Don't eat meat and save the world?

The beef burger epitomises all the ingredients the modern consumer is hooked on

I am quite intrigued by a reader’s response to Mojtaba Tegani’s weblog on the World Poultry News.

Tegani’s reaction to the United Nation (UN)’s Dr Rajendra Pachauri’s prescription on our diet in the face of climate change (`give up meat for one day a week, and you’ll do the environment a lot of good’) was:

“Is it realistic to expect that a reduction in meat consumption influence factors associated with climate change? Additionally, will a vegetarian dietary style solve these problems?”

The said reader’s response to Tegani’s blog: “I think it is all about appropriate scale and management.”

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization told us in 2006 that animal manure and some agricultural practices contributed to some 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

We all have a hand in it. I contribute as well, just by breathing alone.

I agree that issues like antibiotics seepage in soil and water should be looked at closely. But before we allow the consumers to lay the blame solely on the industry practices, let’s remind them of our (yes, our – because we’re all in it) eating habits and our lifestyle.

A rich nation like the United States acquired the taste for meat, poultry and dairy products only as early as the 1920s.

Before that, they ate mainly bread. Before the Industrial Age in the 1800s – and the introduction of the milling plants where wheat could be processed efficiently – bread was not the staple food in Europe or in the US.

People survived on crops other than wheat. They ate things like gruel, porridge and soup. Meat was a delicacy. Bread was the food of the aristocrats.

The Western media reports on the Chinese as if they’ll eat through the entire world’s food supply

But meat, like bread, is the kind of luxury that cannot be let go easily once you acquire a taste for it. Even the introduction of sliced wheat bread in the 1930s could not water down the Americans’ love for meat. The consumers were hooked on it.

So when you have a capitalist system in place, driven by bottomline, and shaped by the demands of the consumers, how do you think the supply is going to look like? What kind of technology is created and employed to support this cause?

Of course, we can argue that some huge corporations manipulate the markets, and our diets, so we have very little choice but to consume what is on offer.

But we do have a choice. We want meat.

The New York Times reported that the upwardly mobile Chinese have acquired a taste for pork – they, too, are eating more meat.

This is another interesting thing I find about the way the West reports on the good fortunes of the Chinese. It’s as if they’ll eat through the entire world’s food supply, and leave us with nothing at all if they become rich. It’s a very Malthusian, dog-eat-dog, point of view that should be left in the Industrial Age, when it first came about.

Had we consume our foods – and our fuel and so on – in moderation, we would not have been in this predicament.

I believe that’s what the web reader meant when he mentioned “appropriate scale and management”. Do things in moderation.

My way, or the highway

The EU consumers want to know what goes into that milk, where it comes from and how the cow is treated Photo: Greshoj

Monsanto’s decision to drop the bovine growth hormone Posilac (Monsanto to divest BST, 12th August 2008) from its portfolio of products speaks volumes of the power the European Union (EU) is wielding over its trade partners, in particular the US.

The message from the EU is clear: If you want to do business with us, you have to live up to our safety standards. If not, you can take your business elsewhere.

This applies not only to food exports, which affects the farming and crop protection industries, but also to other types of goods as well, such as cosmetics, drugs and electronics.

Such is the power of the EU safety legislations that the US has now been turned into a “dumping ground” for EU rejects. Other trading partners such as China – a serial offender when it comes to exporting dodgy food and non-food items to the EU – have no choice but to adhere to the EU standards.

While it’s easy to dismiss the EU as the big bully from Brussels, the animal health and agrochemical companies have little choice but to pay attention to the people they do business with: the EU citizens.

Traditionally, when an EU bill that’s not in favour of the industries is passed, the industry people will claim that it’s politically motivated, and not based on scientific rationale.

Animal health has to pay attention to the people it does business with: the EU citizens Photo: Anne Koth

Because it’s the EU and not quite the Third World, they can’t play the small violin solo of “you need this technology to combat food shortage caused by overpopulation”.

Greenwashing must be tempting to some of these people, who’d go to great lengths hiring expensive PR agencies to manage the message, and commissioning top universities to come up with studies to back their products.

But you can’t win the public that way. If ‘green’ is not what your brand is known for, don’t greenwash.

Getting Cornell University to say that using a particular genetically modified (GM) cow growth hormone could help a farmer reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Hormone treatment cuts dairy gas emissions, 15 July 2008) because it can increase the milk productivity in cows – and therefore reduce the number of animals needed for dairy production – just won’t cut it.

It’s better to admit that this is not the product the public wants. The public is a bit nervous about it and of what it could possibly do to the human immune system.

It’s also time openly acknowledge that the animal welfare lobby is gaining strength. While the EU consumers enjoy their dairy products, they’re not happy to know that the cows put on the hormone are at risk of getting mastitis.

We live in an age where consumers want to know where their food comes from, and how the food-producing animals are treated.

Nike bounced back from the bad press in the 1990s by improving its business ethics and trying to understand its suppliers' manufacturing constraints. "One of the reasons for the disconnect between a company’s code of ethics and what happens among its suppliers is that suppliers and even boards of directors often are seen as external to the company," says Mark Vickers, vice president of research for i4CP Photo: Nike

Now, since when is the welfare of the livestock the companies’ responsibility, when their first duty is to make profits? Since it starts hurting the profits, of course. Supermarkets go the extra mile rebranding and relabelling food packages to placate their customers. That must count for something.

What I find interesting about Posilac is that both the European Commission (EC) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) found that milk produced using the supplement is “no different to that from untreated cows”. But the product is still banned in the EU.

It is generally understood that the EU cannot ban, say, a T-shirt, because it is made using child labour outside the economic zone. But what the EU can do is ban a T-shirt that is found to contain some hazardous chemicals.

However, we all remember what happened to Nike’s sales in the 1990s amid the sweatshop allegations. No nasty chemicals found and no Brussels prodding was needed to get the sales to nosedive.

Of course, that’s just clothes. The public is less forgiving when it comes to food. The EU regulators’ attitude towards the supplement is indicative of the influence the public perception has over a brand, and how particular the EU citizens are when it comes to food.

Keeping track of problems

A research flock at the US Sheep Experiment Station near Dubois, Idaho, USA. Unlike their USA counterparts, the EU member states still disagree over the implementation of sheep and goat tags Photo: USDA

Nobody asked for electricity when it was invented. Thanks to marketing and powerful lobbying, electricity is now something both businesses and consumers can’t do without.

Not all technological innovations have been that lucky, though.

Radio-frequency identification, or RFID, has been trying to make an inroad into animal health for quite some time.

While it has succeeded in penetrating the retail sector, via supermarkets and to a certain extent, pharmaceuticals, it still has to justify its existence to agricultural groups and packaging sectors that are still comfortable with low-tech identification (ID) techniques, such as barcode labelling.

Digital Angel’s announcement to restructure its Destron Fearing animal ID business shortly after receiving approval from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for its swine livestock identification tag system does not come as a shock, given the current financial climate in the US and the various issues plaguing animal ID and RFID in general.

As you would know, the European Union (EU) requires all sheep and goats across the European Union to be electronically tagged by the end of 2010 (Regulation 21/2004). Tagging the animals will not stop the disease. What it can do is to help the relevant authorities to monitor the movement of livestock through the supply chain, and hopefully identifies the source of an outbreak when the proverbial hits the fan.

The sheep industry leads the resistance to "double-tagging" in the UK, it is alleged Photo: DirectGovKids

The proverbial finally hit the fan this month. A small bluetongue outbreak occured in the southeast of Germany. A few days after this incident, which took place in the Ortenaukreis district, near the French border, the disease was identified in Portugal. Spain is monitoring the situation closely.

In January this year, Spain and Italy made their unhappiness clear when the mandatory tagging of livestock was postponed from the end of 2009 to the end of 2010 (EU extends electronic ID deadline for sheep and goats to January 2010, 8th January 2008). Despite the technical and financial obstacles, Spain and Italy committed a significant amount of resources at national level to prepare for the 2009 deadline.

They found the excuses put forward by other member states who ‘failed’ to meet the deadline simply “unacceptable”.

The UK, egged on by the sheep industry, welcomed the postponement.

I suppose the Southern Europeans have a valid reason in supporting an automated animal monitoring process. The geography makes the spread of the unwanted – and I am not just talking about animal diseases – a tad easier in the region than in an isolated island like the British Isle. Meat products are a major revenue earner for Spain and Italy, so they can’t afford to mess up.

The story, however, is slightly different in the UK, where living and operating costs are ridiculously high. An animal tagging system integrator told me that the resistance against the 21/2004 regulation “is being led by the sheep industry in its fight against double-tagging”.

Bluetongue up close: Hyperaenia of the oral cavity and oedema of the mucous membranes Photo: Crown Copyright/DEFRA

“Double-tagging” is a peculiar issue, and it doesn’t help the RFID cause one bit. The 21/2004 directive requires all sheep to be double-tagged in any event when leaving holding of birth. From January 2008, one of the tags must be an electronic device. Individual recording of livestock will also be compulsory.

Again, if you have hundreds of sheep, you have little choice but to do this electronically. Setting up a new electronic record-keeping system costs money. To muddle matters further, the 21/2004 directive gives a further derogation that “lambs” (yes, baby sheep) leaving their holding of birth do not require an electronic device.

Before you come to the conclusion that lamb-tagging is daft, I'll have you know that the UK's Institute of Animal Health (IAH) thinks bluetongue virus can be passed by pregnant ruminants to the foetuses they carry. IAH reckons that's how it survives the winter (Bluetongue virus might survive the winter within foetuses, 5th March 2008).

The same chap told me that the beef industry, very much spooked by bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), supports electronic tagging. It’s the sheep farmers that are throwing the spanners in the works.

So how much does an average tagging system cost then, I asked.

“A handheld reader starts from £60. A slaughter line is from about £2500, and a livestock market system with multireaders, £10,000. Tags are priced from £0.16 to £0.85 per piece.”

(No) thanks to global warming, midges can survive the Northern European winter and spread the disease all year round. Isn't it time the animal health industry stops compensating for other industries' greenhouse activities, and do something to reduce carbon emission in agriculture? Photo: Institute of Animal Health

If it’s true that the basic cost of the EU scheme to the UK farmer would be between £13,000 and £16,000 – according to DEFRA – and if it’s true that the average UK farmer is earning below £15,000 a year, then both the sheep industry and the animal tagging industry can kiss each other goodbye. With about 67 million sheep movements a year, how could the sheep farmers cope with the costs? And let’s not forget the rising feed costs.

Animal tagging is a novel idea, one that I support wholeheartedly. But like many types of technology, it needs to be supported by a justifiable business strategy. The much-touted Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) has been around for more than 10 years, but hey, if you can organise a knees-up with good old text messaging, why need WAP? Similarly, if you can get by with good old head-counting and low-tech ID methods, why bother upgrading?

But if we have a reliable tracking and tracing system in place, it will be a lot easier to know where to look first when the diseases strike again.

Not a matter of taste

Organic or battery? Photo: Yoichiro Nishimura

What I admire about the tabloids is their reporters’ ability to sniff out sensational news, even in the most mundane piece of literature. Like a science journal.

I am not a Daily Mail reader, but sometimes I wish my favourite leftwing broadsheet has the same tenacity and imagination to bring R&D materials to life.

On Sunday, the Daily Mail reported on a Bristol University study which concludes that ‘organic chickens have less flavour’. The research, originally published in the British Poultry Science journal, “involved a panel of ten tasters blind tasting samples from 120 chickens which had been reared in various ways”.

Dr Paul Warriss, who led the study at the university’s school of veterinary science, told the Mail that “in general, higher ratings were given for texture, juiciness, flavour and overall preference for meat from the birds reared in the standard system.”

Although it sounds like a press release from the pro-antibacterial camps, this is an interesting piece of news.

Actually, you can find a lot of extremely interesting stuff if you have the time to browse through PubMed, that very useful online service ran by the US National Library of Medicine. Never mind the Daily Mail. If you want to be entertained/horrified/incensed/intrigued, go to PubMed.

I did a story on the possibility of tumour caused by RFID chips in dogs and cats based on the leads found on PubMed. Typically, it’s the kind of news that won’t be taken up by the mainstream papers (because it’s about dead pets, not dead humans), and the type that veterinary associations and their sponsors would keep at an arm’s length.

One thing you have to remember about R&D news is that just because it’s based on some fancy studies, has plenty of numbers, Latin words and incredible job titles (Prof, Dr and so on), it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the news with a pinch of salt.

They're not free-range, so they're not fashionable Photo: Stephen Ausmus/USDA

When I can afford it, I buy organic. Editing a website on animal health, which talks about maximum residue limits (MRLs), pharmacokinetics of drugs and so on, makes me very weary of what goes into the animal. I don’t care how bland the chicken tastes. I don't want to get cancer. I want to live long.

But I won’t knock battery chickens as well. I grew up on them; I still buy what Tesco calls “Caged Eggs” (does that mean the eggs are caged?) and I understand it is impossible for chicken producers to generate a large amount of supply in a short time and make profits without relying on antibacterials (Feeding the 300 million, April 2008).

What I am curious to know, as a consumer, is what organic means under the current EU regulations. Different countries have different definitions. The EU and the US have comprehensive organic legislation. In Australia, there are no organic standards for produce at domestic level. Australia only bothers when it comes to food export.

In my previous life as a technology reporter, when I was researching a piece about International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for wireless devices, a PR person told me: “You know that some ISOs are not given out by government bodies, but by private companies sub-contracted by the government?” Similarly, in some countries, the organic certification is given out by private companies sub-contracted by the governments.

I am not saying that government agencies are not immune to corruption. I am just saying that private agencies are driven by bottomline.

Labelling is also another issue. According to the Council Regulation (EC) No 834/2007: “The aim (of the proposed regulation) is to have the lowest possible presence of GMOs in organic products. The existing labelling thresholds represent ceilings which are exclusively linked to the adventitious and technically unavoidable presence of GMOs.”

So do I care if organic chickens have less flavour or not? Maybe you do. I don’t. What goes into my curry will always taste like curry. What I want to know is: how truly organic is our organic chicken?

A pig of an issue

The piggy bank is actually a concept derived from the old tradition of pig husbandry. Once, the pig was a valuable asset to the family Photo: Christopher Bruno

My favourite author, Anthony Burgess, once told a newspaper that as he grew older, he found himself yearning for the food he used to grow up on, no matter how much he loved curry.

Not long ago, I wrote a blog about the relationship between livestock and different societies and cultures around the world. For example, chickens and ducks. Far Easterners and Southeast Asians really like their chickens and ducks.

Jo Power, one of our writers, who is also a former agriculture correspondence, once explained to me the significance of the pig in the British society. Around the time of the Industrial Revolution, it was normal for families to rear pigs in the backyard.

In the days when garbage collection was a novelty, probably not even heard of, and pretty much most types of waste were biodegradable, if not recyclable, having a pig was really useful. If you’re left with leftover scraps, you know who to feed them to. And pigs eat anything. Jo told me that pigs are not necessarily dirty – if you keep their habitat in an acceptable condition, they don’t have to be dirty or smelly.

In those days, the cured meat of the pig could sustain a family for months.

Now, you might think that the relationship between pig and man in this context is rather utilitarian. In a way, it is. But like the relationship between our Oriental friends and poultry (or to be exact, my mom and her ducks), it can be emotional as well.

How can you be emotional about something you keep in captivity? And eat?

Being an immigrant who is nosy by nature, I feel obliged to know a bit more about my adopted country and its gastronomic history. I am still not a fan of pork scratchings (although haggis I can tolerate), but I am intrigued to discover that the piggy bank is actually a concept derived from this old tradition of pig husbandry. The pig was a valuable asset to the family.

I was recommended to read Lark Rise To Candleford by Flora Thompson to learn more about the history of the British rural life.

So next time you see pig farmers protesting about the threats to their livelihood, you should know that they are also giving a voice to their concerns about the future of their customs, their cultural identity and their ways of life.

Oh, and why the mention of Anthony Burgess? Why not. His books (not The Clockwork Orange, obviously) got me into writing.

Optimism is quite an effort

The Genomia Fund aims to use R&D to come up with solutions for biomedical applications, livestock for food and sustainable agriculture Photo: SCapture

You can change the world. But to do that, you have to change your world first.

I am not quoting Eric Clapton. I am rephrasing the words of René Dubos, the microbiologist and humanist who once said that you can help solve global environmental problems by considering the ecological, economic, and cultural aspects of your own surroundings.

For those of you who have not heard of René Dubos, he was the guy whose famous maxim is used in so many charity and NGO marketing pitches: “Think Globally, Act Locally”.

Even Royal Shell, not a known friend of the pro-environment movement, (mis)appropriated it for their advertising campaign. At least we know their marketing people are well-read.

It’s quite rare to encounter Dubos-type of optimism in R&D and veterinary medicine, unless it is to do with philanthropic initiatives. So imagine my surprise when I read the online overview of the Genomia Fund’s objectives (Moredun in the money”, 30th June 2008).

The Genomia Fund, a consortium led by Moredun with the involvement from institutions such as the Institute of Animal Health, the Roslin Institute and the Rowett Research Institute, receive £3m to help the transfer of technologies from consortium members to the market.

The aim of the fund is to use R&D to come up with solutions for biomedical applications, livestock for food and sustainable agriculture, and also to attract more money to the sector.

The Genomia Fund says that livestock plays a significant role at domestic level in tackling the global changes brought about by the explosion of the world’s population, the economic growth and the rapid urbanisation of developing countries.

It is key “in sustainable agriculture and rural development in the UK”.

“Products of livestock agriculture are worth about £25 billion a year at retail in the UK alone, and are responsible for the employment of about 0.5m UK residents,” it says.

“Over 60% of the land in the UK is only suitable for forestry or livestock agriculture. Grazing livestock is critical to the maintenance of our landscapes so attractive to tourists.”

Despite some setbacks in animal biotechnological developments, the Genomia Fund says there are plenty of commercial opportunities available – provided that the sector puts itself forward as an attractive investment proposition.

Glad to see some optimism at last. I can’t say much about the animal R&D industry, but from my experience in journalism, the one thing that is hard to change is attitude, and the one thing that is hard to be is optimistic. It takes open-mindedness to accept that the non-sale or the non-marketing work you do can generate revenues.

I once wrote a blog (not for Down on the Pharm, and not using this pseudonym) lamenting the journalist’s lack of commercial sense, and the death of traditional journalism as a result of that.

But you know what Dubos said? “"History teaches that man without effort is sure to deteriorate, man cannot progress without effort, and man cannot be happy without effort."

And that was a scientist, not the Dalai Lama, talking. Optimism is quite an effort. But it’s an effort worth doing.

No chicken feed

This could save lives

Who would have thought this day would come? Online health news website HealthNewsDigest reported that scientists at Ohio State University's Comprehensive Cancer Center are now working on turning chickens into a cancer-fighting food.

It works like this: you feed the chickens with a type of feed that contains gossypol, a natural substance found in cotton, and then you feed the chickens or their eggs to humans.

We find that hugely interesting because gossypol was used to keep the population under control in China. It was discovered that cottonseed oil used for cooking actually make a reasonable, if not 100% reliable, male contraception. A website dedicated to male contraceptives claimed that "researchers found that men taking a daily gossypol pill had reliable contraception and no complaints about change in libido".

Will gossypol-fed chickens also be a food for male contraception one day? Who knows, but this latest news certainly proves that chicken is no longer to the boring and ordinary meat we took it to be. This should expand the portfolio of cancer-fighting foods to include not just greens, fruits and teas – the usual vegetarian fare – but also white meat as well.

Feeding the 300 million

It must be tough for food producers having to choose between profit margins and political correctness. Don’t use antibiotics and your productivity suffers. Use the drugs and you could be inviting a PR disaster Photo: Jonathan Ng

You can make your brand look good in two ways: by accentuating the positive and playing down the negative, or by making others look bad so you look good.

Although it might involve some omission of truth, the former is highly recommended. The latter invites bad blood and bad karma, and should only be left to political campaigns.

Recently, US chicken companies Purdue Farms and Sanderson Farms claimed that their rival, Tyson Foods, did the latter by running an advertisement campaign championing its “raised without antibiotics” chickens. Purdue and Sanderson claimed that in doing so, Tyson insinuated to the consumers that its competitions are using the drugs.

The outcome of the court case will not be known for some time, and we are not in the business to judge who is wrong or who is right. However, it is interesting to note how careful food marketers are when dealing with the word “antibiotics”.

In life science reporting, we don't normally discuss semantics or any obscure branch of sociolinguistics that dwells on the emotional association of a word, but even our own report author couldn't help but comment on the definitions of "antibiotics".

“The term ‘antibiotic’ has become somewhat debased in recent years, at least in the eyes of the animal health industry, as it has been used by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the media in a general in a pejorative sense,” says the Animal Pharm report on Antibacterials in the Animal Health Industry. “It has become associated with scare stories about super-bugs and over-intensive livestock farming.”

The report goes on explain the difference between ‘antibiotics’, ‘antibacterials’, ‘antimicrobials’ and ‘anti-infective’, and what the antibacterials are actually used for.

Antibacterials, it elaborates, do not have any direct effect on viral pathogens. Their use in outbreaks of clinical disease involving viruses is aimed at “combating any secondary infections by opportunistic bacteria which may be present either in the environment or as part of the normal commensal flora of a healthy animal”.

To change the consumers' perception of antibiotics, the public needs to be educated, and more research should be done into new ways of slowing down the much-feared antibiotic resistance, says the Ain Shams Scientific Pharmaceutical Students’ Association (ASSPSA) of the Faculty of Pharmacy, Ain Shams University, Egypt.

Not long ago, the association published a paper on the importance of antibiotics. Entitled Antibiotics Abuse, the paper maintains that “the discovery of antibiotics was a leap in modern medicine. Antibiotics are the cornerstone for the prevention and treatment of numerous respiratory infections”.

It explains the reason behind the abuse of antibiotics in farming. “Cleverly, the antibiotics are called ‘antimicrobial growth promoters’, or AGPs. The reason why they are so desirable is that they increase growth and feed efficiency in animals by 2% to 4%,” the paper says.

“If you are a livestock farmer, 2% to 4% may be more than even your profit margin. To the farmers, there could be perceived negative ramifications to not using antimicrobial growth promoters”.

A diner (pictured, left) enjoying his all-you-can-eat breakfast in New Orleans, Louisiana, US. Mass food consumption means mass food production Photo: Kess Bohan/Sojournposse

Apparently, the US livestock farming cannot do without growth-promoting antibiotics, according to Peter Hughes and John Heritage of the Division of Microbiology, School of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Leeds.

In their paper, Antibiotic Growth-Promoters in Food Animals, published on the FAO website, the authors state: “The Animal Health Institute of America (AHI, 199) has estimated that, without the use of growth promoting antibiotics, the USA would require an additional 452 million chickens, 23 million more cattle and 12 million more pigs to reach the levels of production attained by the current practices.”

It must be tough for food producers having to choose between profit margins and political correctness. Don’t use antibiotics and your productivity suffers. Use the drugs and you could be inviting a PR disaster.

Like many rich nations, the US diet consists of a high proportion of meat. Ironically, not every American is rich enough to afford alternative diets inspired by ethics or healthy lifestyles. Without the use of growth promoting antibiotics in livestock farming, how is it possible for the US to feed her 300 million?

Animal emotions run high

I have a good relationship with my neighbour, we take in one another's parcels and exchange Christmas cards. So I was surprised to detect a coolness setting in, especially as we had discussed our jobs and work routines recently.

Finally, fearing for my parcels and Christmas list, I asked her what was wrong. "I don't agree with vivisection," came the answer. "I think it's wrong but you're biased towards it." I was taken aback. I didn't think we had discussed my attitudes to animal experimentation, I don't think I've ever discussed them, so how did this suddenly happen?

I probed a little further. It emerged my neighbour had thought that a publication called Animal Pharm must write about and support animal experimentation. I explained that Animal Pharm covers progress in animal health, how to make sick animals better, not how to use them to make humans better. My neighbour seemed mollified, and when I mentioned Animal Pharm's coverage of the 3Rs, reducing, refining and replacing animals in research, she was happier with me, although still opposed to using animals for medical research.

So how does the scientific community present current thinking on the use of animals in medical research? Extreme measures by animal rights activists have lost the support of many members of the public, so is now the time for human and veterinary medical scientists to show their side of the argument?

Geneticist Steve Jones, in his book Double Helix, suggests that opponents of the use of animals in medical research use "an essentially stupid argument: that if you disapprove of something, it cannot be true" (Double Helix, p89). He compares messages that suggest that animal experimentation is useless with the pronouncements of creationists, and, depressingly, says that "rubbish endlessly repeated can convert itself in the public mind into uncertainty, and then to truth." (Double Helix, p89).

After speaking to my neighbour, a sensible, well-educated woman, I felt that scientists had a long way to go before their arguments, based on facts not emotions, were listened to.

But one question remained with me: how do animal lovers feel about using animals in studies to find new veterinary drugs? Diabetes and cancer are just two diseases pets can suffer, and today, they can be treated successfully. This success is the result of careful study, research and experimentation using animals. You may not want animals to suffer to help cure your fellow human beings, but you might just have a different attitude when animal experimentation cures your beloved dog or cat.