Ethical concerns arising from biotechnology and animals

Traditionally people have attached a great deal of emotional and cultural significance to animals. The tendency of modern science, agriculture and biotechnology to look upon animals as utilitarian objects that can legitimately be modified and manipulated for our purposes flies in the face of deep-rooted trends in human thought. Thus, the first issue raised by science and agriculture, and brought into sharp focus by biotechnology, is the fundamental question of how we see animals: are they culturally significant beings evoking respect and veneration? or fellow mortals evoking affection and sympathy? or natural objects that we can rightly modify and manipulate for our ends?

Moral disquiet over genetic tampering with animals raises another deeply rooted cultural issue. Some of the traditional Middle Eastern food taboos reflect an animal classification system whereby animals that fall outside the system are seen as suspect. Today most Western people do not use that same biological classification system, but we do have certain categories that shape our perception of the animal world. These come from sources such as children's literature, religious ideas about the natural order, or the idea of evolution as having given rise to distinct "species" of animals. The creation of transgenic animals involves a perceptual shift, whereby we come to view animals not as distinct types, but as constituted by a vast number of genes that can be removed from one species and inserted into another. But this geneticist's view of animals may not be shared by other citizens. If citizens do not share the geneticist's view of animals, then the creation of transgenic animals may be culturally inappropriate, in much the same way that high-tech agriculture is culturally inappropriate in certain parts of the world. Alternatively, perhaps lay people in the West have accepted the modern geneticists' view of animals sufficiently to eliminate any inherent moral qualms about transgenic technology.

Suppose that citizens are not troubled by the issues raised above: they accept the utilitarian view whereby animals can be manipulated for human purposes, and they are comfortable with a view of species that allows us to insert new genes in order to change their properties. We then encounter the four more conventional concerns that have been raised about food biotechnology: food safety, environmental impact, animal welfare, and social justice.

In reality, the animal welfare concerns can be viewed as an extension of the social justice concerns. From a social justice viewpoint we may ask whether a certain technology will benefit, say, pharmaceutical companies and technologically sophisticated dairy producers, to the detriment of smaller, more traditional dairy producers and the local communities that depend on them. In part, concerns about animal welfare extend this type of thinking to include animals: will the changes caused by biotechnology bring benefits to farmers, consumers, and purveyors of biotechnology products, but to the detriment of the animals themselves?

Two specific animal welfare concerns have been raised about biotechnology. (1) The first involves deleterious pleiotropic effects of foreign genes in animals such as the Beltsville pigs. As one transgenics specialist noted, science will "crash and burn" many times on the way to successful production of transgenic animals; as one animal protectionist retorted, it is the genetically modified animals who will crash and burn. Even so, the number of unhealthy, suffering animals produced by transgenic experimentation may turn out to be small compared to problems of similar severity (e.g., dogs with hip dysplasia or fatal genetic conditions) caused by conventional animal breeding. (2) A second concern involves increased incidence of health problems that may result from the use of products of biotechnology on animals, such as the use of BST with dairy cattle. In refusing to register BST, Health Canada noted that the product does not produce new disease states, but rather appears to increase the incidence of mastitis and lameness -- problems that were already being caused by conventional breeding and management for high yields. As both of these examples show, the animal welfare issues raised by biotechnology are rarely new issues.

Some scientists argue that because the animal welfare issues raised by biotechnology are largely the same as those raised by more conventional technology, therefore there are no grounds for concern. An alternative view is that biotechnology, because its methods have become a focus of public concern, has belatedly drawn attention to ethical issues that have too long been ignored. Breeding and managing of animals for maximum profit has resulted in some changes that are beneficial for animals, but there have been important deleterious effects as well; these include leg weakness in many species, high culling rate of breeding animals, various stress syndromes, and increased incidence of certain "production diseases". Thus, we can see the biotechnology issues as sub-questions of the broader question: what are the guiding principles we want to follow in breeding and managing animals for food and other purposes?

For purposes of discussion, we can identify three ethical views. One is the anthropocentric view that animals are here for us to use for our purposes unreservedly, except that they should not be an outlet or practice ground for human vice and depravity. A second is the pastoralist view that animal use is permitted as long as humans provide diligent care for animals, and as long as our relationship to animals is mutually beneficial. The third is the animal rights view that animals are autonomous agents, and we do wrong whenever we deprive them of freedom or use them as means to our ends. The anthropocentric view appears to be closest to that of the biotechnologists and other high-tech animal producers. The animal rights view is often proposed by critics of animal biotechnology. However, a pastoralist ethic continues to have wide appeal and might provide a more acceptable alternative. Thus, we might feel that genetic manipulation, either through conventional breeding or genetic engineering, is acceptable as long as it is beneficial to both humans and the animals. According to this view, conventional breeding or genetic engineering might be acceptable if it leads to increased resistance to disease, stronger joints, or less susceptibility to stress, but not if it leads to higher productivity in ways that cause risks to animal health.

For Further reading

Animal Biotechnology and Ethics, edited by Alan Holland and Andrew Johnson. Chapman and Hall, London, UK. ISBN 0-412-75680-3 (hard cover). 351 pp.

David Fraser

Animal Welfare Program

Faculty of Agricultural Sciences and Centre for Applied Ethics

University of British Columbia

2357 Main Mall - Suite 208

Vancouver V6T 1Z4 Canada

tel 1-604-822-2040

fax 1-604-822-4400

em fraserd@unixg.ubc.ca

http://www.interchange.ubc.ca/agsci/animalsci/animalwelfare.html