As readers of my blog appreciate, I have addressed the importance of scientists better communicating with the public.  In the recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education there is a superb article about this.  Please read and share your perspectives (by comment).

By Dennis Meredith
The Chronicle of Higher Education
May 16, 2010

When it comes to persuading the American public about some of the most controversial issues of our time, today’s scientists too often get failing grades. Gallup polls show that only 39 percent of Americans believe in evolution, for example, while 48 percent say global warming is exaggerated and 46 percent say temperature increases are not due to human activity. And despite many recent court rulings asserting that there is no scientific evidence that vaccines cause autism, far too many parents still cling to that dangerous belief and refuse to have their children vaccinated.

Certainly some unscientific views arise from religious and political beliefs, but there’s another reason for such wrongheaded convictions, as well as for the public’s lack of scientific knowledge: Science suffers from its lack of a culture of explanation.

Scientists and engineers tend to communicate poorly in public controversies because—compared with, say, doctors and lawyers—their professions have not valued explanation. Their career advancement doesn’t depend on having lay-level explanatory skills. To progress professionally, scientists really need only to explain their work technically to other scientists—their colleagues, department heads, and granting agencies. But imagine what would happen to a doctor who couldn’t explain diseases to patients, or a lawyer who couldn’t explain the law to clients and juries. Their careers would be over.

A lack of public-communication skills also means that scientists and engineers do not think strategically about how to make their research work to their best professional advantage. For example, in 40 years as a research communicator at universities including the California Institute of Technology, Cornell University, Duke University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I never heard a researcher ask, “Who needs to know about my discovery?”

Many academic scientists might consider themselves expert explainers because a significant part of their job entails explaining research to undergraduates in their teaching. But even the most skillful scientist-teachers aren’t necessarily skilled science explainers. Speaking to “captive” student audiences is very different from communicating with any other lay audience, who often must be actively persuaded to be interested in a scientific topic.

Unfortunately, most science and engineering educators don’t even realize they need improvement. They don’t appreciate the potential benefits of communication training, so such training remains extremely rare on most college campuses. The result is that their students, too, graduate without knowing how to give a compelling public talk, write an interesting popular article, or create an engaging Web site. That puts them at a disadvantage in the job market because employers rank communication skills first in qualities they look for in an employee, according to Job Outlook 2010, the survey of employer organizations by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

Science would not have such a cultural deficit if scientists and those who educate them took a broader view of the value of communications than just immediate career advancement. They need to appreciate that their lack of skill and interest in lay-level communications limits their ability to reach audiences crucial to the success of their own research and their field. Such audiences include non-scientist administrators, potential collaborators in other disciplines, legislators, and donors. But even scientists’ communications with their own colleagues are less effective than they should be. By using the same skills that grab the attention of the local civic club or readers of a popular magazine, scientists could easily improve their seminars and papers.

Yet scientists seldom bother to emerge from their cloistered realm of jargon to learn “lay language.” They often miss even the simplest and most obvious opportunities to advance the scientific point of view in the public mind by merely adjusting scientific vernacular. Clive Thompson, a columnist for Wired magazine, suggests that scientists could short-circuit one of creationists’ major arguments against evolution—that evolution is only a theory—simply by changing “theory of evolution” to “law of evolution.” “It performs a neat bit of linguistic jujitsu,” he explains. “If someone says, ‘I don’t believe in the theory of evolution,’ they may sound fairly reasonable. But if someone announces, ‘I don’t believe in the law of evolution,’ they sound insane. It’s tantamount to saying, ‘I don’t believe in the law of gravity.’”

Similarly, scientists need to rethink their use of the term “believe” in talking to lay audiences, writes the theoretical physicist Helen Quinn in Physics Today: “For most people a belief is an article of faith; a hypothesis or a theory is not much different from a guess. … When a person hears ’scientists believe,’ he or she may hear it as a statement of faith or a suggestion of uncertainty. Neither is what we intend.” She suggests that scientists would strengthen their authority by replacing “We believe” with “Scientific evidence supports the conclusion that,” or even “We know that.”

Beyond scientists’ being linguistically tone-deaf, their lack of a culture of explanation makes them strategically maladroit when explaining their work to lay audiences. Rather than tailoring their arguments to their audiences, they tend to believe that merely presenting the facts of their work will lead audiences to see the light on such issues as evolution.

Scientists’ reluctance to become activist-explainers of their work is one reason for the dismal coverage of research in the news media. Science coverage on the nightly news is so infinitesimally small as to be journalistic “noise”—a couple of percent of total coverage, according to the “State of the News Media” studies by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Such poor coverage closes an important gateway to science for the public, making people far less likely to understand the importance of scientific findings or consider the possibility of careers in science.

Despite poor news-media coverage, people are interested in science—so scientists don’t have lack of interest as an excuse for their failure to engage the public. According to the National Science Board’s Science and Engineering Indicators 2010, 80 percent of Americans reported they were very or moderately interested in new scientific discoveries.

Scientists may also be reluctant to enter the public arena because of a wrongheaded belief that lay audiences have a low opinion of them. For example, I once heard the director of a national lab declare to reporters at a scientific meeting that the public disparages scientists as socially inept, unattractive, or villainous. Yet in a 2006 Harris Poll, Americans said they trusted doctors (85 percent), teachers (83 percent), and scientists (77 percent) far more than journalists (39 percent), lawyers (27 percent), or pollsters (34 percent). According to the National Science Board’s Science and Engineering Indicators 2008, “more Americans expressed a great deal of confidence in leaders of the scientific community than in the leaders of any other institution except the military.”

Establishing a culture of explanation to capitalize on people’s natural interest in science would not be difficult. Better education and support for lay-level communication are essential first steps. “Communication for Scientists” courses should become a standard component of science and engineering curricula. Such courses need not be onerous additions to students’ workloads—a semester-long course would be enough to introduce them to basic techniques of explaining their work to the public. To help faculty scientists and engineers, universities should offer one-day seminars aimed at honing lay-level communication skills.

Also, more scientific associations should follow the lead of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Chemical Society (ACS) in establishing programs to encourage scientists’ public involvement. The AAAS operates a Center for Public Engagement With Science & Technology, and the ACS has established a Chemistry Ambassadors program. Those efforts support scientists with workshops and information about how to explain their work to students, lawmakers, journalists, and other important groups.

Scientists and engineers may argue that they are too busy to engage the public. Certainly, the demands of running experiments, publishing papers, writing grants, and managing a laboratory are considerable. But researchers will inevitably need to explain their work at some point—on their laboratories’ Web sites, in reports to administrators, in research descriptions for government agencies, and so on. By applying only a bit more effort and attention, they can make those explanations far more effective for lay audiences. They should also use a “strategy of synergy” to make one communication piece—like a news release or feature article—serve many purposes and audiences.

As the former AAAS President John Holdren—now President Obama’s science adviser—asserted in his address at the association’s 2007 meeting: Scientists and technologists need to “improve their communication skills so that they can convey the relevant essence of their understandings to members of the public and to policy makers. … I believe that every scientist and technologist should tithe 10 percent of his or her professional time and effort to working to increase the benefits of science and technology for the human condition and to decrease the liabilities. The challenges demand no less.”

Dennis Meredith is author of Explaining Research: How to Reach Key Audiences to Advance Your Work (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Many U.S. farmers who grow genetically engineered (GE) crops are realizing substantial economic and environmental benefits — such as lower production costs, fewer pest problems, reduced use of pesticides, and better yields — compared with conventional crops, says a new report, Impact of Genetically Engineered Crops on Farm Sustainability in the United States, from the National Research Council.  However, GE crops resistant to the herbicide glyphosate — a main component in Roundup and other commercial weed killers — could develop more weed problems as weeds evolve their own resistance to glyphosate.  GE crops could lose their effectiveness unless farmers also use other proven weed and insect management practices.

The report provides the first comprehensive assessment of how GE crops are affecting all U.S. farmers, including those who grow conventional or organic crops.  The new report follows several previous Research Council reports that examined the potential human health and environmental effects of GE crops.

“Many American farmers are enjoying higher profits due to the widespread use of certain genetically engineered crops and are reducing environmental impacts on and off the farm,” said David Ervin, professor of environmental management and economics, Portland State University, Portland, Ore., and chair of the committee that wrote the report.  ”However, these benefits are not universal for all farmers.  And as more GE traits are developed and incorporated into a larger variety of crops, it’s increasingly essential that we gain a better understanding of how genetic engineering technology will affect U.S. agriculture and the environment now and in the future.  Such gaps in our knowledge are preventing a full assessment of the environmental, economic, and other impacts of GE crops on farm sustainability.”

First introduced in 1996, genetically engineered crops now constitute more than 80 percent of soybeans, corn, and cotton grown in the United States.  GE soybeans, corn, and cotton are designed to be resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, which has fewer adverse environmental effects compared with most other herbicides used to control weeds.  In addition to glyphosate resistance, GE corn and cotton plants also are designed to produce Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a bacterium that is deadly when ingested by susceptible insect pests.

Farmers need to adopt better management practices to ensure that beneficial environmental effects of GE crops continue, the report says.  In particular, farmers who grow GE herbicide-resistant crops should not rely exclusively on glyphosate and need to incorporate a range of weed management practices, including using other herbicide mixes.  To date, at least nine species of weeds in the United States have evolved resistance to glyphosate since GE crops were introduced, largely because of repeated exposure.  Federal and state government agencies, technology developers, universities, and other stakeholders should collaborate to document weed resistance problems and develop cost-effective ways to control weeds in current GE crops and new types of GE herbicide-resistant plants now under development.

Environmental Benefits

Improvements in water quality could prove to be the largest single benefit of GE crops, the report says.  Insecticide use has declined since GE crops were introduced, and farmers who grow GE crops use fewer insecticides and herbicides that linger in soil and waterways.  In addition, farmers who grow herbicide-resistant crops till less often to control weeds and are more likely to practice conservation tillage, which improves soil quality and water filtration and reduces erosion.

However, no infrastructure exists to track and analyze the effects that GE crops may have on water quality.  The U.S. Geological Survey, along with other federal and state environmental agencies, should be provided with financial resources to document effects of GE crops on U.S. watersheds.

The report notes that although two types of insects have developed resistance to Bt, there have been few economic or agronomic consequences from resistance.  Practices to prevent insects from developing resistance should continue, such as an EPA-mandated strategy that requires farmers to plant a certain amount of conventional plants alongside Bt plants in “refuge” areas.

Economic and Social Effects

In many cases, farmers who have adopted the use of GE crops have either lower production costs or higher yields, or sometimes both, due to more cost-effective weed and insect control and fewer losses from insect damage, the report says.  Although these farmers have gained such economic benefits, more research is needed on the extent to which these advantages will change as pests adapt to GE crops, other countries adopt genetic engineering technology, and more GE traits are incorporated into existing and new crops.

The higher costs associated with GE seeds are not always offset financially by lower production costs or higher yields, the report notes.  For example, farmers in areas with fewer weed and pest problems may not have as much improvement in terms of reducing crop losses.  Even so, studies show that farmers value the greater flexibility in pesticide spraying that GE crops provide and the increased safety for workers from less exposure to harmful pesticides.

The economic effects of GE crops on farmers who grow organic and conventional crops also need further study, the report says.  For instance, organic farmers are profiting by marketing their crops as free of GE traits, but their crops’ value could be jeopardized if genes from GE crops flow to non-GE varieties through cross-pollination or seed mingling.

Farmers have not been adversely affected by the proprietary terms involved in patent-protected GE seeds, the report says.  However, some farmers have expressed concern that consolidation of the U.S. seed market will make it harder to purchase conventional seeds or those that have only specific GE traits.  With the exception of the issue of seed industry consolidation, the effects of GE crops on other social factors of farming — such as labor dynamics, farm structure, or community viability — have largely been overlooked, the report says.  More research is needed on the range of effects GE crops have on all farmers, including those who don’t grow GE crops or farmers with less access to credit.  Studies also should examine impacts on industries that rely on GE products, such as the livestock industry.

Research institutions should receive government support to develop GE traits that could deliver valuable public benefits but provide little market incentive for the private sector to develop.  Examples include plants that decrease the likelihood of off-farm water pollution or plants that are resilient to changing climate conditions.  Intellectual property that has been patented in developing major crops should be made available for these purposes whenever possible.

Published 26 March 2010

THERE ARE AT LEAST 1 BILLION POOR PEOPLE LIVING WITH CHRONIC UNDERNOURISHMENT, and the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goal of substantially reducing the world’s hungry by 2015 will not be met. The developing world’s poor are experiencing the effects of higher commodity prices, and declining agricultural productivity growth is exacerbating the problem. Next week, leaders in science and society will convene in Montpellier, France, for the first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD 2010) to organize sweeping changes in global agricultural research. The meeting follows major reforms of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), endorsed in December 2009. CGIAR’s new business model is meant to more effectively address food security, focusing on people, results, and efficiency. “Mega Programs” (now called “Themes”) will deliver research outputs to achieve scaled-up impacts on poverty, and a new fund will harmonize donor contributions to support CGIAR’s 15 research centers. But the total global investment in public-sector agricultural research is 20 times greater than that of CGIAR. How to better harness this critical resource (along with private-sector investments) for worldwide poverty reduction will be a major focus for GCARD.

The main battlegrounds for poverty reduction are Asia and Africa, where 97% of the world’s food-insecure reside. Although international food prices have declined from their peak in 2008, they have remained higher than the trend in developing countries, reflecting a supply/demand imbalance. Contributing to the problem, cereal yields growth has declined. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a 2°C increase in temperature could lead to a further 20 to 40% fall in cereal yields, mostly in Asia and Africa. Lifting a billion people out of poverty and feeding an extra 2.3 billion by 2050 will require increasing cereal production by 70%, doubling the output of developing countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, where more “ultrapoor” live, developing technologies to boost productivity is especially difficult because of greater threats from pests and diseases, poorer soil, and drought. In addition, Africa’s R&D establishments are small compared to those of South Asia—half had fewer than 100 scientists in 2000. Compared to Latin America, Africa has less than half the rural roads per hectare, 1/40th the capital per farmer, and 1/50th the rural electricity supply per worker. Despite some success with maize, cassava, and some horticultural crops, few African countries have experienced a Green Revolution.

Agricultural development requires a combination of enabling policies; secure land rights; and farmers’ access to knowledge, technologies, and markets. Some technologies, such as new plant varieties or those that enable more efficient use of water and nutrients, can be obtained from international sources. But innovations involving natural resource management or the involvement of women have no universal blueprints and must be developed to suit particular conditions. Hence, restructuring CGIAR with sharper research priorities that bring in  partner countries is a hopeful sign.

Public investment in agriculture is critical. Only Brazil, China, and India have boosted research expenditures as a share of agricultural gross domestic product; but it may now be increasing elsewhere, after two decades of decline because of complacency among policymakers. The 2009 pledge of the G8 countries of $20 billion in new aid to food and agriculture over the next 3 years, with a focus on Asia and Africa, should help, as will an anticipated expansion of South-South partnerships. The goal of the GCARD 2010 meeting is to transform the global architecture of agricultural research over the next several years, as an essential complement to the CGIAR reforms. The stakes are high: Without this change, we may face a billion more hungry on our planet.



When surveys don’t give you the overwhelming result you’re looking for, there’s only one thing left to do — cook your numbers. This was the tactic employed by the Consumers Union (CU), the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports, after it conducted a poll recently on genetically engineered crops.

The CU was miffed by a USDA draft environmental impact statement (EIS) on GE alfalfa which in the CU’s words, “indicated that consumers and organic farmers don’t care if their organic food is GE contaminated.”

The CU created a poll to refute USDA’s EIS findings, but unfortunately for them, the results fell short of expectations. So apparently they turned the numbers over to the shrewdest and most ruthless manipulator of data they could find — their marketing department.

Consequently, on March 2, the poll results were released with a headline that blared, “Two-thirds of organic food consumers concerned with genetically-engineered contamination.”

Michael Hansen, senior scientist with the CU, declared that the CU poll contradicted USDA’s position, and showed that “consumers care greatly,” about potential GE contamination.

The CU news release went on to say, “Given the popularity of alfalfa sprouts among health-oriented eaters, Consumers Union urges USDA to consider the overwhelming consumer concern before deciding to allow GE alfalfa on the market.”

Closer examination reveals trickery afoot.

To its credit, the CU provided this link to the survey results, Organic Food Poll, perhaps hoping that few people would actually take a peek inside. I did, and discovered that I could use the exact same numbers to arrive at a completely different conclusion.

I began with an assertion in the CU news release that “58 percent of all respondents were extremely concerned, very concerned or somewhat concerned with GE contamination.”

I found that in actuality, only 24 percent of all respondents were in the very concerned and extremely concerned categories, while 34 percent said they were only somewhat concerned. A whopping 41 percent claimed they were not concerned at all. To me, being somewhat concerned is a whole lot closer to being not concerned than it is to being very concerned or extremely concerned. In fact, if I tell a pollster I’m somewhat concerned, I might be saying I don’t much care at all. So my personal take would be that 75 percent were not very concerned or not concerned at all about GE contamination.

As to the CU’s claim that two-thirds of organic consumers were concerned about GE contamination, again it’s a matter of how you crunch the numbers. A surprising 33 percent of those who buy organic products were not concerned about GE contamination and 35 percent were only somewhat concerned. My conclusion therefore would be that 68 percent of organic consumers had very little or no concern about GE contamination.

So there you have it, two steaming plates of statistics, each half-baked to suit the taste du jour — with alfalfa sprouts on the side.

e-mail: erobinson@farmpress.com

The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) released their annual report on global adoption of genetically modified (GM) on February 23, 2010.

An executive summary of Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops: 2009 – The first fourteen  years, 1996 to 2009 presents highlights of the amazing growth in the global adoption of GM crops.  Impressively, GM crops are being readily adopted by developing and developed countries.

Some highlights from the report:

• Small and large farmers in 25 countries planted 134 million hectares (330 million acres) in 2009, an increase of 7 percent or 9 million hectares (22 million acres) over 2008
• In 2009, the number of biotech famers worldwide increased by .07 million to 14.0 million, 90% of those were small and resource-poor farmers in developing countries.
• For the first time, biotech soybean occupied more  than three-quarters of the 90 million hectares of soybean globally, biotech cotton almost half of the 33 million hectares of global cotton, biotech maize over one-quarter of the 158 million hectares of global maize and biotech canola more than one-fifth of the 31 million hectares of global canola
• While 25 countries planted commercialized biotech crops in 2009, an additional 32 countries, totaling 57, have granted regulatory approvals for biotech crops for import for food and feed use, and release into the environment since 1996.

The report from ISAAA also discusses important developments in biotech growth over the past year, including China’s landmark decision last November to issue biosafety certificates for its nationally-developed proprietary Bt rice and phytase maize. The report also delves into the future of biotech, and the need for biotech to help us reach the UN Millennium Goals through investments in research and commercialization of Golden Rice and drought tolerant crops.

“Instead of redesigning the factory farm to suit the animals, they are redesigning the animals to suit the factory farm”
Matthew Scully. The American Conservative, May 23, 2005.

My most memorably painful experience occurred when I was a teenage farm kid that stomped on the end of a pitchfork. My intent was for the handle to swing up and whack my sister in the hand. Alas, she was not the embarrassed teenager who left for our family vacation the next day with a well deserved set of stitches. In the seconds after the handle did its damage, I knew where I was hurting, I knew that it was a rather intense sensation, and I knew that it was not at all pleasant. What I did not know was that these experiences where the result of two different sensory pathways. The first pathway told me that my chin hurt, and badly; the second told me that it was not pleasant (for me at least – my sister was on the ground laughing).

Neuroscientists are beginning to understand how we and our fellow creatures sense pain. Lab mice that have a genetically altered anterior cingulate cortex sense pain and remove themselves from the source of the pain, but apparently are unaware that pain is an unpleasant experience and are less likely to avoid future painful situations. Some apparently believe this a terrific opportunity to produce genetically altered farm animals that have no concept of pain’s unpleasant effect.

Genetic manipulation through selective breeding is nothing new and has often benefited farm animals. In return for milk and meat, animals have been protected from extreme environmental conditions, starvation and predation. Selective breeding has made enormous contributions to society by allowing us to feed a growing population without compromising our environment or the well-being of animals. For example, Ever-Green-View My 1326-ET just completed a new world milk production record with over 8,400 gallons of milk in one year’s time, or nearly 23 gallons per day from a single cow! And she was not “worn out” at the end of the year. In fact, she was classified “Excellent” for her outstanding physical appearance; an honor bestowed on less than 1% of our nation’s Holstein cows.

There are, of course, examples of selective breeding pushing animals too far. A story is told of a well intentioned farmer growing 4,000 free-range turkeys. Unfortunately for the farmer, when it rained his turkeys stood looking into the sky and drowned. This story is held up as an example of how those who believe animal agriculture has gone wrong really have no clue about farming realities, but the opposite is true. Eliminating some of the most basic instincts for survival shows we value their meat, but not their intrinsic worth as turkeys.

The idea of manipulating an animal’s genome to eliminate their pain avoidance instinct is far more sinister than accidentally breeding exceptionally dumb turkeys. It would be an extreme example of “designing the animal to fit the factory farm”. It is not our farmers suggesting this would be a wonderful development at this point, but might they someday be forced to breed such animals just to survive economically?

The premise that this would increase animal welfare because the animals don’t realize they are in pain is absurd. Animals were designed with a pain response for a reason. Eliminating such a basic instinct would prevent them from avoiding future painful situations, and it raises the potential for abuse to new heights. What happens if animal handlers are absolved from any feelings of guilt because they are no longer inflicting pain? My bet is they won’t spend more time petting the farm animals. If it no longer is unpleasant to lie in a stall that has no bedding, will farmers continue to spend limited resources trying to make their animals more comfortable? With “pain free” animals, will we concern ourselves with making sure they are housed in systems that prevent lameness?

I am not suggesting we ignore problems in modern animal agriculture production. The continued demise of the traditional system with animals owned and cared for by a farm family is tragic. This transition has not been good for rural communities or farm animals. Breeding robotic animals that have been redesigned to take minimal notice of a painful situation does not solve these problems or promote more humane animal treatment. It is simply a faster road toward unmitigated animal exploitation. Views of farm animals range from mere economic assets to fellow creatures bestowed with their Maker’s breath of life. If we eliminate the most basic sense that pain is to be avoided, we have no right to claim we care about farm animals for anything beyond how much of a return on assets they can generate.

The Opinion-Editorial published in the New York Times was passed along to me earlier today.  As readers of Terry Etherton Blog on Biotechnology appreciate, I have written about a variety of topics across the landscape of science and agriculture; defending science, as well as attempting to counter attacks on, and misrepresentations of production agriculture .

In the article below, Mr. Shriver paints a picture of animal agriculture that presents some perspectives that don’t reflect the reality of practices used in contemporary animal production.  Moreover, a paradox is presented about science – use transgenic farm animals that have been engineered so they can tolerate “pain and suffering” that he asserts is caused by “factory farming”.

My experiment, you ask?  Rather than my writing an initial blog about this Op-Ed piece, I am opening up comments, and wish to moderate the discussion of your opinions and knowledge about animal agriculture and science as framed in the story by Mr. Shriver.  I will share my perspectives after I “gather” your comments.

Not Grass-Fed, but at Least Pain-Free

St. Louis

IN the 35 years since Peter Singer’s book “Animal Liberation” was published, jump-starting the animal rights movement in the United States, the number of animals used in cosmetics testing and scientific research has dropped significantly, and the number of dogs and cats killed in shelters has fallen by more than half. Nevertheless, because the amount of red meat that Americans eat per capita has held steady at more than 100 pounds a year as the population has increased, more animals than ever suffer from injuries and stress on factory farms.

Veal calves and gestating sows are so confined as to suffer painful bone and joint problems. The unnatural high-grain diets provided in feedlots cause severe gastric distress in many animals. And faulty or improperly used stun guns cause the painful deaths of thousands of cows and pigs a year.

We are most likely stuck with factory farms, given that they produce most of the beef and pork Americans consume. But it is still possible to reduce the animals’ discomfort — through neuroscience. Recent advances suggest it may soon be possible to genetically engineer livestock so that they suffer much less.

This prospect stems from a new understanding of how mammals sense pain. The brain, it turns out, has two separate pathways for perceiving pain: a sensory pathway that registers its location, quality (sharp, dull or burning, for example) and intensity, and a so-called affective pathway that senses the pain’s unpleasantness. This second pathway appears to be associated with activation of the brain’s anterior cingulate cortex, because people who have suffered damage to this part of the brain still feel pain but no longer find it unpleasant. (The same is true of people who are given morphine, because there are more receptors for opiates in the affective pain pathway than in the sensory pain pathway.)

Neuroscientists have found that by damaging a laboratory rat’s anterior cingulate cortex, or by injecting the rat with morphine, they can likewise block its affective perception of pain. The rat reacts to a heated cage floor by withdrawing its paws, but it doesn’t bother avoiding the places in its cage where it has learned the floor is likely to be heated up.

Recently, scientists have learned to genetically engineer animals so that they lack certain proteins that are important to the operation of the anterior cingulate cortex. Prof. Min Zhuo and his colleagues at the University of Toronto, for example, have bred mice lacking enzymes that operate in affective pain pathways. When these mice encounter a painful stimulus, they withdraw their paws normally, but they do not become hypersensitive to a subsequent painful stimulus, as ordinary mice do.

Prof. Zhou-Feng Chen and his colleagues here at Washington University have engineered mice so that they lack the gene for a peptide associated with the anterior cingulate gyrus. Like the animals given brain lesions, these mice are normally sensitive to heat and mechanical pain, but they do not avoid situations where they experience such pain.

Given the similarity among all mammals’ neural systems, it is likely that scientists could genetically engineer pigs and cows in the same way. Because the sensory dimension of the animals’ pain would be preserved, they would still be able to recognize and avoid, when possible, situations where they might be bruised or otherwise injured.

The people who consumed meat from such genetically engineered livestock would also be safe. Knockout animals have specific proteins removed, rather than new ones inserted, so there’s no reason to think that their meat would pose more health risks for humans than ordinary meat does.

If we cannot avoid factory farms altogether, the least we can do is eliminate the unpleasantness of pain in the animals that must live and die on them. It would be far better than doing nothing at all.

The Federation of Animal Science Societies (FASS) has analyzed the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production’s report Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America as well as the American Veterinary Medical Association’s (AVMA) response to the report. After a review by FASS’ Scientific Advisory Committees, FASS agrees with AVMA that there are significant flaws in the Pew Report.

As an organization dedicated to sound science as the foundation of any policy recommendations, FASS is concerned that the process utilized by the Pew Commission to ensure an unbiased work product was insufficient. As pointed out by the AVMA, the process for gaining scientific expertise in the technical reports was biased and did not incorporate the findings and suggestions of a significant number of participating scientists. This represents a fundamental problem in the way the report was constructed.

In addition to procedural deficiencies, there are substantive problems with many of the recommendations in the report. For example, the Pew report recommends restricting the use of antimicrobials in food animal production to reduce the risk of antimicrobial resistance to medically important antibiotics. Banning the use of antibiotics before science-based studies and risk based evaluations are done to determine if there is an actual risk to human health would be detrimental to animal and human health. Additional research is needed to determine what, if any, policy changes to antibiotic use are appropriate.

In the area of animal welfare, the Pew report seems to assume that all intensive farming operations are inherently inhumane. It is possible to have good animal welfare in both small and large scale production systems and there are positive and negative trade-offs when choosing among different production systems. FASS also believes that housing type cannot be considered in isolation from other important factors that influence animal welfare, including management, feeding systems, environmental features, and animal type.

FASS encourages policy makers and other interested parties to consider both the Pew report and AVMA response when looking at policies for animal agriculture. FASS appreciates that both Pew and AVMA recognize the value of more research. It is important to maintain a continued dialogue on these issues and increase support for additional research in the area. Science must be the foundation as animal agriculture looks to the future.

The Federation of Animal Science Societies was formed in 1998 by the three founding Member Societies: the American Dairy Science Association (ADSA), the American Society of Animal Science (ASAS), and the Poultry Science Association (PSA). The mission of FASS is to strengthen the common interests and collective good of member societies through a unified science-based voice that supports animal agriculture, animal products, and food systems globally.

We took a look last week at some details of the 2008 tax return filed by the deceptive Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). The filing shows that HSUS paid out less than one-half of one percent of its $99 million budget to hands-on dog and cat shelters. Meanwhile, a large portion of the kitty – tens of millions of dollars – went to employee salaries and animal rights lobbying. And all this expensive chicken-hugging has a hidden price. To find it, try visiting your local unemployment office.

In 2008 HSUS spent more than $2.3 million on a political committee called “Californians for Humane Farms,” which campaigned for the “Proposition 2” ballot initiative in the Golden State. In 2007, it gave over $1.3 million. HSUS also made donations of $200,000 in 2007 and 2008 to the “Committee to Protect Dogs,” a Massachusetts organization that pushed for a statewide ban on greyhound racing with the “Question 3” ballot initiative.

Both ballot campaigns were successful. And both had human costs. In California, a UC Davis study estimated that Prop 2 would destroy the state’s egg industry by adding 20 percent to the cost of egg production and causing companies to move to other states or to Mexico. In real numbers, the study found, Prop 2 was expected to cost more than 3,000 jobs and take more than $615 million out of the state’s already precarious economy. In Massachusetts, 1,000 people were expected to lose their jobs after the racing ban took effect last week. We love dogs too, but when people lose their jobs, who’s going to buy them kibble and flea collars?

All told, HSUS’s leaders spent more than $4.1 million on two political battles, and put an estimated 4,000 workers out of business. And that doesn’t include similar political “committees” HSUS has bankrolled in Michigan, Colorado, and Arizona. Who knows how many jobs HSUS will kill this year in Ohio alone?

Sure, HSUS claims it does everything “for the animals.” But what about people? How many American workers and their families are left unemployed in the wake of animal rights campaigns? And why doesn’t HSUS put a serious amount of money into pet shelters, where animals can be helped and jobs created?

There are human costs to HSUS’s crusades. But when cows and pigs are all you care about, people can get lost in the shuffle. Today’s overfed animal activists are clearly willing to put Americans in the bread line. Just don’t expect any chicken soup when you get there.

I have spent the last few weeks attending many Holiday celebrations and receptions.  A key component of these fabulous gatherings has been all of the delicious food.  In addition, I have received many food gifts from family, friends and colleagues.

We are deeply fortunate to live in a country where there is “food galore”. This reflects the impressive nature of our food system, from farm to fork, and the many science and technological advances that allowed this “to happen”.   However, I wish to remind my readers that there are many in the World that suffer from too much food, as well as too little food.  Both of these “bring” pressing social and health issues.

I have written about the economic and health costs of the overweight/obesity epidemic in the United States in a previous blog, “Land of Plenty – Overweight and Obesity in America“.   More than 66% of Americans are overweight or obese.  This reflects the reality that too many people eat too much food!  The fact that this epidemic is ongoing even though there are nutrition and health care intervention programs that could work indicates how difficult this problem is to “fix” on a population-wide basis.

The other “food issue” is hunger in the World. Based on estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, there are more than one billion hungry people in the World!  This is about one-sixth of the World’s population.  It is incredulous to think about this especially given the wealth and agricultural scientific expertise in the developed countries of the World that could be brought to bear on solving the problem.

A very simple question follows:  What do “we” do about it? There is no easy “fix” for this.  Moreover, the “answers” are profoundly difficult to implement world-wide, especially given the poverty and geopolitical strife that exists in developing countries that contribute to the problem.

My encouragement is that as you enjoy all the food over the Holiday Season you consider what you might do to help address the problems that surround “too much food” and “too little food” in the global village.  And, consider providing a comment to this blog with your ideas for solutions.  In the New Year, this will be a theme of some of my blogs–i.e., what we all can do about food excesses and hunger in the World.

All the best for a Happy Holiday Season!