The Animal Turn
Animals are increasingly at the forefront of research questions – Not as shadows to human stories, or as beings we want to understand biologically, or for purely our benefit – but as beings who have histories, stories, and geographies of their own. Each season is set around themes with each episode unpacking a particular animal turn concept and its significance therein. Join Claudia Hirtenfelder as she delves into some of the most important ideas emerging out of this recent turn in scholarship, thinking, and being.
The Animal Turn
Bonus: Veterinary Ethics and Animal Welfare with Sean Wensley
Using his book Through a Vet’s Eyes as a backdrop, Claudia talks to Sean Wensley about veterinary ethics and animal welfare. They discuss some of Sean’s experiences as a vet as well as some of the challenges vets face in representing animals’ interests.
Date Recorded: 20 February 2024
Sean Wensley is Senior Veterinarian for Animal Welfare and Professional Engagement at the UK veterinary charity, the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA). He was President of the British Veterinary Association (BVA) and chaired the Animal Welfare Working Group of the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe (FVE), which represents veterinary organisations from 40 European countries. Sean has contributed to animal welfare and conservation projects around the world and in 2017 he received the inaugural World Veterinary Association (WVA) Global Animal Welfare Award for Europe. In 2023 he received the J.A. Wight Memorial Award from the British Small Animal Veterinary Association (BSAVA) for his outstanding contribution to pet welfare. His first book Through A Vet’s Eyes: How to care for animals and treat them better was selected as one of the Financial Times’ Best Summer Books of 2022.
Featured:
- Through a Vet’s Eyes by Sean Wensley.
- Here for the Animals by Claudia Hirtenfelder.
- The ethics of referral by Barnard Rollin.
- Abolition with Gary Francione on The Animal Turn.
- Every Twelve Seconds by Timothy Pachirat.
- Community Led Conservation with Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka on The Animal Turn.
- Learning Animals by Nadine Dolby.
The Animal Turn is part of the iROAR, an Animals Podcasting Network and can also be found on A.P.P.L.E, Twitter, and I
Wild Times: Wildlife EducationWildlife mysteries, crazy news, and daring animal stories—listen now!
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
A.P.P.L.EAnimals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
The Animal Turn is hosted and produced by Claudia Hirtenfelder and is part of iROAR Network. Find out more on our website.
So again I was trying to connect the naturalist's attention to behaviour, spotting that the end of a branch has just quivered a bit more than the wind can blow it and thinking, oh, I think a squirrel might have just jumped off that branch. And sure enough, there's the squirrel. Just having that close attention to the world around us, and particularly animals when we are fortunate to to spot them, then applying that same close, careful observation to to the an imals that we use.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:This is a bonus episode where I'm going to be speaking to Sean Wensley about his book Through a Vet's Eyes. I was fortunate enough to meet Sean at a conference last year here in Vienna that was looking at veterinary ethics, and in today's episode we're going to talk a little bit about his book, which is really interesting. It's a fun and interesting read and quite dynamic in the ways in which it's been put together and we're going to be talking about two concepts veterinary ethics and animal welfare. I think we spend a bit more time with animal welfare than veterinary ethics, but you'll certainly get a sense of how these two concepts are interrelated and why it's important to be thinking about them in the world of veterinary sciences and looking after animals. Sean is a really generous guest. He gives a lot of himself and his ideas throughout the episode and I very much enjoyed talking to him. We had some good bouncing back and forth going on and, yeah, it was all around, I think, a really, really good conversation. Let me tell you a little bit more about him.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Sean is a Senior Veterinarian for Animal Welfare and Professional Engagement at the UK Veterinary Charity the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals Sounds like they do really incredible work. We speak a little bit about it towards the end of the episode. He was President of the British Veterinary Association and chaired the Animal Welfare Working Group of the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe, which represents veterinary organizations from 40 European countries. Sean has contributed to animal welfare and conservation projects around the world and in 2017 he received the inaugural World Vecnarian Association Global Animal Welfare Award for Europe. In 2023, he also received the JA Witt Memorial Award for the British Small Animal Veterinarian Association for his outstanding contribution to pet welfare. His first book, the one we talk a bit about today Through a Vet's Eyes how to Care for Animals and Treat them Better was selected as one of the Financial Times Best Summer Book Reads for 2022. It's a really interesting conversation. We go in many, many different directions and I hope you enjoy listening.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Hi, Sean, welcome to the Animal Turn podcast.
Sean Wensley:Hi, thank you very much. Thank you for having me.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:I'm delighted that you're here. It's not too long ago that we met at the conference in Vienna and you very graciously gave me your book and I've had the opportunity to read it. So thank you so much for gifting that to me and I'm excited to talk to you today. I'm hoping that we can talk about kind of two concepts but I think they're interrelated and let's see how we go and that's veterinary ethics and animal welfare. But before we get into that, let's talk a little bit about you and about the book. So you are a vet, right?
Sean Wensley:I am, yeah, I qualified in 1993, started in 1998. So yeah, 20 years a vet, and I've had a fairly varied career as a vet.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:And how does one become? Because you're in the UK. So how does one become a vet in the UK, and if you're a vet in one country, can you be a vet in any country?
Sean Wensley:They check that the standard of education being offered by those universities is acceptable, and so when we qualify, we qualify with a degree in veterinary science, veterinary medicine, but then we can also become a member a so-called member of the royal college of veterinary surgeons and that then allows us to to practice in the uk and work as a veterinary surgeon. The rcvs, you know, uphold standards and check that they maintain a register of veterinary surgeons, have a veterinary surgeon. The RCVS upholds standards and check that they maintain a register of veterinary surgeons, have a disciplinary procedure for when that's needed and the qualification is transferable to some parts of the world that recognise it and others you might have to do an additional qualification that's relevant to the local area that you would like to work in
Claudia Hirtenfelder:you say veterinary surgeon, there is there a difference, I guess, because maybe you can really bring it down to basics for here, when we're thinking about vets, what are we?
Claudia Hirtenfelder:what are we talking about? Because when I think about a vet, you know, I think if linus is sick, there's someone who I take linus to to check him out, but I've never really thought of that person as being a surgeon. So there are different kinds of vets, or how does it work? Like, really dumb it down for me, tell me, what does it mean to be a vet?
Sean Wensley:That's a great question. Yeah, well, there are some differences in terminology actually around the world. So in the US, for example, the term that would be more often used is veterinarian. In the UK, here we just traditionally use the term that would be more often used as veterinarian. In the uk, here we just traditionally use the term veterinary surgeon. But they are interchangeable. So basically we're just talking about someone who has that undergraduate training that I've just referred to. We have a bachelor's degree in either veterinary science or veterinary medicine, but that's just. Different universities call it by a different name. It's the same qualification and are therefore eligible to become a member of the royal college of veterinary surgeons.
Sean Wensley:Um, I mean other differences in terminology. We would call typically, some of the vet works here in clinical practice a veterinary practice or a veterinary surgery or a veterinary clinic, whereas in the us they often call them a veterinary office. So there are some differences in terminology. But but this is a person. A vet is a person or a veterinarian is a person who has that training which allows us to practice as vets and the type of vet that you've alluded to there, that you've come across with your own pet, and that would be the most common interaction that most people would have with a vet, I would.
Sean Wensley:I would say taking their pets to, to see the vet. And that, then, is work that we do to both prevent ill health, you know, through vaccinations and preventive medicine, and of course to to treat as well, either through medicine and or surgery. But what often isn't realized is that vets do that work across lots of different areas of animal use, so that clinical work of course isn't just for pets. It's on farms, it's on horse racing stables, it's in laboratories where animals are being used for research. The clinical work of veterinarians is undertaken in all of those different settings where animals are used by humans. And then there's also a wide range of non-clinical work that people with a veterinary qualification are doing, whether that's in policy or academia, academic research, advisory capacity, government work. So there's the non-clinical applications of the veterinary science degree as well.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:I want to come back to that a bit later, kind of the non-science or the non-medicine parts of veterinary ethics, and I think we'll come to that in a moment. But before we do, it's not very often I get a chance to actually speak to a vet. So how long do you have to study to become a vet? And you said that you work across all of these different realms. So over the course of getting your degree, is it a matter of you go to all these places? You do. Do you do practicals on farms and working at a you know, I don't know shelter or like how do you? How do you get this experience? Do you get a kind of full suite of experiences over the course of your degree?
Sean Wensley:yeah, it's quite an applied degree in that sense. It's five years training. In the UK, one of the vet schools, it's six years and they have the middle year you are able to obtain a BSc. So a degree sorry, a bachelor's whether it's in science or arts but in another allied or unrelated subject, a subject of your choosing, but for most of them it's it's a five-year course and, yeah, it it's typically structured across the different areas of animal, what I'll call the different areas of animal use that I've already mentioned.
Sean Wensley:You know these different categories of animal use. So we do some farm animal lectures and then placements to go and understand how pigs are farmed in the uk and how cattle are farmed in the UK and so on. So we do get that direct exposure. And then, similarly with the others, the classic ones are farm animal, equine and companion animal. There are opportunities for so-called electives where, if you're particularly interested in something, you might go and do some zoological medicine or exotic animal medicine and then seek a placement which will be supported in that area. But the main ones are pretty much farm, companion and an equine. Public health is looked at quite seriously. So that's the veterinary role in, you know, assessing, particularly in the food supply chain risks to human health that vets with our training understand and can help and support food standards and food hygiene. So that's definitely covered and we have placements that allow us to see aspects of food production as well.
Sean Wensley:Veterinary role in slaughterhouses is not only to oversee and uphold animal welfare to the extent you and your audience would believe that's compatible with the nature of a slaughterhouse but also to help examine and inspect the meat and the animal-derived products that are going into the food supply chain for high food safety risks yeah, I imagine that's really challenging, challenging work and and yeah, I think, as I mentioned to you in the kind of email correspondence between us, I have some challenges with the concept and idea of animal welfare in and of itself, because it seems to be at this moment, when you reach a slaughterhouse, no matter what you say in terms of how good an animal's life has been prior to that point, you're reaching kind of the, I guess, a point to which animal welfare doesn't make sense to me and I think, as you've, I mean not, it doesn't make sense.
Sean Wensley:I understand that there are better and worse ways to die. I think that's a. I mean we can understand that in terms of our own lives as well, there are better and worse ways to die. But I think the whole premise on underlying this is, in essence, that animals are there to be used and actually their welfare and their pursuit for life is not really what's under consideration there.
Sean Wensley:Yeah, and hopefully you know you'll have gathered both from the presentation that I was able to give in Vienna where we met at the Veterinary Ethics Conference, and then through the book at undergraduate level at university, and then, lastly, in my career, I've become very interested in these questions of animal welfare and ethics and the veterinary profession's role in society. And our role and our social relevance and social license only exists in the prevailing constructs and attitudes to what is socially acceptable within society. So I think it's I'm fascinated by not only our relationships as humans with non-human animals, but also these ethical questions. I've been fortunate to spend time with our national representative body, the British Veterinary Association. I was their president in 2015-16. And it's really important in that role to think well, to take a sort of big picture view of what is.
Sean Wensley:What are we contributing to society here? What is society increasingly challenging, expecting of us, wanting us to be doing or not doing? And so I certainly wouldn't. I'm fascinated by your perspective and I can very much. I mean we'll discuss what that perspective is more, I'm sure, but as I understand it, you know, I think it's really important that we're challenged in that way and that we keep challenging our relationships with animals and the underlying ethical foundations and justifications. So I certainly wouldn't sit here as someone who's keen to defend the status quo and the traditional role of vets in sort of upholding the status quo.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:I mean I imagine it must be really hard because, being at that conference, one thing that really stood out to me was the differences of opinion right, it's not like all vets agree on everything. And I wrote a brief blog entry about it where everyone was saying that we're here for the animals. You know, I think everyone in that room would agree that they were there for the animals and doing this work for animals in some shape or form, whether it's from a pragmatic perspective of saying you know, animal use is not going to end tomorrow, so how do we make that use more palatable? So others saying making it more palatable is the problem in the first place, because this produces productivity. I mean, it increases productivity and it just makes that kind of use acceptable, you know, in the kind of socially acceptable in the status quo.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:But I think it was really interesting was to question whether or not and how vets are part of this conversation, especially, I think, as things like One Health are taking more and more of a center stage at the moment.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:I think a lot of people are saying well, vets should be the ones standing up on the stage because they understand animals best, or they really understand both medicine and maybe some of their evolutionary desires, et cetera. So vets would be the best ones to kind of politically represent animals. But then there are others who are saying they're not so convinced. I think it was Karen Heaston, I'm not saying I really enjoyed her kind of presentation where she said she wasn't convinced whether or not vets were the correct one. So it's really, I think, great to see that these conversations are happening. Really I think it's. I imagine it must be really interesting work and challenging work, because it feels like you're probably damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. You're talking to me and you're damned if you do and you're talking to someone else and you're damned if you don't.
Sean Wensley:Yeah. So I'm certainly interested in all of that. I suppose my perspective there clearly is a status quo of animal use. You know humans do use animals for different purposes across the planet and across cultures and throughout history, so that that is a given, that it's not to say that the types and nature of the use won't and shouldn't change. But you know, there is a fact that we do use animals and derive benefits from animals at the moment, and it seems a good thing that there ought to be in the equation and representation of how they're used and how their interests are, both explored and then to be understood and then, once understood, advocated for.
Sean Wensley:If there can be a trusted, evidence-based, ethically founded professional that the public are, at the moment at least, willing to listen to, then a person is classically described as the veterinary surgeon or the veterinarian. So that's, given this sort of public role and something of a public expectation that we will be the voice of the animals. Okay, so that's, that's a bit of a classic characterization of our work, that we're, that we're present. As I say, we are in slaughterhouses, we are in racing stables, we see what's going on, we're at the coalf face of animal use, whatever is being discussed and described elsewhere. The bottom line is we are there, we're witnessing, we're seeing it and we have, yes, relationships with those who are deriving particularly financial benefit from doing it. So there's a clear potential conflict as well. But, that notwithstanding, we're there and we can and we can see it, so we have access, I think I mean. So that's quite a privileged sort of pedestal to be put on, you know, as a professional. But my starting point is I would like to see us grow into it, you know, I think I can see the, the value and the the persuasive nature of that type of argument that if you did have a voice of the animal present in all of these places really doing their job, you know, without fear or favor, and fulfilling that, that opportunity and duty, then that's, that's a good thing.
Sean Wensley:But there's work to be done to, I think, to secure and maintain that position. And maybe the two that I'd pick on one is that we've classically been trained in sort of animal physiology, animal basic biology, of course, then the clinical things like pharmacology and pathology and all that kind of stuff. But the emergent field of science, as you know, has been in how we assess and understand animal interests, how they perceiving the world and how they're feeling and what matters to them. And our profession, I think, is quite open that we've not kept up with that area of science. So that definitely then puts us at a disadvantage. You know, we can't really be seen as the leaders and guardians for animal welfare if we are less skilled than others in in understanding how we understand the nature of their being and how they, how they understand how they relate to the world. So there's that risk that we should, you know I think we are addressing and that's improving, but it's recognized as a risk.
Sean Wensley:And the other one I've already touched on is a potential conflict of interest. We are, we. There's the so-called veterinarian's trilemma, which is the conflicts that can arise between our different duties to the animal, to the business and client that we work for, and to to ourselves and the profession. You know, we're trying to draw a line of best fit in many ways through those different stakeholder interests and although we absolutely should be putting the animal's interests first and I think any time that is discussed or consulted upon, it's always agreed and re-agreed that that's who we should be putting first. Agreed and re-agreed that that's who we should be putting first, then nevertheless remains a challenge of implementing that. Someone's paying you to be there, you know, and even just tactically you can get people. You're thinking about human behavior, change, human psychology if you don't deliver, don't deliver that advocacy and communicate it in the right or most effective way, you'll just get a defensive and potentially hostile reception to it as well.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:And I wonder to what extent animal's property status plays into this here as well, because this seems markedly different to a doctor for humans, a human doctor, where if I go in, even if I'm a child and my mother has a different opinion, or I'm as the patient, the main priority for the doctor. Right, the doctor would never do anything to me. That's not, I guess I mean, ethics. Obviously medical ethics has a sordid history as well of not doing things and doing things that they shouldn't do, of not doing things and doing things that they shouldn't do. But kind of in a general state, me as the patient, I would be the most important thing to the doctor. I wouldn't come in there and my mother wouldn't say I just can't deal with her behavior issues anymore, Can you just put her out of commission. That would not be something that would be asked of my doctor, and if it was, my mother would be reported and then she would go somewhere else.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:But somehow it's really, I think, accepted that you can have an animal, let's say, with behavior issues and because that's your client, if you don't put the dog down, because they perceive it, they'll go to another vet who might, and I imagine that must be, yeah, and this is that trilemma you're talking about, right, like, are you speaking to your client, your customer, or to the dog's best interest? And I assume that this just amplifies higher up you go. If you start to look at slaughter houses, the agricultural industry is massive. I'm sure that this becomes extremely political very quickly.
Sean Wensley:Yeah, and it's a really good example that you've picked on. So, in helping to encourage and foster the debate within the profession and those that take an interest outwith the profession around our principal ethical duty. You'll know, bernard Rollin and others have talked about the mechanic model of veterinary medicine versus the pediatrician model. And, exactly as you say, under the mechanic model we're just there to.
Sean Wensley:Someone brings a broken animal, it's their property, it's yes, it's sentient, but the sentience isn't necessarily fully accounted for and they just say you know, can you do this please? How much is it going to cost? Right, well, no, I'd rather you didn't and you bin it off, put it on the scrap heap versus the pediatrician model, where the, the animal's interests, are first and foremost. And we go into that interaction with the, the guardian, the keeper, the owner, the guardian, thinking how can we get the best outcome for the animal within the sort of you know, constraints that we're operating within, um, but where the and I think that is helpful to get for, as I say, fostering the, the discussion and helping people like vet students and others think about it but where it falls down in the final analysis is that, yes, pets and other animals are classed as property, so they don't have the same fundamental sort of rights that a human patient has, a human infant has when they're being seen by a pediatrician.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:That first example you gave, kind of where you said vets have perhaps been a little bit behind other sciences, and kind of thinking about animal sentience and phenomenology and the ways in which they experience the world. I found that quite surprising and interesting. So if you were to think about the sciences that are perhaps leading this, so it sounds to me like there has been an animal turn in veterinary ethics and it seems kind of strange because animals have always been your subject, but it seems as though there's really been a kind of critical turn in terms of thinking about them as beings that think and feel and experience the world, which is quite interesting. But if you were to think about a science that is leading this, what would you say?
Sean Wensley:Well, there is now recognised a dedicated field that is referred to as animal welfare science and that's kind of typically characterised as being the science of understanding how animals perceive the world. Clearly, they all have very different senses and some of their senses are dialed up or dialed down compared to ours, so their actual perception of the world is very different to ours and we run the risk of assuming that they all perceive the world like us when they don't. So that's one part of animal welfare science how do they perceive the world? And then, secondly, what matters to them? What are their needs and their wants and their pleasures and their pains? How do we better understand those? And that science is only roughly about 60 years old, so it's really quite young and it's also a little bit of a damned if you do. Damned if you don't type area of science, because it's quite an applied science. Damned if you do. Damned if you don't type area of science, because when we it looks, it's quite an applied science. So it's looking at, for example, common husbandry practices that are done to millions of animals, if not billions of animals, globally. Take, for example, so-called mutilations of farmed animals, like tail docking, teeth clipping, castration, disbudding all of these things that we do for various reasons, typically without anesthesia or analgesia, pain relief those practices are now rightfully A coming under scrutiny, coming under the spotlight. So why are we really challenging? Why are we doing these? Are we doing it simply because tradition and we haven't really considered that there might be a better or different way of doing things, but also trying to understand the nature of them? Because if you ask that question, it's based on the premise that we think it's not very nice for the animal. Of course, pain in those examples is what we're concerned about.
Sean Wensley:Now, if we're to be cautious and scientific and go into thinking there are implications for livelihoods and economics and industries of just being seen to give an answer from the from the outset. So we approach it thoughtfully, then someone will say well, you know, how do you know? It's painful, they're not humans. And this is where it can become a sort of the science of the ridiculous, potentially because an animal that has pretty much the same relevant anatomical structures, the same neurochemistry and so on squeals when something that is unpleasant to us happens to them. But the defenders of that practice will say no, no, no, no, it's just because they don't like being away from their litter mates, or they've never been picked up before. They don't like being picked up. You know you're making the mistake of thinking it's pain.
Sean Wensley:So this, this, this branch of science has found often fascinating and clever ways of elucidating whether or not some of these things are painful. And when we get the results of that, then science does, I think, still, you know, carry the weight that it ought to. It's, it's proof, it's evidence and it's much, much harder to argue with. And that has, can be and has been really influential. And then getting new guidelines or legislation off the ground and across the line and into statute and so on. So it's, it's, it's persuasive and it's influential and beneficial. On the other hand, on the damned, if you do so, that people say that's the most ridiculous science ever. You know, you don't need to be the most brilliant mind in the world to know that if you chop a piglet's tail off with no or and or testicles off with no pain relief, then and they scream and squeal. You know.
Sean Wensley:So you know you get that argument
Claudia Hirtenfelder:and you bring this up in the book. I think I had to. I had to laugh a little, actually in the beginning of the book, because you, you said, common question you get from people is you know, how do you look at all of these different species? Because there and I even in the blog entry I wrote about the conference, the conference, I, yeah, but you know, human doctors have one species that they have to look at, and animal doctors, vets, have a whole host of species
Claudia Hirtenfelder:.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:And then you kind of went on in the book to say, well, as much as there's all this variance, there's a lot of physiological similarities. And now one of my new favorite words is pentadactyl, which I've learned from your book, which is that we all, kind of most of us, share this kind of five-limbed situation. So when you start to look physiologically and considering that physiology was always this like premium state for veterinary ethics or veterinary science, physiologically there's no reason to assume that they wouldn't experience pain. It seems, like you said, it seems like the science of the ridiculous. But, as you say, whenever a study comes out, that kind of illustrates without a doubt that, yes, it is pain, it is another kind of tool in the toolbox I think of advocates, of scholars to really engage in these conversations without being fobbed off as being overly emotional or, you know, it does help.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Now I know you've had to do some of these types of mutilations. You've been trained in doing these types of things. What was in going through this training and learning how to do these types of things to animals? When you'd learned it, did you see or perceive anything as being wrong with having to do this stuff? Were you uncomfortable? How did you kind of navigate that emotional realm of having to do this work? Or did it just seem normal that you had to do it?
Sean Wensley:Yeah, my journey towards reflecting on any of these things has had a gestation, as it does in lots of people, and probably in hindsight, hindsight, a longer gestation than I would have liked it to have done. You'll know from the book that my first love, essentially my first passion and my reason for being interested in animals and then wanting to be a vet was the natural world, natural history and being out in nature. So I was fortunate to grow up in a part of the world in northwest England that had great biodiversity. It had sand dunes and pine woods and nature reserves and that was all on my doorstep and I lapped it up as a teenager and earlier. And I guess you go from just the pure, unadulterated joy of having that access and just its aesthetic and it's peaceful and all of those things it's just there to be enjoyed through, probably in my teenage years, to it being somewhere where you ponder a little bit and reflect on how you and your species is connected to others and related to others, probably initially just in terms of ecology and you know the interconnectedness of species in an ecological sense. And then I went, I was fortunate to get a place at vet school, which was competitive and difficult to secure a place and started the training and the placements and the point about competitiveness is relevant, certainly in my case, but I'm sure it would apply to others, in that once you were in there there was a lot to learn. So it's a very, very packed curriculum for five years and it's something of a treadmill, so there's a rapidity and
Sean Wensley:a volume of material to digest which is worth learning.
Sean Wensley:Considering here because there's not much time to reflect, there isn't really built-in time to think. What we're doing is ethically problematic and there's also I think, as I say, this would apply to me, but I think others as well because it's been so competitive to get into. Not everyone comes out the other end. You know there's quite a drop off each year, so there's also something of a, a fear, you know, a concern. If you even did pause to reflect on what you're doing, it's not going to be you that would ever either have the opportunity or desire to to raise, because you might fall behind or you might fall foul of a, an attitude, that from someone that says you're not really here to ask questions like that. You know now, as I said, I qualified 20 years ago, so I think there's much more awareness now and due consideration given to reflection and ethical consideration. So I'm not going to say that's like exactly like that today.
Sean Wensley:But yeah, to answer your question, I I was just trying to keep up, claudia, you know, you're just in there and and you and you, you're thinking how do I do this if I'm past piglets? And I've just been shown by someone who does it all the time very quickly the farmer. Okay, you basically cut here. You don't want to take too long because they're going to wake up, because you know the little piglets were asleep when we went to that first litter. You just cut here. Hold here, now, turn this way. You need to fiddle. There was a little cauterizing a little, essentially a burner that burns through the tail and that's lit, you know, and so you've got to handle that safely and you cut here it's. You're just trying to. You're taking it all in and going right, right, right, okay, and fumbling this poor little creature in your hands, just get getting on with it and hoping that you pass that module. So that's my honest, personal answer.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:I think it's a fair answer. I think many of us can relate to kind of, I think, when I've always said busyness is the kind of antithesis to niceness, like when you busy you're not as nice or as kind or at least I'm not, because life just gets, I think, a bit too busy and there is something to be said for not having the space or time to really think about what you're doing. And I know it came up in the conference, this idea of moral was it moral distress, where we're kind of what's expected of you as a professional and maybe what you're feeling personally don't align, or they don't align years later. Right, like you're doing something and there is something about the speed with which it's done. I think the same thing has even been said about factory farm workers is they have to do pretty horrible things but the speed with which they have to do it makes reflecting on what you're doing a really hard thing to kind of navigate
Claudia Hirtenfelder:and go through.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Coming back to what you said about your book and kind of your appreciation and love for nature, I really really kind of appreciated that throughout the book you blended. Each chapter seemed to blend kind of a wild animal who you had experienced and an animal who you were experiencing in your practice, and that's just maybe what I would talk from it. But it seemed like each chapter was trying to blend these different animal worlds into a chapter and you were asking both ethical questions but also, at the same time, explaining some of what you had to do in your day-to-day practice. What was your thinking between doing that kind of blended model?
Sean Wensley:So there's a yeah, there's a thread of nature writing that's woven through it all, and I had three main justifications for doing that, or reasons for doing that. So the first one was to try to be authentic. So, as I've just said to you, this is who I am. I'm, at heart, just an amateur naturalist who loves being outside. If I could build something of a relationship with the reader who I was then wanting to take on this sort of hand-holding journey with me through the world of animal use as I've experienced it, then you know I wanted them to have a sense of the person that they were walking with. So there's something about just a sort of honest reflection of me as a person. So that was reason one. The second reason was then, as we've just been talking about, to try and use nature, as I and many others do in, in quote unquote real life for its well-documented and increasingly well-documented capacities to promote restoration and psychological reflection. You know, to go from those scenarios where some unpleasant things common unpleasant things are happening, out into beautiful nature and just remind ourselves that for self-preservation, you know it's, the world's not all bad and there is beauty to be found. Let's just go back down to the beach and think about it and try and understand why that's happening in our society in various parts, as you know. I then come on also to think about what we might be able to do about it as citizens and people who care about it. But so that kind of action phase as well, it's not just reflection but as a first step let's just get away from it all and have a think and take a deep breath. So that was something about the formula of the book, because if I was just doing chapter after chapter of relentless descriptions of animal harm, then you know that's arguably a less accessible book. And thirdly, there was something this goes back to animal welfare science. What's been so influential and helpful has been the way we have been able to use animal behavior and observable animal behavior to understand how they're feeling. So again, I was trying to connect the naturalist's attention to behavior, spotting that the end of a branch has just quivered a bit more than the wind can blow it and thinking, oh, I think a squirrel might have just jumped off that branch. And sure enough, you know, there's the squirrel. Just just having that close attention to the world around us, and particularly animals when we are fortunate to, to spot them, then applying that same close, careful observation to to the animals that we use. So, for example, lambs that have their tails docked, which is very common and done to millions, millions of lambs. It's done very, it's done very rapidly and we don't stop, we just return them to the pen. Do the next one returns the pen, return them.
Sean Wensley:You often don't stop to watch them, but when you do watch them and this is what animal welfare scientists do there are a lot of pain related behaviors which are quite subtle that they show. So they find it difficult to rest. They're frequently lying down, standing up, lying down again, they kick their hind legs, they wag their tail, they turn around to look at their back end because there's a, there's a source of pain there. They've got an increased respiratory rate, which you can see, that they're breathing faster. And the video that I showed at the conference actually has two lambs where, for the purpose of science, one of them has received a local anesthetic prior to the procedure. So you can really compare and contrast between a lamb that's comfortable because their pain is being managed and one that isn't. But they're classic behavioral indicators and if we don't take the trouble to pause and watch them carefully, then we just don't see all of that. But it's really clear and obvious when we do take the time to look for it.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:I really, really, really appreciate what you're doing here, because I had Carl Safina on the show years ago and he's an amazing, I think, naturalist writer. He writes about wolves and elephants and I remember asking him saying would you ever write a book like this about cows and pigs, domesticated animals who we use and who have been part of our societies for thousands and thousands of years, and actually applying that same level of awe and wonder to their social structure, to the ways in which they organize when they're given the opportunity to organize their worlds? And it was an interesting conversation because that was like no, no, he sticks with wild animals and he does it beautifully and wonderfully.
Sean Wensley:But I've always found it quite interesting that there are these kinds of two genres of books. You have this celebration of wildlife, this love affair really with wildlife, that's almost written separately from the Anthropocene in some ways, right From the human impact humans are kind of outside of, except for maybe in the concluding chapter, kind of reflection on how we're impacting the number of species or their population sizes. And then, on the other hand, you've got advocacy books that are advocating for animals and saying you know, our use of them is abysmal, the ways in which they're treated is abysmal. Look, they're amazing, but look, the use is abysmal. But very rarely have I come across a book that's actually just a celebration of you know, like wonderment at pigs, like wow, look at what they can do. You know, they're not pests, they're not like, they're incredible creatures who do amazing things. So I appreciate that kind of tension that you're trying to pull there by drawing these almost different genres into conversation with one another. I very, very much enjoyed that.
Sean Wensley:It made it harder to publish. I should say I was very fortunate to find eventually an agent who got that and sort of was able to play it back to me in the way that you just have. They read it and they said they could see what I was trying to do, whereas other agents before her and then after her various publishers just couldn't quite grasp which shelf it would sit on for exactly for exactly the reason you've said. Is this a nature writing book that's celebrating and enjoying nature and the natural world, or is it animal ethics, animal rights type book?
Claudia Hirtenfelder:and I think people don't know how to deal with the audiences either. Right, I think especially veganism or animal activism is viewed perhaps as being a very niche and specific market that you're gearing towards and that if your work is tied with any sort of activist brush, that maybe it's not going to be as purchased or as, and I mean mean, I think there's a lot in your book that I would I'd be like I want more from you. You know like I want more of an activist bend from you, but that's you're going to get that from from anyone, right? You're going to get that from. The vets that read your book are going to say we want less, maybe, or so I. I think that this book makes you quite vulnerable in some ways, but I think it's an impressive thing to do because it shows the kind of complexity and difficulty of being a person that's trying to do their work and dealing with really intense ethical issues but, at the same time, showing that it's not just you that's part of the story. Right, there are pigs and lambs and dogs and house finches and a whole host of different animals whose lives are really impacted by our decisions, and I think that that's something you drove home.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Towards the end of the book you spoke about passive consumption. Maybe you can talk us through that a little bit. What did you mean when you referred to passive consumption?
Sean Wensley:I think that's just the fact that animals and animal use is woven into our daily lives so widely, so insidiously, that we don't really necessarily realize the ways that our lifestyles and daily choices are supporting and essentially propping up. You know the status quo, so there's something about just revealing, um, what you know, what goes on is that kind of I suppose sooner not call it an expose, because then that gives it a sort of a feel. But yeah, you are exposing what goes on behind closed doors, and then you might want to take action off the back of it, and I would support that. So passive consumption could be. We each get what three votes a day, it's often said with our, with our meal choices, and you might choose to abstain from animal derived products meat and dairy and eggs off the back of reading a book like mine or I signpost to some of the so-called higher welfare assurance schemes where things like farrowing crates aren't permitted, routine mutilations aren't permitted, slaughter without using stunning that renders the animal unconscious before they have their throat cut isn't permitted. You know, there are certain ways that these schemes address the harms and harmful practices that I've outlined, and some people might feel able to take that step when they're not yet or ever will, be willing to give give up animal products completely.
Sean Wensley:Now I, you know, I don't really advocate, I'd advocate you do something, but I'm not, I don't strongly advocate, as you know, one or the other of those options. I suppose that's partly because I I think, once you've given information and hopefully a clear way, it is a personal choice what people do. I don't want to tell people. You seem to be telling people what to do, even though I'd like them to do something, and there's something of the. I guess, tactically, you know, more people are probably going to do one than the other and if as long as everybody does something, you will raise the bar, you will reduce the total sum of suffering across the board.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:I mean, like you said, you can see a lamb who's experiencing less pain or more pain. But I guess my biggest concern and I was never really able to articulate this until I spoke to Gary Francione on the podcast not too long ago Because for me I was always like why wouldn't we approach trying to get animal rights and animal welfare at the same time? Because obviously the world's not going to go from using animals for thousands of years to not using animals for thousands of years overnight, so obviously we need to. The animals who are here right now experiencing these things need better conditions. But the goal, the hope, should be to move away from that, to move away from this kind of absolute reliance and use of animals. And I was like surely we can see these on different temporal scales.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:And his response and it stuck with me and I'm still working through it a little bit was not only can you not work on them together at the same time, but animal welfare undermines any sort of pursuit for animal rights because, as we said at the beginning of the interview, it makes that use a bit more palatable. You can feel better about chickens being in confined situations because the chickens I'm not eating or the eggs I'm not getting don't come from battery hens. So as long as it feels a bit better it's not the worst of the worst then it's okay. And of course I mean, this is not you, sean sean, give me all the answers to everything, but it's. Do you think these two are irreconcilable or do you think there is a way for them to to work together?
Sean Wensley:I think it's, it's a it's. It's very difficult and I'm not sure that there is a right. It's hard to know. Maybe only with the benefit of hindsight in the future can we look back and see what did or didn't work. Because the risk, as you say, of pursuing the animal welfare ideal, which is, you know, the fundamental, I think, ethical positioning there is that it's okay to use animals for our benefit so long as they have a good life and a humane death in return. And I think that is pretty attractive and persuasive if they genuinely, if that could be realized and we, hand on heart, believed it was realized that they were leading the life that they would choose almost let's for argument's sake, say the life they would choose or certainly one that wasn't constrained or curtailed in any way. That really bothers them. So it's a good life and then a kind of instantaneous humane death that they barely perceive, or if at all. Now the question there is is death in itself an issue, you know, is that curtailing of life problematic, but if you don't believe that, that that's ethically problematic, that an animal can have an absolutely brilliant life from their perspective and then for it to be instantly ended in a way that they just didn't even know happened.
Sean Wensley:Then I can see that many parts of society could could sign to that, and it's kind of through the animal welfare position what we are signing up to.
Sean Wensley:The difficulty is, for all of its simplicity, it would still be a radical departure from where we are now. We would just be breeding different types of dogs in different ways to be kept as our pets. We'd be acquiring pets in different ways. Farming would look very, very different and that would have implications for our environmental stewardship as well. You know, it'd be a much sort of a lighter, more hands-off, less intensive approach to farming that was respecting the living environment, had agroecological principles at its heart and more sort of ranging animals that are not only enjoying their lives better but delivering ecosystem value as as they did, values as they did it. So I think you can paint a picture, you know, a sort of compelling picture. The difficulty is if you don't believe it's really achievable. It's a nice description, but it's not really ever likely to be practically achievable at the scale that we're talking about, then, yeah, it legitimizes something that arguably isn't ever going to be realistically achieved.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:You mentioned breeding. You mentioned breeding there, and I think you spoke a fair bit about that in the book as well. What are your thoughts on breeding as a kind of practice?
Sean Wensley:Well, I suppose my first answer would be if we agree that it's okay and justifiable to use animals at all, then they have to come from somewhere. So breeding at that level is acceptable because we need those animals in the world. The challenges come, and the ethical challenges come because of the breeding decisions that we make. It's selective breeding. Animals aren't typically choosing who's who to breed with. They're being bred with those that we, that we elect for them to be bred with or it's, you know, done through artificial insemination in many cases as well. And we are selecting for certain traits that are beneficial to us as humans. So some are being bred for guarding, herding, fighting and, on the farm side, productivity, rapid, efficient meat production, ie muscle mass that grows quickly and can be taken from the animal when they're killed at a relatively young age.
Sean Wensley:And in selecting for those human beneficial traits, we often inadvertently select for something that's harmful to the animal's quality of life. There are classic examples like breeding chickens for meat production. The selective pressure has been for the chickens to grow as fast as possible so that we get that muscle that we eat more quickly and more of it. But that has been linked to lameness and painful lameness, and the birds and their walking abilities can be very, very damaged and impaired because they're so effectively, because they're so heavy and we've, while selecting for rapid carcass efficiency, we've inadvertently selected for genes that are harmful for for mobility when, when you're a vet in a, let's say, a slaughterhouse that slaughters chickens.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:So I read I think I don't know if you've read it Every 12 Seconds. It was also a book about he was doing his PhD and Patcherat, timothy Patcherat, and he got an undercover position in a slaughterhouse to work as a slaughterhouse worker in the United States and it's, I think, a brilliant book and the geographical work is really fascinating. And the United States and it's, I think, a brilliant book and the geographical work is really fascinating and the social work. But he kind of described, I think, what a slaughterhouse looks like from behind closed doors. Many of us, like you said earlier, vets have access to some of the spaces. Many of us don't. When you're working as a vet in a chicken slaughterhouse, are you looking at every chicken that comes past your way like, how, how does it, how does it work? When you're a vet in the slaughterhouse, what, what are you doing? Where are you standing? What does it? What does it look like?
Sean Wensley:so these are vets who are employed by the government, so they're government vets undertaking a statutory duty. I just out of I will say I would hesitate to speak on their behalf. So you know, anytime you start to comment on any one veterinary professionals work, you know that's. They are immersed in it and much more expert in it than I can be, sort of helicoptering across the whole lot. So have that as a qualifier. But they're present, as I mentioned earlier variously, in the location where the animals are killed or stuck and or stunned. But they're present, as I mentioned earlier, variously in the location where the animals are killed or stuck and or stunned, before they're killed, to check that that's going as it is required to, according to guidelines and process and legislation. So is the stunning equipment working properly? Are they dying as quickly as they meant to? There's no mis-stuns or you know there's nothing going wrong at that point.
Sean Wensley:And they're also present with meat hygiene inspectors to, as I said earlier, look at then, after that, the, the carcass and aspects of the carcass that's coming through on the line. I mean this is like a big factory, you know. I don't know, some of your listeners will have been or seen them on television animals are. An important part of the whole slaughter process is is the transport from farm to the slaughterhouse, then how they are offloaded, typically from a from a lorry. You know that welfare standards and oversight applies to all of these parts of the process before they even get into the slaughterhouse, then where they're held, and then they start moving towards the killing area, and so it goes on. It's like a production line. Thereafter Different things happen to the carcass and part of an animal comes out at the other end that will go to shops.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:And in your work with animal welfare because I know you've been doing a lot of work in the UK with animal welfare what are your kind of? I mean, I guess we haven't really done a good job of prying apart the difference between animal ethics and veterinary ethics and animal welfare, so maybe we should maybe speak a little bit about how those two are different. But then, in your kind of capacity as someone who does work on animal welfare, what are you hoping towards? That vision that you gave a moment ago? Is that your kind of end goal? Is that what you're working towards and hoping for?
Sean Wensley:I think so. Yeah, that's what's as. We've increasingly focused on these topics as the veterinary profession. So, taking seriously our responsibility, taking seriously some of the challenges and discussions that are taking place at the moment, we've done a lot of work through our representative bodies. So I've been involved at the British Veterinary Association when I was there, and then after that, the, the federation of vets of europe, which represents veterinary associations from 40 different countries.
Sean Wensley:We've both developed animal welfare strategies now that have been asking these questions and consulting widely with the profession, and the sort of headline of both them is is that animal welfare position that I described, a good life and a humane death? How then do we, as vets, help society move towards that? And we've really now this is part of veterinary ethics, but kind of clarified our dual duty. So it's the work that vets are doing at the coalface of animal use within the status quo is is all honest, important, valuable work. That's. That's the whole thing about helping the animals in the conditions in which they currently find themselves.
Sean Wensley:But because we know what the typical root causes of the common problems are, then our dual duty says we should also be speaking up and speaking out about why they're coming into our practice in the first place. So maybe it's just not good enough to just be widening the airways of flat-faced dogs that can't breathe but breathe well because of the way that it's selectively bred by people. It's really important for those individual affected dogs. But we as a profession should be saying to society look there's again, as I said earlier, in a sort of professional, respectable, appropriately communicated and effectively communicated way, there is a problem here. There's an underlying ethical problem that, yes, we could just keep our heads down, we could do the operations day in, day out and take the money for it, and that's how we earn our living in that example.
Sean Wensley:But as professionals we should be saying it's not really right that they're, that they're being bred this way and we would like to help you a reflect on that, b challenge that and. C support your transition away from that. So you know, we're not, it's that fine line. We're just, we're not just suggesting that we should be rebel rousers. Is it rabble rousers? I don't know.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:I'm not the best person for it. I get my words confused all the time. We'll just call them rousers.
Sean Wensley:Yeah, yeah, antagonists. There you go and just wagging a finger and telling everyone they're doing everything wrong. I think we want to position ourselves as critical friends, we want to challenge and we want to help you move to something that's different or better.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:In this work, do you work with the people who are wagging their fingers and being?
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Because, you know, I think it's sometimes easy perhaps to give that label to the people that have placards and are standing outside factories and are saying and raising these questions, and I know that they are the thorn in the side of industry. I think advocates and activists will gladly admit to being the thorn in the side and saying that their role and it's an important role is to be the people that are wagging fingers. But as much as the industry or vets are perhaps speaking to industry and what industry wants in terms of productivity, when you're speaking about people who are perhaps arguing very much in favor for what is in animals' interests, I think there are a lot of activists who should be at the table and perhaps aren't because of this kind of fear that they are wagging fingers or being and I think that sometimes that's a label used to keep people away who make the conversation more difficult to be had, and perhaps the conversation is difficult to have for a reason. Do you, in your work, also work with activists?
Sean Wensley:Yeah, we did so. There was something of a nervousness, expressed actually by vets across Europe when we did this at the European level. This was a recurring theme that somehow our privileged position as animal welfare advocates was being challenged or undermined by, in the views of some, those who haven't had the direct access that we've had, they've just read papers or they've seen a bit of undercover footage and have taken a view and have gone very hard on the issue and that we're we vet to then sort of losing our place at the table to those who the public and now and others politicians and so on are listening to. And the way we tried to deal with that through the strategies was to say the conclusion we came to was to say it's not either or it's not sort of one's from a muslin on our patch and we need to be at the top of the mountain and that sort of thing. It was exactly as you just said. We should be able to work together with them and recognize that actually we all want to see improvement and we've had nice examples of where there are areas of overlap in mission. We have come together in a way that we haven't previously, even though we've recognized that that particular organization we're partnering with on that issue we wouldn't necessarily be in agreement with at the moment on other issues that they work on.
Sean Wensley:So a classic example was a charity called Animal Aid, an animal rights organization. They basically would like to see an end to the slaughter of animals for food, but as part of their journey towards that they were advocating cctv and slaughterhouses in the uk. And the british veterinary association got behind that as part of our welfare at slaughter policy and says, yeah, yeah, you know, we think that's a good thing, so we can't sign up as things stand to your broad vision, but we're happy to join you in lobbying for that particular ask. And we were successful. Yeah, we were successful.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:You were successful. And is that CCTV footage that's only available to the company or is it something that's in the public domain Like? Could I, as a citizen, go and look at the CCTV footage that's only available to the company, or is it something that's in the public domain, like? Could I, as a citizen, go and look at the CCTV footage so that I know where my food comes from?
Sean Wensley:It's available to vets who are fulfilling the statutory duty and some others. Again, I'd have to look at the detail Now. I don't think it's accessible to the public, at least without some kind of acceptable justification, at least without some kind of acceptable justification. I don't think it's openly accessible in that way. But it's the Food Standards Agency or an overseeing statutory body. They have access to it and they can report on and do report on adherence.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:So it can be used as like a legal tool as well. If a particular farm gets a complaint, you've got this kind of wow. That seems markedly different to what's happening in Canada, the United States, australia with their ag gag laws. That seems like a very different route.
Sean Wensley:So that's been a nice example of working together and I think that's been fostered in these recent years of work in this area by the profession. But there's also, I think, you know, I I have a huge amount of respect for people that take direct action and mobilize in in in ways that you've been describing, and I think the two approaches work nicely together because you have the kind of, let's say, the moderate call, that's just being the critical friend, challenging, raising issues, saying how about, and some of that, you know, is dampened down from the outset by industry defenders. Others are sort of seeing the writing on the wall. They're seeing social attitudes changing. They're looking up and looking at going. Okay, we should, uncomfortable as it is, we should engage with that, and we recognize that it's important to do so and things just start to nibble away and move in a direction and you maybe see a working group or a committee that wasn't there previously.
Sean Wensley:But then those working outside of that collaborative, multi-stakeholder approach are really putting the pressure on and they're getting column inches and they're getting media attention and I think they exert, in my opinion, a really helpful external pressure that keeps everyone else's feet to the fire, you know, because all of these nice initiatives could sort of fizzle out. We'll have some good conversations and then we've sort of ticked that box and and so on. So I think the the my own view is that the the more direct action type approach can really help sustain and maintain interest and focus and also, if they do gain public support which there's certainly been examples of them doing so their ask is we want this? Well, the industry then suddenly think everything that they thought was extreme would have only gone sort of here. So, yeah, let's tick all the boxes that we were being asked for at the start in a bid to satisfy the broader public call. So I've seen examples where you know something then shifts quite dramatically and even though clearly it's still not to the level that the outside ask was.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Just for the listeners, sean is showing me his hands and saying and he's saying, like you know, activists might be asking for something and he's using his hand showing way up here and industry or people, stakeholders come back and they give an offering that's most oftentimes much lower, but it can move higher and higher as the more activists apply pressure. Thank you so much, sean. I said I was going to ask you for your quote at about the 40-minute mark and we've been at it for an hour. This has been really interesting to kind of get some insights into your thinking with regards to animal welfare and the ways in which various stakeholders interact, and that's definitely complicated and, while I might not share your kind of vision of the future, I think it's really important that we have that kind of conversation because there are animals today and people today that use animals and we need to be thinking. We have to think across disciplines, right, we really have to think across disciplines, disciplines and and voices and ideas. But, sean, do you have a quote ready for us?
Sean Wensley:yeah, the one I'd picked was from chief seattle, the native american indian leader, which I'm sure many people have heard it before. I used to have it on a poster on my bedroom wall as a teenager and when I was at university. Um, but it's the one that says this we know, the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected, like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he's merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. And just at that impressionable age where I was thinking about the world as we talked about at the start, that really resonates with my sense of our place in in in nature, as a species. And then, lastly, not only how we sort of managed to sustain ourselves, but how we think and relate to each other ethically. So it fostered a way of thinking, I guess, for better or worse, and that's why I picked it.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:I'm always. I always have to marvel at people that have had these insights as teenagers, because I don't know if I was just a particularly like, not reflective teenager, but I just ran around doing stuff like I don't. I don't remember having any sort of big insights into the world. And you're not the first guest. Many guests come on and they seem to have these kind of revelations as youngsters, as teens, in terms of thinking about how we're part of the world. It's a really beautiful quote and I think I really appreciate how it kind of disrupts the hierarchy of us being above nature. We are part of nature and that has political implications, right.
Sean Wensley:Yeah, and if I could say, claudia, just in terms of my espoused vision for the future and you mentioned that it would diverge from yours I still think that where there are replacements, potential replacements, I don't maintain that it's necessary to use animals and I think it's on on the food side, like cell culture, meat and different types of I mean you know that that's a whole different discussion, that that is equally unpalatable and unacceptable to some people and we.
Sean Wensley:You know that needs teasing apart. But I'm not wedded to the idea personally that we just have to use animals in perpetuity and that we can only do it in a in a nice and kind way if. If we don't have to use them, then I'm absolutely. You know, I'm as interested in that as the next person.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Yeah yeah, I think I mean, and, and to be fair, like I have to do a lot of work on what my, my vision would would be. You know, and there's a lot of, I think, imaginative work and theoretical and difficult work that needs to be done in terms of thinking about this future. And there are some scholars that do that kind of work. They think about it at you know, political realms like Sue Donaldson and Will Kimlicker, for example. But I think when you start from a position of non-use, that kind of like ethical position, you're compelled to think differently about the future. Right, if it's just not an option that's on the table, then you have to think in more creative and different ways in terms of what that future might look like.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:And I understand that a pragmatist might look at me and say, well, listen, that's not going to disappear overnight, blah, blah, blah. But I think my commitment for the future is one that is not premised on non-use, and I think having that removed just means that we have to think more creatively. And maybe it's not a practical or reasonable one, but I don't think we've played with it enough to know that yet. I think it's been pushed off the table too quickly and too readily for us to disregard it. But I don't know, I don't know, just like you don't know, and we're just working towards finding a world that has to be better than what we're currently doing, I think.
Sean Wensley:Yeah, there's no part of me in my personal response to that for which that is especially uncomfortable. I think I would align with that personally as a vet. We are immersed in animal use and a starting point of animals being used again, as we touched on at the start. But I think personally you're absolutely right If your starting point puts animals to one side and says now how can we relate to the rest of the living world in all its different forms's not premised on use? I mean how much energy and conservation work. But there is perhaps some overlap there.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Something very different when use is even removed from the kind of equation of what vets do Like. What would it mean for the profession if animal use was taken off the table? And you'd be a better position to answer that than me. But I think it opens up really interesting thought experiments when you remove use.
Sean Wensley:Yeah, I mean we have seen interesting examples of that. The profession was founded originally around equine veterinary practice. Because horses were so widely used for transport, not least when the motor car came along, the profession had a sort of existential crisis-type moment. You know, what on earth are we, what are vets going to do now that there are no horses being used across every single town and city and village in the land? And of course they adapted and we went into other areas and not least, the absolute explosion of veterinary interest and involvement with companion animals.
Sean Wensley:I mean, that wasn't even there at the start. This whole business of your pet vet who's operating a bit like a akin to a human medic, with the techniques and the resources and the capabilities and the approach. It's very similar to you. That just wasn't. None of that existed. So we have seen massive seismic shifts in the profession and in that example it did relate to an animal use disappearing. So I think that's interesting. But if there was no animal use, if that was replicated across all of the animals for argument's sake, for the thought experiment, then I would say that that then goes back to, or at least into, the territory of this business of the veterinary degree just being a good high quality scientific degree with broad applicability across societies. I mean, I wouldn't. Maybe maybe it wouldn't be called the veterinary degree anymore. I'm not entirely sure, that would have to be thought about, but the transferable nature of what we're taught currently I think we could adapt to this is very it is it is exciting, because I mean as you, as you were saying.
Sean Wensley:This is quite subversive, isn't it? Talk about a world with no animal use.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:But I think it's interesting because I mean, even as you were going through that example of kind of horses and switch to companion use, it would be really fascinating, I think, to read kind of a history of veterinary science alongside a history of animal use and to see how the history of the profession has been shaped very much and how shifts in animal use have changed right. And I think your idea of this future of vets but without animal use it would be. You would still have animal medicine, right, there would still be animals that need. I spoke to Gladys Kalema-Zukusoka, who's a wildlife vet in Uganda, and her work and community engagements and her understanding of like gorillas' health needs, as well as the local community. She's doing some really exceptional work and the gorillas are being used but, I think, in a markedly different way, where they're acting as a source of an attraction for people to come and see the coffee and and there are questions to be asked there.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:But it's a very different kind of use. Her, I think, her vision and her, her thinking. Anyway, I'm happy you got excited about the. What would veterinary ethics be without animal use? Well, not ethics. The the profession thought experiments are fun, they're fun, and then I think they're important yeah, yeah, do you know?
Sean Wensley:um, you're keen to wrap up. There was if, if there's time, just nadine dolby wrote a book called learning animals. She's a professor of educational studies, I believe, at purdue university, and did a really interesting study of veterinary education. So she's not a vet, she was looking in on veterinary education and followed a cohort of veterinary students. And then she's not a vet, she was looking in on veterinary education and followed a cohort of veterinary students and then wrote a very interesting book called Learning Animals, which published a couple of years ago.
Sean Wensley:I included a quote from her, if I may, which is sort of in this territory. So she said historically, veterinary medicine has tacitly and quietly accepted that animal suffering and human violence towards animals is necessary and quietly accepted that animal suffering and human violence towards animals is necessary. However, more recently, societal pressure on these norms and practices has required the profession to rethink its response to how it both represents and participates in these acts. And reading things like that, having conversations with people like yourself and who have your knowledge and perspective and interest, and my awareness that that kind of discussion is happening around the profession you know this is the context that we're increasingly operating in I just think is is fascinating.
Sean Wensley:Of course we could feel we as a profession could feel threatened by these sorts of ideas for the reasons that we've just touched on. It could be really challenge our place in the world. But wow, I mean, if I maintain that as professionals, that's what we're going to do, we've got to, we've got to do what's right. We're not. We aren't trades people just taking money and trying to take as much money for as long as we can. We are thoughtful, professional people that need to be acting in the best interests of society and the planet and animals. And if that leads to some challenging conclusions, then I'm not gonna.
Sean Wensley:I would do not want to, I'm not gonna have it on my headstone that I tried to stand in the way of progress
Claudia Hirtenfelder:beautifully said, sean, and I think, yeah, I think these types of conversations are just really generative and important, and one thing I really love about animal studies is it does foster this ability to speak across disciplines, across sciences, and I think, if all of us are just hoping for something better, these conversations are really important. So thank you so much for being with me on the show today. Before you say goodbye, could you let us know what you're currently working on and if people want to get in touch with you about the book or about your work with animal welfare, how do they do that?
Sean Wensley:they can find me on twitter, my or x, which is I still.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:I don't think I'm ever going to get used to that. I think it's gonna just elon musk's gonna have to deal with the fact that it's always just going to be called twitter.
Sean Wensley:Yeah, so I'm on there, as at sean wensley, you can also contact me through the royal college of veterinary Surgeons on their fellowship or directory of fellows. I'm on there, so you find there and what I'm currently working on. I work for a veterinary charity, pdsa, in the UK. We provide free and low cost veterinary treatment to people who can't afford private veterinary care, and so in my day job I work on policy and advocacy and some research on companion animal welfare.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:That's amazing. You know we were talking about this kind of vision of the future, and I don't know if you know Will Kimlick and Sue Donaldson's work, but one of the things they've put forward is that if animals, particularly companion animals, were viewed as citizens in some societies, particularly societies that give health care, it would be requirements of the state that if we want them in our society and we accept them as part of our societies and our cities and our families and our homes, maybe they should get healthcare, because it's really expensive. Yeah, my doggy insurance has helped me a lot.
Sean Wensley:Another fascinating discussion. I mean we can talk about that another time. Our PDSA is the closest we would get anywhere in the world to something like the nhs for animals, you know. So free at the point of access, but it is done on a means tested basis and and how.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:How does it work so? Is this available to anyone in the uk? Do do they have to prove like need?
Sean Wensley:yeah, absolutely yes. It's means so they have to prove that there are uncertain state benefits. So it exists for the most socially disadvantaged and vulnerable people in society. But it's a big operation. We've been going since 1917, and we operate in just about every city in the UK. We have 48 hospitals and demand for our service is as high as it's ever been.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:What a relief. I mean, just because they're family, really People who live with a dog or a cat or any animal to not be able to afford a procedure. I imagine that is a really, really yeah. This is a person that you have in your home and that you love, and now you're given a bill that you just can't afford. I think that must be a disastrous situation to be in yeah, yeah.
Sean Wensley:So it's all predicated on the strength of, and importance of, the human animal bond and the roles that that really meaningful companionship can mean for people who are unemployed or have mental health challenges or whatever other challenges they have in their life. You know, we have very powerful anecdotes and accounts from our clients around. You know that the pet is the reason that they get up in the morning. They give them structure when everything else in their life seems to have just fallen through the cracks in the pavement. So, yeah, I think it's good work done by a very large team of vets and vet nurses.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Great. Well, thank you so much, Sean, for being on the show today and for having a good conversation with me about animal welfare and veterinary ethics. I know we did it kind of broadly, but I think we got a lot in there and I very, very much enjoyed talking to you today.
Sean Wensley:Likewise. Thanks, so much enjoyed talking to you today, likewise.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:Thanks so much. Thank you to Sean for being an amazing guest, to Jeremy John for the logo and Gordon Clark for the bed music. Thank you to Christian Mentz for editing this episode and to Rebecca Shen for all of her design work. Thank you, thank you. Thank you to all of you listeners as well, for subscribing, for rating and for leaving reviews. It goes a long way in terms of helping the show and letting me know what you think. So thank you, thank you, thank you, and I hope you stay tuned. This is the animal turn with me, claudia huddenfelder.
Claudia Hirtenfelder:For more great iROAR podcasts, visit iROARPod. com. That's I-R-O-A-R-P-O-D dot com.
