight during that period of time, but their bones don't mature in the same way that they would do if they had grown in a much more slow way. And, as you say, as well, these animals are kept in conditions that are not conducive to particularly good animal welfare.
Erin McCann 17:26
Thank you so much, I just wanted to make sure that were helping to elevate all the important insights that were in your discussion before continuing, I think that's a perfect segue to what you were starting to introduce in terms of gene editing.
Dr. Fritha Langford 17:40
Gene editing. So very basically, what gene editing is modifying the genome of an animal or an organism, wheat, for example, as the as another area, which has been looked into, but we're going to be talking about animals today, editing the genome of an animal. So, there's genetic code of an animal, but only mutating genes within its own genome. So not bringing in genetics from a different organism. So, this is not the same as what we would classify as genetic modification, where we take for example, genetics from a bacterium and put that into a chicken.
This, what we're doing here, is we're getting the bird’s or the mammal’s own genome, and making a very small edit, often to one part of the genome that perhaps confers susceptibility or resistance to a particular disease. So, it is technically a mutation that could happen in nature, okay, but it's done by us. So, we make the choice to make that mutation, but it's a mutation that could have happened naturally.
And of course, mutations happen all the time, naturally, they're always going on, whenever we have reading and cell division, many 1000s of mutations can occur during the time, but usually, they don't necessarily happen in the bits that we want them to. So, it's basically targeted mutations. So that's what gene editing is.
And what we're doing with our farmed animals in particular, but also in other animals, which we'll maybe come to in a minute, is considering where we can make these targeted mutations to improve their welfare, improve their sustainability, perhaps improving their efficiency, improving their health, and also improving productivity if it's farmed animals.
So, two big examples, both of which come from some colleagues at the University of Edinburgh, are looking at specific diseases that pigs and poultry are particularly susceptible to. So, If we take the pig example first, there is a viral disease that's seen throughout the pig industry across the world. It's Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS), and we call it PRRS for short. And PRRS is a very big, this disease has a very big economic consequence: it causes reproductive failure in older pigs and respiratory disease in younger pigs, and it has quite a high mortality rate. So, it has obvious welfare impacts for those animals.
So, in order to prevent PRRS, well not prevent it, but minimize it, you have to have really good biosecurity, good hygiene, and minimize stress in those animals. What if you could change the gene that is related to the susceptibility? And we can. So, we can actually create pigs that are resistant to PRRS. So, if we look at it from that point of view, we can see that there's an instant welfare benefit: these animals are no longer going to be suffering from this disease within a farming situation, or pet situation if they're kept as pets, or whatever it might be. So, you can see there's a welfare benefit.
But what could be the welfare risk? One problem of making an animal resistant to a disease through this gene editing process might be that then we have to pay less regard to minimizing stress, keeping conditions hygienic, and providing good biosecurity. Because in a way, we no longer have to try and prevent that disease. It's not going to, the animal is not going to suffer from it anyway.
And so, I think this is quite a big ethical problem for these breeding technologies is that it's possible to keep an animal in worse conditions if it's not going to be susceptible to the disease. There are also other welfare risks further downstream. Because of course, we don't know what the unintended consequences there might be from this mutation. I said that it could be a mutation that could happen in nature. But that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be unintended consequences anyway, if it was a natural mutation versus a gene edit. But what we don't know is whether or not that gene has other important benefits for the animal. So, whether the gene in its susceptibility to PRRS’ state actually confers benefits to the animal. And so, by turning that off, to make the animal resistant to PRRS, perhaps we are reducing those benefits that that gene naturally produces. So that's quite complex, two quite complex issues that could be risky for animals with that particular edit.
Additionally, the chicken one, what do you want me to talk about the chicken one?
Erin McCann 23:21
I want to make sure I'm hearing you correctly, and that our listeners are hearing the, some of the key takeaways that, at least from my interpretation, you're eliminating, which is: number one, if we are optimizing to address a particular issue, like PRRS, we may be simultaneously supporting industry need, right? Supporting human health needs from a meat consumption perspective, while improving an aspect of in this case, pigs’, in broader cases, animal welfare experiences. However, if we are focusing specifically on the industry goals, we can lose sight of other aspects of the animal welfare comprehensively. Meaning, if we're focused on saying, “okay, we've solved this PRRS issue, so we don't have to worry about these environmental concerns. We don't have to worry about these sanitation concerns. We don't have to worry about X, Y, or Z” -- what are we then doing to the animal’s experience? And are we compromising animal welfare through this innovation in some respects?
And the second piece being that we don't know what we don't know, right? So, if we change something, particularly again, with human needs in mind, “what are the implications for the animal?” is what I'm hearing as question number one. There may also be implications when it comes to some of the industry or human health and well-being benefits, but in particular, if we're editing the gene of an animal, what does that do to the animal? We don't necessarily know -- even if this could occur in nature -- because this is a human-driven process. Am I hearing you right in terms of those two themes?