Page 126 - The Welfare of Cattle

breedInG and WeLfare 103

have a greater capacity to empathize and communicate with pigs, which may be contributing to the
delay in product approval.
Empathizing with fish is more challenging as they do not have similar facial expressions or
morphology and, therefore, humans have difficulty communicating with these animals. Not until
recently have scientists been able to demonstrate that fish are capable of feeling pain. Recent reports
that GM salmon have been escaping from fisheries into environments where they are not native,
thus causing a GM animal to also become an invasive species is not true as the transgenic salmon
are sterile. Significant biotechnological advancements that will enhance the food supply, animal
welfare, and the environment are possible, yet ironically, their adoption and subsequent imple-
mentation into commercial food production is challenging due to social resistance to modifying
mammals, while these societal hesitations are less pronounced with regard to fish. Legislators must
objectively evaluate the impact of these biotechnologies on the environment, wildlife, animal wel-
fare, food security, and productivity in the context in which they are implemented—not just within
the context of how well they can empathize with the animal’s experience.
Biotechnology and animal welfare. Detractors to the implementation of biotechnology express
concerns regarding the risks to the environment and wildlife populations should GM animals either
interbreed or interact with wildlife. Concerns have been raised regarding the unknown health risks
to humans that consume GM animals and animal products, and some argue that genetic modi-
fication compromises the genetic integrity and inherent value of the animals, thus intentionally
altering them is morally wrong. Statements such as this are true, and, get people upset. It has been
documented that beef from animals implanted with growth promoting hormone implants has 40%
or more estrogen than beef from non-implanted animals; however, what is not usually provided is
that the levels of estrogen per 3-ounce beef serving may range from 0.85 to 1.20 ng. Blair (2015)
reported estrogenic activity from several foods and showed that 3-ounce servings of peanuts pro-
vided 17,010 ng and tofu provided 19,306,004 ng of estrogenic activity from isoflavins. Most birth
control pills provide 20,000–50,000 ng of estrogen daily (FDA, 2017). Stanford et al. (2010) found
estradiol equivalents per serving to be 0.19 ng in cow milk, 1.0 ng in coffee, 50 ng in beer, and
1,000 ng in soy milk. It may be that many naturally occurring hormones in non-animal foods need
as much or more scrutiny as hormone levels in animal-based foods.
Many of these ethical concerns regard the impact of GM animals on human and environmental
health, yet few realize how their own bodies metabolize ingested compounds. The irony of this is
that we eat a lot of DNA daily, some people express concern about eating meat from a hormone-
treated animal yet give little attention to the dosage of hormones in birth control pills with hundreds
of time the active ingredient dosage as might occur in animal products. Therefore, concerns regard-
ing the implementation of biotechnologies should not be applied carte blanche. Context-specific,
objective, and biologically appropriate considerations should be made regarding the impact of these
technologies on the animal itself, and its subsequent welfare when determining whether implemen-
tation of this technology is suitable for commercialization.
The role of biotechnology in food security should be addressed in this chapter. Without the
advancements available from biotechnology, the costs of animal health and disease management
will increase. Entire industries (e.g., the citrus industry utilizes biotechnology to eliminate green-
ing in oranges thus increasing the efficiency of the citrus industry) may be completely eliminated.
Furthermore, abandonment of biotechnological use will limit our ability to optimize production
efficiencies and mitigating production costs in developing countries. Therefore, without the advance-
ments and benefits of biotechnology, we may have trouble meeting the food needs of the future.
Again, considerations regarding the implications of biotechnology and animal welfare are not
new (Broom, 1993) and the scientific literature is rampant with examples of how biotechnology has
influenced our expectations regarding animal husbandry and welfare. In the 1980s, much inter-
est and effort was devoted to cloning of cattle by embryo nuclear transfer. In several instances,
extreme variation was associated with birth weights in the clones resulting in a large offspring