Response to the Rural Economy and Land Use Programme - third call consultation

Submitted on behalf of IFR by
Dr Nigel Lambert

June 2005

Background information on the consultation can be found at: www.relu.ac.uk

Introduction

The management of plant and animal diseases in the UK is clearly a broad issue of considerable importance. While primarily focussed upon human food and health, there are clear links between your defined remit and the mission of IFR. Below we identify three issues that we feel should form part of RELU’s third call for proposals.

Stress and Infection

Salmonella and Campylobacter are the two most common zoonotic pathogens that cause disease in animals. They are responsible for large economic losses to agriculture and an estimated total of 500,000 cases of human infection in the UK each year. The major farm animals that suffer from infection are chickens and pigs. Enhanced resistance of farm animals to infectious disease is a central tenet in any sustainable farming approach, and it has been hypothesised that increasing farm animal welfare can reduce the incidence of zoonotic disease and transmission to the consumer. The variables responsible for the susceptibility of animals to bacterial pathogens include microbial colonisation as well as social stresses.

Laboratory experiments show that the infectivity of bacterial pathogens is increased in the presence of the stress hormones produced by chickens and pigs. To protect the viability of farming in the UK, and to reduce the levels of bacterial zoonotic infection of farm animals we need to understand more about the link between animal stress and bacterial infection.

The intensive nature of the production systems used for pigs and chickens makes these animals highly relevant for study. This is particularly timely, given the legislative and consumer pressure to reduce anti-microbial usage in agriculture and moves toward higher welfare, more sustainable husbandry (e.g. bans on traditional battery cages and farrowing crates, the use of ‘free-range’ systems). Understanding the relationship of welfare standards, including the human behavioural element, on the levels of stress experienced by animals, and the impact of this stress upon immunity and susceptibility to disease can only be achieved using a multi-disciplinary approach. At present, there is little interaction worldwide between scientists who study infectious disease and those with an interest in animal welfare and behaviour. This lack of contact between different scientific disciplines obstructs progress towards rational disease control strategies and needs to be addressed.
A rigorous study needs to be undertaken to investigate the effect of stress upon the colonisation of pigs and chickens by Salmonella and Campylobacter. If the findings show that increased levels of animal stress lead to higher levels of infection by zoonotic pathogens there will be a new impetus to improve the welfare of our farm animals driven by veterinary, economic and public health factors.

Consumer engagement

One important subject that should continue to be considered by RELU is that of consumer engagement in animal and plant health issues. This touches upon a significant contemporary debate about whether the public should be involved in policy setting and decision making in science in general – a debate that has emerged following various societal controversies (e.g. BSE, GM foods and crops, FMD, MMR) that have served to undermine the credibility of scientists and policy makers. These controversies have led to the widespread questioning of the appropriateness of the traditional ‘deficit model’, which assumes that the one-way communication of ‘facts’ to the public is sufficient to adequately manage public response and ensure acceptance of pre-determined science policy decisions. Proponents of engagement would instead argue that decisions about how to deal with issues such as animal and plant health (e.g. in the context of avian flu) cannot be totally informed by natural science, as human values are pervasive throughout such processes.

The emerging assumption that ‘public participation’ is a universal panacea is, however, largely untested. It is more likely that ‘participation’ will not be relevant or appropriate in every scientific debate – and it is importance to develop an evidence base for this contextuality. In any case, it is unclear how public engagement should be best enacted to ensure positive results for science and for society, and research is clearly needed on this topic. Issues of animal and plant health may thus provide ideal testing grounds (contexts) for exploring these major scientific, societal, political and economic themes, and this opportunity for funding appropriate research should not be missed. After all, it is unlikely that public influence on the rural economy and land use will grow, so it is best to ensure such influence is timely, relevant and situationally appropriate.

In summary, any successful RELU project, whatever the context, should include a public engagement element to assist policy formers in translating the exciting scientific findings into workable societal structures.

Barriers to multidisciplinarity – a possible RELU initiative

While strongly supporting the desire for multidisciplinary approaches we were concerned by the phraseology of the RELU consultation call to which we are responding. The term “necessitates” could imply that researchers are being “coerced” into unnatural collaborations. As an Institute that has multidisciplinary approaches at the heart of its activities (from physics to nutrition, social science to molecular biology) we have undertaken a number of formal discussions and reviews into the whole concept of multidisciplinary research. At our last internal management review (Peter Wilson, 2002) “Exploring barriers to multidisciplinary research”, the issue of “forcing” scientists of different disciplines emerged strongly. The dearth of research into scientific multidisciplinarity was also noted and it was concluded that more social science research was needed into understanding the processes that lead to establishing successful multidisciplinary scientific projects. These collaborations are essential if broad and complex issues concerning food and/or health for example, are to be addressed.

Given RELUs strong commitment to multidisciplinary research and the realisation that the future of science and technology will depend upon effective transdisciplinary collaborations we feel that RELU projects would make ideal “case studies” for exploring barriers and motivators for multidisciplinary collaborations. Information from such case studies would we feel lead to the identification of generic factors involved, which could then be tested in national surveys of researchers. By establishing an initiative across the whole of RELU along the lines suggested above would not only greatly benefit the aims of RELU but that of UK science in general.