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Special Edition - Wilberforce Lecture 2025
244 Plays5 months ago
In this special edition recorded live at the 2025 Wilberforce Lecture we tackle technology unleashed.
From de-extinction, gene editing, robot pets, AI conversations with animals to alternative proteins, how do we harness technology to create a better world for animals?
Host Kate Quilton is joined by special guests Melanie Challenger, RSPCA Vice President, writer, researcher and broadcaster, Jane Lawton, Managing Director of the Earth Species Project and Thomas Schultz-Jagow, RSPCA Director of Advocacy and Prevention.
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Transcript
Introduction to Animal Futures Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
um RSPCA presents Animal Futures, hosted by Kate Quilton. Welcome to a special edition of the Animal Futures podcast, recorded live at the ah RSPCA Wilberforce Lecture 2025.
00:00:14
Speaker
Our series has explored the future of animal welfare and how the decisions we take today will affect the world we build for animals and us tomorrow.
Technology Unleashed: Future of Animal Welfare
00:00:24
Speaker
In this podcast, you'll hear our expert panellists take a deep dive into one of the key themes of our series with a discussion titled Technology Unleashed.
00:00:34
Speaker
How can tech help us build a better world for animals? Joining the discussion are Melanie Challenger, RSPCA vice president, author, broadcaster and bioethicist, focusing on the relationships between humans and animals.
00:00:49
Speaker
Jane Lawton, Managing Director at Earth Species Project, dedicated to decoding animal communication using AI. Thomas Schultz, Iago, RSPCA Director of Advocacy and Prevention.
00:01:05
Speaker
From robot pets and AI communication with animals to gene editing and cultivated meat, technology holds immense potential to transform animal lives for better or worse.
AI's Role in Human-Wildlife Conflict
00:01:18
Speaker
In this episode, our expert panel explore what a tech-driven future could mean for our relationship with animals and how we can harness these advancements to create a kinder world for all.
00:01:30
Speaker
Let's get into it. Okay, so We're all here broadly to talk about how tech ultimately is going to influence animal welfare. I want to start with you, Melanie.
00:01:41
Speaker
How do you think tech can help when it comes to animal welfare? And are you hopeful? Yes. two Two separate things that I'll but i'll pull apart there. So...
00:01:53
Speaker
and some Some examples of where tech or that that that have made me feel hopeful recently from tech have been, um we have growing problems with human wildlife conflict.
00:02:04
Speaker
And so there was a project that was introduced to a year ago where they ah had taken a kind of traditional camera trap, attached in a kind of AI system to it, a recognition system, and deployed this in West Bengal, I think in India.
00:02:20
Speaker
where there was a lot of human elephant conflict and that was often leading to injuries certainly and sometimes fatalities. When they deployed that technology ah in 2023, over a year, they were able to reduce fatalities and injuries to zero.
00:02:39
Speaker
So it was a huge success. and And basically how it works is that it was able, the AI is is you know deployed through the camera trap. It was able to identify elephants in the area in a kind of is something like 90% effectiveness um at identifying elephants. And then that sets an alert system so that people would know that they were in the area. So quite simple as a premise, but very, very effective. So that sort of thing makes me deeply hopeful.
00:03:07
Speaker
There are then other technologies like, for example, precision farming, so which is a sort of suite of of different technologies that that are being sort of rolled out in farming. Now, some of those have shown some sort of welfare benefits for in particularly identifying disease, for example.
00:03:24
Speaker
So there was a case with um studying the extent to which sort of we were able to identify mastitis in in dairy cows and that was identified at about sort of 40% effectiveness. So being able to address the needs of animals faster, great, but this is where I don't get so hopeful.
00:03:45
Speaker
Because and the the main take home or the main thing I want us to think about is that at the moment, animals are deeply disenfranchised and their lives pass in highly unjust and non-ideal circumstances. And our tech is being developed, conceptualised and rolled out into non-ideal situations.
00:04:08
Speaker
So there's just as much likelihood, if not more, that if we do that, tech can end up amplifying the kind of um injustice that they're facing and in entrenching some of the welfare challenges that they're facing rather than resolving them.
00:04:23
Speaker
Interesting. Jane, how about you? How do you feel about it? Are you hopeful? Well, not surprisingly, since I work ah with an organisation that is using technology to better understand animals, I am quite hopeful.
00:04:38
Speaker
um I think for me, it's primarily about the fact that technology can accelerate our understanding for animal animals. There's lots and lots of applications like what Manu was talking about, where technology has been used for a very, very long time to advance conservation, to mitigate human-wildlife conflict.
00:04:57
Speaker
But for me, it's fundamental fundamentally about the fact that we know nature is very, very complex. It's actually kind of beyond our ability to fathom and stand.
00:05:09
Speaker
And there's vast amounts of data being generated right now. about nature, which we can't analyze, we can't make sense of. And so the advances in technology and specifically AI are allowing us to do that. And if you think about citizen science projects, as an example, it's simply going to accelerate our ability to make sense of the incredible work that people out there are doing in observing nature.
00:05:37
Speaker
There's also real hope, I mean clearly there's a lot of hope in terms of tech and climate change, again the positive and the negative, but just in terms of understanding what is happening around the world.
00:05:51
Speaker
um One of the most effective things that's being used right now is bioacoustic monitoring to understand the health of ecosystems and that's simple as putting a microphone into a forest.
00:06:02
Speaker
and tracking the kinds of sounds that that forest is emitting from the animals, from the trees, and and then getting a sense, is that actually degrading over time? So there's I think there's lots and lots of really hopeful stuff, and there's lots of things to be concerned about as well. And the reality is, every time you invent a new technology, you invent a new form of responsibility.
00:06:26
Speaker
And the challenge we're facing right now is that technology is accelerating beyond anything we have seen before.
Ethics and Optimism in Animal Communication
00:06:35
Speaker
It's exponential. And there is no way that even our kind of almost ethical stance can keep up with that, let alone the regulatory frameworks.
00:06:44
Speaker
So that is deeply concerning. And I think we need to make sure that we are we all pointing out where we see the issues and and at least trying to get ahead of things. Jane, how about you, Thomas?
00:06:57
Speaker
Well, I'm with Jane in thinking if technology helps us to understand better how animals think and feel, that must lead to better welfare. I'm an optimistic kind of guy. i wouldn't work at the RSPCA if I thought otherwise. So the challenge really is to manage that and to be very vigilant on where technology might deviate from the good cause that we could...
00:07:18
Speaker
put it to. I mean, some of my colleagues are in the room here today, the the colleagues that work in the science and policy teams. There are numerous examples, whether it's animals and science or farmed animals, where we look at very concrete examples that we would, broadly speaking, applaud.
00:07:31
Speaker
But we're not naive and we know that we're going to just have to keep a very close eye on where maybe discretions will happen. think what personally love about the RSPCA is that the RSPCA has been with us for so long that, you know, you've almost encountered lots of advancements at different times, you know, in the last, what, 200 years.
00:07:54
Speaker
And this is another... Well, it is. And the people who founded the RSPCA over 200 years ago, they put that P in the title for a reason. It is going to be about prevention. We can do all we want and we do every day to help animals in need that are neglected or abused.
00:08:10
Speaker
But if we really want to change the dial, we've got to go back and look at what technology may be able to contribute today in that preventative work that we also need to focus on. There are some hopeful possibilities with the way that we can um deploy people's views and potentially even the views of other species as we move forward. So I am hopeful.
00:08:32
Speaker
I'm just laying that seed now before I go into the dark territory. Which leads us brilliantly on to imagine a world where we can communicate with animals even better than we do now, which was a big part of the Animal Futures report.
00:08:47
Speaker
And as posing the question, is AI going to allow us to communicate with our pets better? Is it going to happen? Am I going to play chess with a dolphin?
00:09:00
Speaker
Yeah, so, I mean, this is the heartland of what our organisation does. A Species Project is essentially developing frontier AI to try to understand what animals are saying.
00:09:14
Speaker
And I do really, really want to point that out now because I think... This um is in the hopeful territory when we think about using AI to understand other animals better, to learn to listen to them and learn from them.
00:09:32
Speaker
It can very quickly stray into the areas of concern and when we talk about communicating with other animals. And quite often that could, you could imagine, spaces where that is actually to more to the benefit of human beings.
00:09:48
Speaker
than other animals. So that's the slight, that's the slight tangent. But I think what i what we feel really strongly at our organisation is that many of the challenges we're facing today, the biodiversity crisis, the climate crisis in particular, are driven by the fact that we have become so disconnected from the rest of nature.
00:10:09
Speaker
And I use the rest of nature deliberately because we've forgotten that we're part of it. We've forgotten that we are in fact animals. um And so that kind of disconnection is what allows us to exploit and extract and see everything else as the other and not part of ourselves.
00:10:31
Speaker
we fundamentally believe that if you can understand animals better, you can use communication as a window into the intelligences and the cultures. um of other species and that in so doing you can create impact at many, many different levels. I mean, we've talked about accelerating science, advancing conservation, but fundamentally we believe that it can also change the way we think about ourselves and help us move away from this sense of exceptionalism.
00:11:02
Speaker
We recently experienced jane Jane Goodall's passing. She was the person that really um discovered that chimpanzees make and use tools. And there was that famous quote, which is from Lewis Leakey, which is, you know, we must now redefine man, redefine tool or accept chimpanzees as human beings.
00:11:22
Speaker
That was in like the early 60s. And so language is kind of like one of those next barriers that we have erected. this Only human beings have language. If you speak to most scientists, they will say there is no chance that animals have language.
00:11:37
Speaker
And yet there are discoveries every month about a hallmark of what we thought was human language in other animals. So this ability to to um kind of break down those barriers and almost open open our ability to connect because so much of nature is actually communicating all around us in ways that we simply don't have the hardware to even perceive.
00:12:04
Speaker
I mean, plants make sounds. um And actually, you know, if Chloe was a real cat, Chloe might be able to hear at the same frequency that a houseplant communicates its distress when it needs water, right? So there's all this stuff happening and we are actually not even in the loop.
00:12:21
Speaker
But AI can actually help us to connect to that. Will that help us treat animals differently? I mean, i you know, i ah hope so.
00:12:34
Speaker
It's not a given, though. And I think we have to be incredibly intentional about this and think about ways in which if we can understand other animals, how does that upend current systems?
00:12:46
Speaker
How does it shift the economic system from an extracted one to a regenerative one? um How can we start to engage, well, learn from nature, learn from other animals, but also start to engage those voices in our decision-making processes?
00:13:01
Speaker
If we can do that kind of thing, we might move into the space of transformation and different ways of engaging with other animals. But as I said, it's not a given.
00:13:12
Speaker
And it's really about humility, um engendering humility in ourselves. About 70% of the audience think that it would transform the way we treat them if we could communicate with our animals better.
00:13:26
Speaker
Lots of people nodding. What do you
Legal and Ethical Considerations of AI and Animals
00:13:28
Speaker
think, Melanie? I think and one of the greatest problems that other organisms face, but most particularly animals who can communicate with us, and actually we're pretty good at guessing what animals...
00:13:42
Speaker
and need and want anyway. ah So i I've done an experiment in a room with a number of different people, different groups of people in different countries actually, where I've um played audio of a cow who's had her calf taken away And I've played audio of a cow humming, so cows hum when they're contented and because ah a woman is singing a lullaby.
00:14:07
Speaker
And I take the images out, so you're just listening, and then I ask this sort of often quite sceptical crowd if they feel confident telling me what they think, but just whether they think it's good or bad or what they think might be happening.
00:14:20
Speaker
And they get it right 100% of the time, of pretty much everybody in the room. And then when I sort of tentatively ask them and they they might offer reasons why, they're actually pretty good at guessing what they think might be happening.
00:14:34
Speaker
Then I put the visuals back in. And when I put the visuals back in, there are audible gasps. It transforms when they then see all of the other information beyond just the auditory information when they can see the physical effort when they can see and and in in the video where with the um cow that's humming her ear lifts up and she moves her whole body closer to the woman who's singing the lullaby and people fall to pieces at this point in time and this is often a sceptical crowd So we can communicate with other animals already and we understand really that they have interests and preferences but what is missing, I'm afraid, is the gravitas that comes with legal and moral standing.
00:15:17
Speaker
We do not have robust legal and moral standing for other living beings anywhere on this planet. That's really where we need to go. so if this kind of technology can can be part of what it gets us in that direction then I think that would be an incredible bonus.
00:15:33
Speaker
um One area of concern I have actually is in, there's a fit for us broadly within, who are concerned with animal welfare and animal rights, is that at the moment there's a lot of conversation floating around about AI welfare, believe it or not, alongside animal welfare. So in this same conversation, there's there's a growing discourse around AI welfare.
00:15:59
Speaker
And that concerns me because that means that we're sort of seeing synthetic forms of calculation in computers as somehow being analogous with what is intelligence or sensitivity or agency in other living beings. And that is not a pathway that I think we should be going down.
00:16:20
Speaker
We've got a question from the floor on this. Can we get mic too? Emma. Emma Slowinski. She's at League Against Cruel Sports. Okay, cheers. Right, Bron. Staying with the trouble.
00:16:34
Speaker
There she is. Thank Kate. Am I on? You are. I am on. Wonderful. um This is fantastic. And yeah, the idea that an AI vacuum cleaner might get legal recognition before an animal does has exploded my brain. yeah um And my question really relates to that, which is, do we think it's worthwhile trying to pursue some kind of government policy or legal protection around the implementation of AI?
00:17:03
Speaker
So if it is a function that's going to be negative for animals, there's just something in place, perhaps a little bit like there is with some of the genetic stuff where there's at least a question asked first, is is now the time to be doing that?
00:17:16
Speaker
And if so, is there a way we could get animals represented in the formulation of that policy so we're not repeating that mistake of doing stuff to them um rather than involving them in that process?
00:17:29
Speaker
I think any area where there is a question, really broadly what we're talking about is justice, that an affected person or entity who is affected and who should have moral you know considerability, so should matter to us,
00:17:49
Speaker
um and is going to be directly affected by an action should be consulted in a just and fair society. um Of course, we don't have anything like that really anywhere.
00:18:01
Speaker
ah We consult humans. So we're we're a great actors. You know, everyone who is probably in the room, in in a way, the citizens' assembly are, to a certain extent, trying to take us some steps forward.
00:18:14
Speaker
the radical step of whether we would really more substantively consider and include other species. mean, outside of my role in the RSPCA, that's work that i I do in a project called Animals in the Room, where we're looking at how we can really substantively represent other species in a more, as ah as a new kind of political frontier.
00:18:34
Speaker
And let me tell you, it's extremely complicated. It's not easy and it's not trivial. But I think in the meantime, while we work towards that kind of horizon, we should certainly be deploying more citizens assemblies. So we we need to be see having more citizen consultation.
00:18:52
Speaker
um We need to be having more debate. We need to be slowing down and placing interventions so that you don't get... straight from one kind of biased sort of human driven, human centric set of assumptions that don't sufficiently do due diligence and really consider other living beings as moral subjects and um entities that we should consider. So everything that we can do, so of course, we should be doing that with AI development.
00:19:22
Speaker
ah No question. I think every frontier is an opportunity to start building that more democratic landscape for other species. Yeah, and if I can add to that as well, I think that, yes, 100%, we should be pushing for regulatory frameworks.
00:19:41
Speaker
um And specifically, you know, we're we're trying to catalyze a conversation around regulation around how you use AI to, whether it's to communicate with or just simply to understand other animals.
00:19:54
Speaker
And what is interesting is a lot of people then say, well, we can't even do that in the human domain, right? We haven't done that effectively for AI and how it affects human beings. But actually, this could be an interesting window in, right? um Suggesting that there need to be regulatory frameworks for the way AI is affecting animals. And there's an interesting stuff happening in the EU around that. Mm-hmm.
00:20:18
Speaker
um could actually be an interesting way in then to opening the door to more effective regulation for human beings as well. We actually did a survey recently of how people around the world were feeling about AI and animal communication.
00:20:32
Speaker
And we were really surprised by the results. I mean, first of all, this is ah ah a thousand people in more than 67 countries. And more than 60% definitely feel that animals have language, emotion, and even culture. 60% also showed great openness to including other animals in decision-making processes in some way, shape or form. They didn't know how that was going to work, but they were really interested and that blew us away actually. We were quite surprised by a pad.
00:21:04
Speaker
But on the flip side, I think it was 85% of those polled were really, really concerned about the potential unintended consequences of the technology and felt that in particular, we needed to keep um close tabs on industry, using this in factory farming situations yeah as an example. So I think there's a lot of openness there. And I actually think there are some real, there's some real opportunities to start looking this forward.
00:21:35
Speaker
It's not going to be easy, but i think we need to. I very much agree with that. The only thing I would add is just to build on your point that we're horrible at this when it comes to, you know, humans. and Where do we even start? So your point there that it is maybe opens the discussion by introducing animals into this framework from the very beginning might get us some more attention.
Cultural Resistance and Technology Implementation
00:21:56
Speaker
What I think, what I worry about is the speed in which all of this develops because the classic approach of an organization like the RSPCA is, invest in education, run a few campaigns, be smart in the way you ah work with with parliamentarians, etc.
00:22:12
Speaker
We're not going to the time to do that systematically and from you know the bottom up. So what is the sort thought leadership that the RSPCA and others can provide using those ah out these findings from your research and make sure that there's far more awareness and then think about that smart way in.
00:22:30
Speaker
A time is not on our side. No, and there may be some interesting, um ah some interesting almost acupuncture points as well, where as an example, exploring now what it would take for the voice of an animal to be admissible in a court of law, right? If you can start to point the research in that direction, to actually start getting to places where we can consult.
00:22:56
Speaker
um And that will mean that the I think that the regulation has to follow. Yeah. from AI, we move on to, she comes. I think a lot of you, picked her up, by okay.
00:23:09
Speaker
A lot of you are probably, did you have a little go on Chloe? Oh, yeah, I think she did the rounds, she did the rounds. um Anne withered back.
00:23:22
Speaker
I mean, I told you, she is the star of the show. i With ai you know, comes the opportunity to make even more realistic robot pets like this. I pass her along.
00:23:36
Speaker
there um Thomas, you've got a lot of thoughts on robot pets. I want you to tell us about robot pets. yeah Your experience of them so far. I will want to start by saying I'm far more in the space of the real thing.
00:23:49
Speaker
ah rather than a robot pet. However, I want to give you two examples why I think this is really an important building block for future um interaction.
00:24:00
Speaker
um i it In my spare time, I'm a trustee for an organization called Hearing Dogs for Deaf People. So we match assistance dogs for people with profound hearing loss. And that those are assistance animals. They help them ah just navigate everyday life, you know, fire alarms, doorbells, that sort of thing.
00:24:18
Speaker
But equally important is to combat the loneliness and isolation that comes with hearing loss. And I think that the challenge for that organization is we just don't have enough volunteers to work with the puppies to get enough of these dogs into the match with a person with profound hearing loss. So I can totally see how in a very short time frame you would find a way of having a robot do some of that work instead of ah of a real animal.
00:24:48
Speaker
And the second example, directly related to to little Chloe here, um my own dog is a therapy dog that goes to care home close to where I live.
00:24:58
Speaker
ah Pets of Therapy is is a great organization matching a lot of, um you know, schools, patients, people with dementia, et etc. So we go go to a Bupa care home and I see these emerging more and more now.
00:25:12
Speaker
is You can just buy them. but You can just buy a version of it. Maybe this is more sophisticated. You can buy this on Amazon. See? Brings in at about 150 quid. Yeah, exactly. and I know this because the first time I saw one, i was i was just asked to change batteries, which, you know, they do go through quite a bit of batteries.
00:25:28
Speaker
ah But it's fascinating to see how people, you know, these are very depressing places. um And when you see, you know, the the rise of dementia, Alzheimer's, etc., and how they impact the impact that has on society, my point would be, why not? Why not? You know, this is a very, very cheap way to assist with what otherwise is hugely expensive care and medical needs, etc. So I totally see a future for that ah in one way or the other, but in those areas in particular.
00:26:01
Speaker
What about you, Jay? there are There are these advantages, but then there's this, I mean, I i ah have always had cats and it's it's something about recognizing a another being um and learning to kind of adapt, change to to to something, an animal that's unpredictable that you will never fully, fully understand.
00:26:24
Speaker
I just think this there's so much power in that. And that's the power of when people are exposed to companion animals that be that it unlocks something in them in terms of empathy. I don't know. And I also really, really worry just about more, particularly when we mentioned Amazon, um more products be sold in the world. um And it just kind of reinforces our our um training as consumers stuff.
00:26:52
Speaker
um so Absolutely. my My point is there will be a lot of people for whom it will not be realistic to actually hold a pet because they can't afford it or they are in a situation where that's just not possible.
00:27:03
Speaker
And if there is a you know ah medical or mental health um way to alleviate some of that, and i i have I would not hesitate for one minute to go down that route. Have we got a poll at Robot Pets?
00:27:17
Speaker
I'd love to see the results of the Robot Pets poll. And maybe while we chase that, we've actually got a question from the floor. Andy from the New Citizen Project. Is he around?
00:27:27
Speaker
Oh, there we go. Great. Hello. Thank you very much. Yeah, so we I'm Andy from the Citizen Project. I co-ran the Citizen Assembly alongside this brilliant team. My question was about actually there's 15 billion recommendations that that were voted through by the Assembly and are in the report and RSPCA has responded to.
00:27:46
Speaker
It's actually the the one that was about technology that was the one recommendation that didn't get enough support by the Citizens Assembly to become a recommendation around using technology to ah to to to further welfare. And I think that's something we saw across the whole of the big conversation, the online conversation with the public as well.
00:28:03
Speaker
And in our polling with with the but representative polling, There's almost this knee-jerk reaction from a lot of people against the just the use of technology in general. People spoke about wanting natural solutions, this idea of things being sort of not not real. you know People know best how to look after animals. So I just wondered, is that kind of knee-jerk reaction against technology something you've seen in your work? And also, kind of what does that tell us about how technological solutions should be rolled out?
00:28:29
Speaker
i mean I can say from from my perspective...
Gene Editing and De-Extinction Concerns
00:28:33
Speaker
That is not the knee-jerk reaction they get because ah but really what we're offering is the potential to understand other animals better. and And people are very, very engaged with that. I think the other thing that's been really interesting is, of course, with the rise of ChatGPT, which...
00:28:52
Speaker
and and all the other models now that you know have burst on this thing in the last couple of years is that people now see that potential, they're engaging with it, and they see that, actually, that they're seeing that it's probably inevitable that we're going to have something similar um for the animal domain soon. So I think people really, really engage with that potential and possibility.
00:29:15
Speaker
Their minds always go to the positive. That's typically where they go. um and it often is, can I talk to my dog or my cat? um that's That's where people go.
00:29:26
Speaker
um When we raise unintended consequences in in terms of, um you know, the ability to help poachers, hunters, and to control landmills and factory farm situations, the majority of people haven't thought about that yet.
00:29:45
Speaker
So actually, I'm not seeing the knee-jerk reaction against technology, um but potentially indifferent in different domains, we will be seeing that. Yeah, i um I would say it's very common within scientific research um for there to be...
00:30:06
Speaker
what it's called a natural bias so a bias towards things that appear to be are perceived as rather than necessarily that they you are natural so and I'm going to get on to this in a moment but and genome editing would be a very very good example of that and gene editing more broadly when we um engage with publics about where the instinctive resistance is coming from, it's very often because it feels as though it's not natural. And there are explanations given for this in terms of just our own kind of um evolutionary history. We have preferences for things that we think are quote unquote natural. And they're also cultural um impulses.
00:30:48
Speaker
But I don't think we should just entirely dismiss it as as that either. um I think there's a lot that we could talk about here that's actually very complex that we certainly don't have the time here to discuss or surface, but just to acknowledge that if we're we're living through the third industrial revolution at the moment.
00:31:07
Speaker
So this is a revolution that is primarily about the engineering of biology. um So... It's not in fact AI. We think about AI.
00:31:19
Speaker
AI is really, sorry, fourth industrial revolution. AI is really part of the third industrial revolution, which is the digital information revolution, so computers and so forth. It's just the sort of Zemith of that. But the first and second industrial revolutions, which was about the kind of mechanization of energy and the release of and and the machine age, nobody foresaw pollution.
00:31:40
Speaker
Nobody foresaw the ozone hole. Nobody foresaw the sorts of... We're mopping up in climate change the consequences the first and second industrial revolutions. Now, many great things came from them, but you can understand why people might be resistant.
00:31:56
Speaker
We're living with disinformation now, societal disruption. all-time low belief in democracy. That's been driven by the consequences of the ah third industrial revolution with the digital revolution.
00:32:09
Speaker
Can we be surprised? And are publics wrong to be hesitating as we face the fourth industrial revolution? I don't think that they are.
00:32:19
Speaker
And we should get onto that. Gene Eddysik. You know, ah obviously, I guess it's an opportunity to maybe improve health for animals.
00:32:31
Speaker
There are some positives, but there are a lot of negatives. How do we harness that technology in a way that doesn't further commoditize animals, do you think, Melanie?
00:32:43
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm a bit of a bore about gene editing and genome editing. So I think it is...
00:32:52
Speaker
something that our society isn't taking so seriously enough. I think it is an enormous frontier for animal welfare and for what it is to be human, for what it is to have ah a a wild world. um It really matters and we very little understand it.
00:33:11
Speaker
So when we did, i i work in bioethics in the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, we did a citizens assembly on genome editing farmed animals. And citizens were very, very clear that they were concerned about welfare implications. So there's a great push to use gene editing and genome editing to deal with, again, a lot of the kind of negative consequences that come from farming. So trying to deal with disease in in crowded organisms, making growth fast growing organisms. So fast growing salmon, for example.
00:33:46
Speaker
um trying to reduce sort of injury by ah gene editing. There's lots of invisible forms of gene editing at large. The pandemic really accelerated this. This is one thing that I try to point out. We had the three R's, ah so, of animal research that have been around for a long time now.
00:34:05
Speaker
which are broadly um ah desired by publics around the world. So this is, ah you aim for replacement of animal models in research, but first you work on reduction and refinement.
00:34:17
Speaker
But when gene editing got in the mix, so we gene edit widely with um research models, particularly mice and rats, but other organisms as well.
00:34:30
Speaker
ah Once that happened, we had an uptick in animal research because replacement had been under fireed ah had been undermined by refinement. So my concern is that we are already deploying an incredibly powerful, incredibly test disruptive technology.
00:34:49
Speaker
And I'm a great believer and supporter of science, but we are... deploying this at present already, um what in a really widespread way, it's making a lot of money as well.
00:35:02
Speaker
um There has been no public consultation anywhere really substantially on this in the world, certainly no recognition of the agency and autonomy of the organisms themselves.
00:35:12
Speaker
And that's already being rolled out and normalised in our world. So ah the the likelihood that we're heading towards greater objectification and a radical form of industrialising the bodies of organisms is already at large in society today.
00:35:29
Speaker
Sorry to be, and I havet i haven't even got onto de-extinction technologies yet. Well, let me talk about that. So our poll, you can see the results of it here. If we develop the technology to breed and reduce extinct species, should we?
00:35:45
Speaker
Which often comes up in this area. What do you think about that, Jane? oh I think ah there are huge risks in this. And I think what, I mean, you know, it sounds good, you know, a species when extinct, potentially due to human pressures from, you know, anthrop anthropocentric or anthropogenic causes.
00:36:06
Speaker
um Why not bring it back? Wouldn't that be a good thing? where would be top of the list? Well, ah I don't know, um ah because i'm I'm not actually a supporter of it. oh ah But...
00:36:19
Speaker
What that does is ignore root causes. so yeah it It simply says, we destroyed something and now we have the power to bring it up and say you will. um Not thinking about why um that happened in the first place and also completely ignoring the interconnectedness of nature and the complacency of nature and of evolutionary processes.
00:36:40
Speaker
And so there's there's just something in that which is, again, just as such a great example of human beings feeling like we know and understand enough to design nature and to control it.
00:36:56
Speaker
And that is fundamentally the mindset that we need to change. so for me that it doesn't feel like these are the right sorts of things for us to be emphasising. It's almost a microcosm of the big issue. Yeah.
00:37:08
Speaker
Can I make also like some, put some detail on it as well? Let's just but just look at the reality of the situation. Many of us struggle to get money and resources into conservation and into animal welfare and to have it be at the heart of people who people's priorities, despite the fact that caring for other species Particularly caring for animals should be the pillar of what a good society is is. It should be what a good society grows from, not that we do on the other side of it.
00:37:39
Speaker
Putting that to one side, hundreds of millions, something close to 500 million was raised by the group that brought back the dire wolf. Now, let me be clear that no dire wolf was brought back.
00:37:52
Speaker
There are no de-extinction technologies. It's genetically engineering a novel organism. What they did was take a grey wolf, which was ah close had a close relationship to the dire wolf, which by the way was not driven to extinction by humans either.
00:38:08
Speaker
um tap So what they've done is sold and it's gone on you know newspapers all around the world that the dire wolf has been brought back.
Alternative Proteins and Consumer Behavior
00:38:16
Speaker
No, they haven't. They've genetically modified a grey wolf at the same time that there was a national public conversation on whether or not humans in North America could live alongside grey wolves and they can't.
00:38:29
Speaker
That's the reality of the context in which this is happening. It's basically Jurassic Park. I.e. really bad idea. If only we could bring Jeff Goldblum along. That's right.
00:38:42
Speaker
We'll try for next year. Yep. Wilberforce 26. We'll make a phone call. Okay. I'd love to talk more about gene editing, but we haven't got long left, unfortunately.
00:38:54
Speaker
So we must move on. And ah this is to an area which yeah I've spent a lot of time working in over the last stretch of time. I've been in labs in San Francisco trying, I guess, fillets of fish grown from fish cells.
00:39:12
Speaker
ah Quite extraordinary. That was about 10 years ago. And, you know, it's come on a really, really long way in just 10 years. we're talking about alternative proteins. I think at the minute it sits at kind of, ah it's a hundred billion dollar industry at the minute. That's the kind of ah figure being touted at the moment and it grows 10% year on year.
00:39:35
Speaker
Do we think that alternative proteins could drive a revolution which reduce our reliance on animal products? What do you think, Thomas? I certainly think it's part of the solution and we need to very seriously drive further research and acknowledgement of what that contribution could could look like. and We've got lab-grown meat in pet food in the UK today.
00:39:59
Speaker
not available on the market. It will be in another in other countries. And, you know, there are all sorts of issues around the energy use and growing this in reactors, etc., which is so foreign to the way we think about feeding ourselves. But the reality is the biggest animal welfare crisis on the planet today is that of farmed animals and low and lower welfare farming. There is no way we can tackle that at scale without significantly reducing the amount of animal products we consume, simple as that.
00:40:29
Speaker
And as people want to eat protein, where are the alternatives? I think it's brilliant when, you know, celebrity chefs talk about beans. Wonderful. But, you know, we need to be doing more in bringing consumers to the, um you know, to the recognition that they really have a choice to make every day in their in their food choices.
00:40:49
Speaker
And I do think that the and debate around, for example, processing in in alternative products today is a detour from the actual recognition that we have got to find that solution. And for me, alternative proteins need to be part of it.
00:41:05
Speaker
And we're hopeful that we're going to see some positive ah language in in government you know strategies around supporting this and investing into this technology in the very near future. Do you think almost culturally we've got a bit of speed bump get over in terms of, I mean, that's what I encounter a lot, of kind of consumer resistance to it.
00:41:25
Speaker
Yeah, of course there will be. There's the ick factor, you know, and there is there is the simple thing is if you don't want to eat animals, don't. You know, there's plenty of alternatives in ah in the plant-based ah range that you can actually do.
00:41:38
Speaker
But why not try to find solutions where we know there is a vast quantity um of of alternative protein that we need to provide? So I wouldn't rule it out at all. I think we should cautiously, ah optimistically embrace it and see where it takes us.
00:41:54
Speaker
I mean, it's interesting, isn't it, referring to, a guess, Petri dish, ah you know, as potentially having the egg factor for some people over an abattoir, you know. There is that.
00:42:05
Speaker
Yes, there is that. But I think it's also far too exotic and far too expensive. And, yeah you know, we do need to keep the environmental impact and the cost, basically, ah in
Transparency in Animal Product Provenance
00:42:16
Speaker
mind as well. The RSPCA will be our pca we always speak about the animal welfare element first and foremost, but we don't live in isolation from the rest of those factors in society. And that's why I think the discussion about meat reduction, for example, squarely puts us into a debate that needs to be had with more urgency than we're having it today.
00:42:34
Speaker
I think at the moment our audience thinks yes, with some significant effort, ah it could definitely reduce our reliance on animal products. And related to this, we've got a question from Claire. Can we get a mic to Claire?
00:42:49
Speaker
This is about ah people having information about provenance of animal products to help them make better choices. Thank you very much. Really fascinating discussion. Thank you so much. and um Where are you from, Claire? Oh, sorry. I'm from Humane World for Animals. So we're we're a close partner organisation of the RSPCA.
00:43:07
Speaker
um and ah the And the citizens' assemblies are just so encouraging because I think they they confirm what we all hope and suspect that we we are a nation of animal lovers.
00:43:18
Speaker
um But then the question is, and you just touched on this, Thomas, ah why as consumers do we make so often choices ah that cause animals so much suffering and that there's so much lack of information given to people? And so, you know, when people are interacting with animals, so um you know, after they're wrapped in cling film and they're and they're having thoughts about, you know, some bucolic imagery of, you know, farming from yesteryear, but actually the reality is is vastly different.
00:43:45
Speaker
But um my question is about the technology, coming back to technology. We all carry around these supercomputers in our pockets and and in our hands. We buy food with them. We walk around supermarkets with them.
00:43:56
Speaker
So how can we we use technology that's in people's hands to... connect people with real-time, accurate and useful information that can empower them to make kinder choices as as consumers and and get rid of the the gap between you know fact and fiction with in Farm Inc.
00:44:15
Speaker
well I think the Citizens Assembly discussed the issue of labelling for example and we would very much want to see labelling system in place that as a consumer with all that confusion um that is out there about what's the right thing for me and what's you know what's the impact of what I consume, it is right there in your hand. You can do the whole barcode thing today if you think about your your health on all sorts of products. There's no reason why a strong labeling if it's sufficiently clear, sufficiently unified across product ranges would be a great solution to that and I think you know that's where time is going to be on our side because the development happened so quickly that I can totally see a future where as a consumer going into a shop, into a supermarket you will know exactly in terms of annual welfare and the labels exist in other places not yet in the in the UK and I think that's only a matter of time now and we should absolutely support that.
00:45:09
Speaker
Anyone else on that? I suppose something that's quite interesting, I've been reflecting on it a lot lately, is that when we make something that you said made me think of this, you know, what are the environments in which we engage and consume and how do they affect our agency? And one of the things that we have to, um mean, obviously we're animals ourselves. And when we make decisions, so when we act, the decision generally comes kind of,
00:45:37
Speaker
sort of through the body and then right comes into your kind of conscious thought sometimes it does come more kind of thought down into the rest of the body into an action but we have created these environments you're sort of saying why is there this disconnect and it's because the environments that we pass through actually affect our bodies first and foremost before they get anywhere close to our kind of um cognition um So there can be a real disconnect if we're in environments that are very unempathic that are misleading or that are very distracting or where our attention is, or there's placement that we're not even aware of that's sort of leading us down ah particular pathway so that actually where our values are. and where our actions are can become greatly uncoupled by the environments that we build. And I would say a lot of our commercial environments are like that. They're not helpful for us.
00:46:34
Speaker
You could say that's just as true of our health, for example, and making good, healthy choices in the environments and supermarkets so as it is with our moral kind of um environments ah or choices. so So I think there's something there. And actually, maybe, maybe tech can intervene there by...
00:46:53
Speaker
Providing a connective tissue to get value alignment and action to come together with consumers by being that kind of missing bit that overrides what's happening in that commercial, you know, environment that you're passing through. There's possibly something there.
Future Scenarios for Animal Welfare in 2050
00:47:13
Speaker
Brilliant, thank you. um Now, we are almost out of time. We just have time for one last question. Now, I've got it here and a lot of you will have looked at this, but the Animal Futures Report is very much focused on what 2050 is gonna look like. And so I'd just love to quickly whiz down the panel and find out from each of you what you think the best case scenario or worst case scenario is gonna look like in 2050. Start with you, Thomas.
00:47:40
Speaker
So the worst case scenario for me is that we're going to see more horrible monster breeds on the farm and in our homes distorted. And there's been no regulation and no changes in values and attitudes that would prevent that.
00:47:55
Speaker
and On the positive side, I'll go back to something we said earlier. If we understand how animals feel and think, in my view, that will drive up ah campaigns for better welfare and we're going to get to a much better place.
00:48:08
Speaker
But with all this talk about artificial intelligence, let's not forget the one thing we already have today, which is emotional intelligence. And that can ignite that kindness that we're going to need to see for every animal.
00:48:20
Speaker
Excellent point, yes. Melanie? Yeah, my worst case scenario is probably that we will have killed the wild. So I have genuine concerns that we could get to 2050 and there will be no wild left. We only have 4% of wild mo and mammal biomass left. So I think it's a realistic proposition if we're not careful that we'll kill the wild. So that that distresses me. And with that would have come the widespread objectification of of other species.
00:48:49
Speaker
um But my really hopeful scenario, and I have to be honest, I'm more on the hopeful side, would be that we have a new form of civilization. We have one that is democratically inclusive. We have one in which we are more connected with the living world again. And we have one in which we haven't demoted humans, but we've lifted up the rest of the living world with us.
00:49:17
Speaker
Brilliant. Very hard to follow. Jane, yes. um Pressure is on. I should have started thinking. I was like, you know, the worst case scenario for me, it's all this.
00:49:28
Speaker
And it is that we've actually used, we've trivialised the power that technology is giving us. So for me, that is actually that every one of us has an app on our phone.
00:49:44
Speaker
we can We can communicate with our dogs and our cats at home. We can have quick little conversation with the birds in our garden. But it has fundamentally changed nothing about the way we are engaged in. In fact, has entrenched the systems of control.
00:50:01
Speaker
ah And that that is leading to, it degrades the health of all life, including our own ah lives. But very much like Melanie, I think that there is um huge potential for us to emerge into a place where there's this new relationship with nature that looks, could look like and many, many, many different things. This new civilization that you're talking about, it could like mean financial mechanisms that get agency to other species for actual financial agency.
00:50:33
Speaker
and It could look like um all corporations having to have an AI mediate with the rest of nature on their boards of directors. But it it could also look like instead of just human citizens assemblies, when we're debating these questions, it could like look like multi-species um assemblies.
00:50:55
Speaker
So all of that is actually possible. That is a great note to finish on. Multi-species assemblies. Thank you for joining us for this special edition of the Animal Futures podcast.
00:51:07
Speaker
Thank you to our panel, Melanie, Jane and Thomas, whose shared knowledge and expertise have helped to enlighten and explore how we embrace technology in a way that drives a better future for animals, people and the planet.
00:51:21
Speaker
I hope listening to this podcast has inspired you to consider what you can do to help create a better world for every animal. You can find out more information about the Animal Futures Project on the ah RSPCA website.
00:51:35
Speaker
Thanks for listening.