Animals in their nature: A case study on public attitudes to animals, genetic modification and...

Animals in Their Nature: A Case Study onPublic Attitudes to Animals, GeneticModification and ‘Nature’

■ Phil MacnaghtenLancaster University

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to engage with contemporary debates on the social and ethicaldimensions of genetically modified (GM) animals. Dominant policy ethicalapproaches and frameworks are criticized for failing radically to accommodatesome of the most important dimensions of concern. Drawing on primary empiricaldata emphasizing existing embodied relationships to animals, the article analyseshow people express ethical concern over GM animals, including their sense of thecontinuities and discontinuities between GM animals and those determined by con-ventional selective breeding practices.The findings suggest that GM animals are likelyto become an issue of public controversy, especially in the animal testing domain,due to the ways in which they symbolize and give voice to underlying tensionsbetween ‘moral’ and ‘instrumental’ approaches to animals.The article concludes thatpeople reject GM animals as ‘going against nature’, and that such concerns reflectwider unease about science, about technological modernity, and about hubris.

KEY WORDS

animals / embodiment / ethics / genetic modification / nature / risk

lthough the sociological dimensions of environmental risk and action havebeen actively researched and critically debated in recent years, littleresearch has focused on the contribution of such approaches to the anti-

cipation of environmental controversy. Yet, for policy institutions, it is preciselythe need to anticipate public opinion, and hence the potential for risk issues tobecome matters of public controversy, that tends to be of primary interest.

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SociologyCopyright © 2004

BSA Publications Ltd®Volume 38(3): 533–551

DOI: 10.1177/0038038504043217SAGE Publications

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Indeed, the ability to help anticipate responses to potential new and emergenttechnologies, and to distinguish between different technologies in terms of theirtacit social vulnerabilities, is becoming acknowledged as an essential skill forgovernments and corporations.

Official failure to anticipate the 1998–2000 controversies surroundinggenetically modified (GM) crops and foods in Britain and elsewhere provided adisturbing early warning of the potential for acute political and commercial dis-ruption when a particular form of industrial innovation fails to command pub-lic acceptability (ESRC, 1999; May, 1999). In many ways this was a landmarkevent for governments and industry, signalling the need for fresh approaches tothe advance evaluation and social guidance of new technological developmentsas an urgent pre-condition for any subsequent public acceptability (UK Houseof Lords, 2000). One particular response has been the suggestion that it may bedesirable to distinguish between new technologies and products in terms oftheir ‘social constitutions’ – that is the specific societal values and assumptionsthat particular technologies may reflect and embody when implicated in ‘realworld’ circumstances – as a means of evaluating their likely future vulnerabili-ties (Grove-White et al., 2000).

This approach recently informed the deliberations of the UK Agriculturaland Environmental Biotechnology Commission (AEBC) in their attempt to pro-vide strategic guidance to the UK Government on the future development ofanimal biotechnology (AEBC, 2002). Undoubtedly, the potential of animalbiotechnology is great. By transferring directly the genetic material from onespecies to another, advocates claim that similar effects to conventional breedingwill be achieved faster, with greater precision, and across a greater array ofpotential applications (Royal Society, 2001). At the same time it is clear that theprospect of applying genetic biotechnology to animals raises particular publicsensitivities, and that (existing and current) applications have far-reaching ram-ifications for society’s relationships with animals (Genewatch, 2002). Theextent of public unease is reflected in European-wide opinion poll researchwhere the ‘ethical acceptability’ of GM animals is found to command the low-est of any form of genetic modification (INRA, 2000). In the words of theAEBC, this means that ‘Government and the livestock industry must get it right,to avoid the problems we have seen with public acceptance of the introductionof GM foods and crops’ (AEBC, 2002: 4).

For the AEBC, a vital aspect of ‘getting it right’ is that any future develop-ment of animal biotechnology should anticipate and should appropriatelyrespect wider public opinion. For this reason the Commission sought to under-stand better the nature and strength of public attitudes and sensitivities to ani-mal biotechnology as a critical imperative prior to further steps towards thecommercial production of GM or cloned animals (AEBC, 2002). As an initialmeasure, a literature review was commissioned on existing social attituderesearch on animals and biotechnology in the UK. The subsequent studyrevealed that the extant research consisted predominantly of quantitative opin-ion surveys, that the issue of animals and biotechnology had not formed the

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sole focus of any single research project, and that existing data could provideonly general indications of the state of current public opinion (Breakwell,2001). Noting the strategic significance of the issues, the AEBC commissionedfurther empirical research to help provide a clearer picture of public under-standings of animals, and of the values and attitudes towards them across dif-ferent social groups of the UK public. Through better understanding of generalpublic sensibilities towards animals, the AEBC hoped to develop insight into thepotential factors likely to govern future responses to uses of animals in biotech-nology.

In this article I report on the qualitative empirical research study thatensued (for a full copy of the Animal Futures report, see Macnaghten, 2001).Before reporting on the details of the research I examine how strategic policyreports and institutions have tended to characterize what is at stake in animaland crop biotechnology, and how such approaches may be radically underes-timating the strength and content of public concerns.1 In particular, I scruti-nize the ways in which public unease around the introduction of new andemergent biotechnologies has tended to be characterized in Government andother official bodies around particular configurations of ‘the ethical’ (Blair,2002).

Constructing ‘The Ethical’ in Public Policy

Expert policy reports on biotechnology have tended to frame ‘the ethical’ ascomprising either deontological or utilitarian dimensions of concern (seeEuropean Federation of Biotechnology, 1999; Nuffield Council, 1999; UKBBSRC, 1996). Deontological approaches tend to focus on the intrinsic ‘right-ness’ or ‘wrong-ness’ of the technology and include concerns that genetic modi-fication is blasphemous (e.g. that it is contrary to God’s perfect order),unnatural (e.g. that it breaches the integrity of natural species boundaries), anddisrespectful (e.g. that it violates the ‘right’ of the organism to express its ownnature). By contrast, utilitarian approaches tend to focus on the ‘extrinsic’ con-sequences of the technology and include concerns about the consequences of thetechnology to animal suffering, as well as the risks to human health, animalwelfare, the environment, genetic diversity, and so on.

Such formulations have led what are characterized as ‘ethical’ concerns tobe grafted onto established biotechnology risk-assessment frameworks aseffectively an additional form of specialist instrumental expertise (Grove-White, 2001). However, how adequate are such approaches in capturing whatpeople actually feel to be ‘at stake’ in the development of genetically modifiedanimals?

Dominant risk assessment methodologies have been criticized for reducingcomplex and multi-dimensional risk questions into hard and definable scientificparameters (Royal Commission on Environment and Pollution, 1998; RoyalSociety, 1992). Risk assessment methodologies regulating genetically modified

535Animals in their nature Macnaghten

foods and crops have been particularly criticized for failing to reflect, or evento recognize, some of the most significant dimensions of public concerns(AEBC, 2001; ESRC, 1999; Grove-White et al., 1997). A parallel argumentconcerns how expert ethical consideration of the application of biotechnologytowards animals may be overlooking a host of wider issues of ethical concernrelating to the ways in which the technology is being ‘socially constituted’(Grove-White et al., 2000). This includes potential concerns over the unfore-seen side effects of the technology, possible unease about current institutionaland commercial commitments to the technology, uncertainty about the integrityand adequacy of present patterns of government regulation and in particularabout ‘scientific’ reassurances of safety, and ambivalence towards the tacitnotions of control, precision and ‘improvement’ in dominant institutional por-trayals of the technology.

A related criticism concerns the manner in which ‘intrinsic’ concerns tendto be framed in expert ethical reports. Non-utilitarian or intrinsic concerns,such as whether GM plants or animals constitute a ‘non-natural’ interferencewith nature, or whether they amount to ‘playing God’, have been recognized inresearch as important constituents of public unease (INRA, 1993, 2000).However, in expert policy reports such concerns tend to be afforded an ‘emo-tional’ rather than a ‘rational’ or ‘intellectual’ status (Wynne, 2001). TheNuffield Council on Bioethics report, for example, acknowledges that manypeople view genetic modification as unnatural, as some kind of improper ‘tam-pering with nature’, and as violating some indefinable class of natural barrier(1999: 13–15). Yet, such concerns are often interpreted as making little sense –at least to logically minded ethicists and practising scientists – since it is possi-ble to arrive at the same outcome (i.e. the same gene complements) both fromselective breeding and from genetic modification techniques.

This consequentialist approach reinforces the judgement that new tech-niques of genetic modification should be properly understood as continuouswith older patterns of selective breeding. Indeed, intrinsic concerns are fre-quently belittled as part of a mistaken ‘naturalistic fallacy’ in which people aremistaking as natural (e.g. domesticated or farm animals) what in reality hasbeen shaped by centuries of human interference and selection (see RoyalSociety, 2002, for one recent example of this argument). The endorsement ofthis argument leads the Nuffield Council to conclude that ‘the decision aboutwhat is unnatural cannot be one for public policy, but that the freedom ofchoice of consumers must embrace the ability to refuse what they reject as“unnatural” products’ (1999: 17). Hence, in expert reports such concerns tendto be regarded as matters of individual conscience, to be appropriatelyaddressed through market mechanisms such as labelling, rather than conceivedas a matter for genuine public or ‘citizen’ debate. However, is not the questionas to whether GM and non-GM animals are substantially equivalent one ofnormative judgement? If so, is this not a legitimate matter for substantial ethi-cal inquiry (Grove-White, 2001)?


Research Approach

So far, I have suggested that dominant utilitarian and deontological frameworksmay inadequately accommodate both the range and the potential novelty ofethical concerns raised by animal biotechnology. In particular, I have stressedthe need to pay attention to the wider social and institutional contexts in whichconcerns towards animal biotechnologies are expressed; and to scrutinizepeople’s sense of the continuities and differences between GM animals andthose determined by conventional selective breeding practices.

These questions provided a framework for our empirical research study.Informed by recent debates in the sociology of the environment, the researchfocused on the social practices through which different kinds of people experi-ence and reflect upon animals in their daily lives; for example, as pets, in sport,as wild creatures, as prey, and as subjects of scientific research. Such anapproach emphasizes that it is specific embodied social practices, rather thanabstract ethical principles, that are most likely to shape and transform our rela-tionships to animals (see Franklin, 2002; Macnaghten and Urry, 1998).Understanding such social practices entails a need to engage with people’s owncategories of concern and experience, especially in their dwelt-in worlds.Indeed, it is argued that ethical concern to applications of biotechnologytowards animals is more likely to be grounded in existing embodied relation-ships to animals rather than in abstract ‘welfare’ or ‘rights’ criteria (see Benton,1993, for a parallel critique of ‘rights’ and ‘welfare’ discourse as insufficientlygrounded in social life).

The study that emerged was conceived as an exploratory investigationinto the area, designed to throw some initial light on the factors likely toshape future responses to the applications of biotechnology to animals. Thestudy draws upon the interpretation of eight structured focus group discus-sions involving a selection of population groups in the UK. The discussionswere held in July and October 2001 in the north-west of England and inLondon. Each group met once, for two hours and followed analogous topicguides. The discussion guide was designed to explore how people ‘felt’ aboutcurrent and future applications of biotechnology to animals in the context ofexisting everyday social practices. The discussion centred on three lines ofinquiry:

1 How do people talk about, and directly experience, animals phenomeno-logically? For example, how intelligent, how affectionate, how responsive,how like/unlike humans do they find them to be?

2 How do people talk about animals in relation to ‘professional’ or ‘instru-mental’ uses and contexts? How do they respond to apparent tensions,dilemmas and contradictions in their own attitudes and behaviours?

3 How do people view the (potential and actual) applications of geneticbiotechnology to animals?


The groups were designed to have characteristics from a range of social cat-egories including age, life-stage, gender, socio-economic class and geography ofresidence, to ensure that they reflected a broad cross-section of society. Each ofthe groups was set up to include people who shared social practices involving acommon form of relationship with animals. The research comprised two groupsof pet owners, two of farmers (one intensive, the other extensive), a group ofwildlife observers and one of country sports enthusiasts. There were also two‘non-animals’ groups, as a kind of control, comprised of people with no petsand no acknowledged strong relationships with animals.

Unsurprisingly there were differences in the attitude and perspectiveexpressed towards biotechnology and animals between the various focusgroups. However, what also emerged in the discussions was a number of con-vergences of perspective that transcended, in often spectacular ways, the verydifferent kinds of animal–human relationship embodied in the various groups.In this article I examine these convergences including the dislocations betweencommonly held concerns and their formal (mis)representation in expert policyreports (for a more detailed account of the methodological and theoreticalunderpinnings of the research, see Macnaghten and Myers, 2004).

Animals in Social Life

Undoubtedly, the relationship between humans and animals has undergone aprofound set of transformations as we enter the 21st century. In the early part ofthe 20th century relationships still tended to be based on a categorical distinctionbetween humans and animals. Indeed, since at least the industrial revolution, ani-mals figured in the modern project principally as a resource for human progress(Franklin, 1999). At the close of that century that distinction, and its reliance onthe subordination of animals, was being seriously questioned. The historianKeith Thomas has identified what he describes as a historically generated para-dox (1985): just as the logic of industrial society has resulted in the increasinglysystematic instrumental use of animals for human betterment (in multiple ways),so that same society has also generated new forms of empathy towards and iden-tification with animals. Indeed, most of us appear to be caught up in a complexweb of contradictory responses in daily life, identifying with animals and fre-quently treating them with feeling and compassion (for example, as pets), whilealso benefiting from a diversity of instrumental uses (for example, as meat, asclothes, and as ‘disease models’ in animal testing).

In the focus group discussions we found people caught between moral andinstrumental viewpoints, both seeing animals as ‘ends in themselves’, and par-ticipating in daily practices that ‘indirectly’ use animals more instrumentally, asa means to satisfy ‘human ends’. Thus, we found evidence that large numbersof people were experiencing and relating to animals as individual, living, sen-tient beings. People were developing what can be described as a ‘culture of careand responsibility’ towards animals, expressed through the establishment of


strong emotional ties, feelings of reciprocal love and respect, time spent in thecompany of animals, and a desire to enable animals to live a life as happy, ashealthy and as free from suffering as possible. Such sentiments were unsurpris-ingly most prevalent amongst ‘pet owners’ but were shared across a variety ofdifferent social groups. Some farmers spoke in emotive terms about their live-stock, wildlife observers spoke of the moral imperative of protecting andrespecting animals in their natural habitat, while country sports enthusiastsspoke passionately of their intimate relationships with their working dogs.

Of course, what constitutes care and responsibility for animals is hugelycontested; what constitutes ‘care and respect’ for one social group may be alter-natively represented as ‘cruel and inhumane’ by another. Such contested notionsof animal–human relations are reflected in the growth of vegetarianism, the riseof animal welfare and animal rights organizations, the popularity of protestsover the live exports of animals, and so on (see Benton, 1993; Franklin, 1999;and Tester, 1991, on the historical emergence of such controversies).Nevertheless, notwithstanding such differences in definition and approach, thefocus groups pointed to a heightened sense of empathy and compassion withanimals across a wide array of animal–human practices.

At the same time, the (non-farming) focus group discussions also pointedto a collective ‘blanking out’ of those aspects of daily life that remain utterlydependent upon the instrumental use of animals, especially in the use of animalsin meat production (see Franklin, 1999: 153–7 for a historical analysis of the‘progressive distancing’ of animal origins in the retailing and consumption ofmeat). Many people saw themselves as being ‘in denial’, choosing to eat meatyet at the same time distancing themselves from actively confronting the reali-ties of modern farming; colluding with abattoirs, supermarkets, advertisers andfood producers in dislocating meat from its corporeal production:

Male 1: I suppose I could say I don’t care about cows, pigs and sheep becauseI eat them.

Female 1: But do you like them in the fields?Male 1: I like to see them in the fields but I mustn’t care about them because I

eat them everyday.Male 2: You don’t want to see cruelty or …Female 2: We’re hypocrites really.Female 3: Yes, we are.Male 1: We’re selective when we want to be.Female 2: When it suits us.Female 3: When you’re at the supermarket you don’t think about it.Male 3: You must be able to switch off, it goes back to that point about caring

doesn’t it. You like them in the field but …Female 2: Yeah, you all go and say look at the bunnies in the field but I like rab-

bit pie.(Wildlife observers – north-west)


Yet, the very acknowledgment of ‘hypocrisy’ and ‘selection’ commonlyexpressed by participants represents what may be seen as a reflexive break fromthe past, or what sociologists refer to as an instance of ‘reflexive modernization’or ‘detraditionalization’ (Beck et al., 1995; Heelas et al., 1996). In previoustimes people were more likely to regard the eating of meat as a given, as part ofthe unspoken norms of traditional life (Fiddes, 1991). Nowadays, traditionsand practices have to explain themselves, to become open to interrogation ordiscourse (Giddens, 1994). In negative terms, the active dislocation of meatfrom its context of production may be viewed as part of the contemporary feel-ing of powerlessness, of intensive farming regimes seen as governed by theineluctable logic of global markets and (post)fordist work practices (Griffithsand Wallace, 1998; Schlosser, 2001). In a more positive light, the reflexiveengagement with such acts of separation belies a latent desire to work out amoral and ethical way of living together, both animals and humans (Franklin,1999).

The question of ‘animal testing’ and ‘animals for research’ raised similarambivalent responses as people appeared to be caught between contradictoryinstrumental and moral/caring viewpoints, between the view as to what was anappropriate use for human betterment pitted against one’s moral distaste forsubjecting animals to pain. Indeed, such ambivalent caring/instrumentalresponses can even apply to the same animal, when people accepted the condi-tional need to use animals for testing that elsewhere would be regarded as petsor wildlife. Again, the preferred option was to ‘switch off’. However, whenrespondents confronted the issue a number of common perspectives emerged.Significantly, people tended to accept (or at least to tolerate) the suffering of theanimals concerned when there existed a genuine and authentic human need,typically expressed in the need to cure life-threatening diseases. Such a need hadto be justified in human rather than commercial criteria and was only seen asjustified when alternatives were not available:

Male: Yeah, but if they’ve got to research drugs, yeah, there’s no other optionis there but monkeys because they’re our closest ancestors aren’t they. Andif that means finding a cure for cancer, yeah, I for one am all for it. Or otherthings like cancer related diseases and things like that. If that’s our closestancestor and they get better results from monkeys, right, you might dis-agree with me, but yes I’m all for that. But when you start for cosmetics,yeah, that is bang out of order.

(Pet owner – north-west)

Such findings clearly reinforce existing public opinion research findings onpublic endorsement of animal experimentation for medical purposes (MORI,1999). However, it is important to note that the boundaries and emphases onwhat constitutes acceptable medical uses are not static or unalterable. Theyremain conditional on the movement of wider cultural and political debates asreflected in policy discussions, NGO campaigns, science dissemination, pres-


sures for socially responsible investments, medical advances, media coverage,consumer movements and so on. The current climate of debate around animalexperimentation appears impoverished at present, in that virtually all the par-ticipants expressed a profound lack of knowledge about animal testing. Howmany animals were involved? Was it in the thousands or millions? Was thisdecreasing or increasing? Why were particular animals chosen? For what pur-poses was testing conducted? Who decided what was justified and what wasn’t?How were the animals treated in research? How was this regulated? What, ifany, were the alternatives to using live animals? How realistic were these alter-natives? Was the issue one of cost or of ethics? In relation to such questionspeople felt that the whole issue was clouded in secrecy, and that such secrecycould very possibly be at the expense of the animals involved:

Male 1: It’s done behind closed doors isn’t it.Female 1: You don’t really know do you.Female 2: I think you’d need to be Greenpeace or something like that to

know …Female 3: … It’s all hidden away isn’t it.Male 2: Regulation is another thing, probably most people here don’t know

about the regulations but there must be some sort of regulations behind thescenes that they have to adhere to …

Female 1: We should only use animals if it’s absolutely essential and there’s noother way.

Moderator: And, do you think this is the case at the moment?Female 1: No …Male 1: I mean, I’d like to qualify my stance on that, I’d like the whole thing to

be more public. This hypocrisy that we have talked about earlier, no mat-ter how uncomfortable it might be, we as a society won’t have moved onuntil we can face that hypocrisy.

(Wildlife observers – north-west)

The New Genetics and Animal Testing

The major application of the new genetics to animals at present and for theimmediate future is for the purpose of medical and biological research (AEBC,2002; Genewatch, 2002; Royal Society, 2001). There are three main aspects tothis research: the use of animals as models for specific human diseases; betterunderstanding of the human genome; and testing substances for toxicity. In cur-rent circumstances, the successful development of research in the new geneticsis clearly reliant upon the extension of animal experimentation. In each focusgroup people deliberated on the need for ‘considerable increases’ in animal test-ing arising out of the new genetics. People’s responses were far from negative.Indeed, there was little rejection per se. Rather, the dimensions of concern out-lined above in connection to animal testing were intensified. Nevertheless,


notwithstanding such responses of continuity, there are three reasons why theissue of animal testing in the biotechnology domain may become an issue withfresh public resonance.

First, ‘animal testing’ appears to be a background issue that most people,most of the time, prefer not to dwell upon. It remains a known but hiddenaspect of daily life. At the same time, people are vaguely aware of its prov-enance and recognize that the issue raises profound ethical dilemmas. One fea-ture which helps conceal the debate from explicit public consciousness is thelatent sense that other people and organizations are raising the profile of suchissues and that these are being dealt with by government and medical estab-lishments. Even though the issue is seen as shrouded in secrecy, people share avague impression that the numbers of animals are diminishing, that research isbeing conducted in a broadly socially responsible manner, and that the frame-works of policy and regulation are familiar and responsive. Of course, suchperceptions are closely in line with current UK Government commitments to the3 ‘Rs’ (the principles of replacement, reduction and refinement) which nowunderpin humanitarian practice in animal research and which have led to anoverall reduction in animals experimentation in recent years (UK Home Office,2001). Against such a background, the proposition that advances in the newgenetics may require, as a precondition to development, a ‘considerableincrease’ in animal testing brought the issue into sharp focus. No longer werepeople so comfortable in their role as passive spectators. The question of ‘justi-fication’ became a more urgent matter, demonstrable not just to expert com-mittees but also to the public at large.

A second reason lies in the likelihood of growing public debate aboutassumptions underpinning the social project of the new genetics overall (seeFukuyama, 2002, for one such account). On medical grounds there appearscurrently to be strong public endorsement of the need to find new cures forhereditary disorders. Yet, there is already the potential for the further blurringof ‘cosmetic’ (or enhancement) and ‘medical’ (or therapeutic) boundaries as cri-teria for distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable forms of researchinvolving animal testing. For example, a recent study on the ‘New HumanGenetics’ demonstrated that it was not possible for lay people to draw anysimple lines of distinction between acceptable and unacceptable research andpractice (Kerr et al., 1998). Based on 20 focus group discussions, clear tensionswere identified in lay people’s accounts, between the desire for individual auton-omy and the need for social responsibility, and between conflicting ideas ofstigma, suffering and quality of life.

A further reason is that the additional numbers of procedures are likely tobe conducted on animals that have been themselves genetically modified(Genewatch, 2002). The growing popularity of using transgenic animals (usu-ally mice and rats) as ‘disease models’ is that they can be deliberatively geneti-cally modified to mimic human genetic functions and disorders. There isevidence of a steady decline in the total number of scientific procedures in theUK using genetically normal animals, from just over 3 million in 1990 to 1.9


million in 1999. However, procedures on animals with harmful genetic defects(deliberatively bred by selective breeding) has increased dramatically, by 50 per-cent (from 143,000 to 251,000 procedures), while the rise in procedures usingtransgenic/GM animals has risen tenfold since 1990 (from 50,000 to over500,000 procedures) (UK Home Office, 2001). Such upward trends in GM ani-mal use are predicted to continue, both for commercial and basic research pur-poses (POST, 2001).

Nature and Animals

So far, this article has focused on the factors underpinning how people under-stand animals in social life, including the issue of animal testing, and how cur-rent responses to tensions arising from the new genetics appear to be caught upbetween contradictory instrumental and moral/caring relations. In the follow-ing sections, I analyse the ways in which the category ‘nature’ was used to dis-tinguish between acceptable and unacceptable uses of animals, and thesignificance of this terminology for grounding concerns to GM animals.

In each of the group discussions, participants commonly invoked the termnature to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable uses of animals.This may seem irrelevant, even illogical, in that the majority of animals underdiscussion had been altered, domesticated, bred, and subjected to human influ-ences over centuries if not millennia. As highlighted earlier, such concerns havetended to be regarded as ‘intrinsic’, and individualistic matters in expert ethicalaccounts of biotechnology commonly cited as part of a mistaken ‘naturalisticfallacy’. However, the appeal to the nature of an animal as it was invoked in thediscussions may be more reasonable and more contextually grounded in sociallife.

For many participants the appeal of animals in daily life – as domestic pets,wildlife or shooting companions – tended to be talked about in terms of its con-trast to the everyday stresses and strains of modern living (see also Franklin,2001). In the presence of animals one could leave behind the pressures of work,of parenting, and of farming. By contrast with humans, animals ‘never argued’,‘were always pleased to see you’, ‘always forgave you’, and so on. This was pal-pably the case with the wildlife observers and the countryside sports enthusiastswho, in different ways, sought to experience animals ‘in their nature’, in theirterritory, ideally away from a human-controlled world. As the following pas-sage shows, in wild nature, and preferably in the company of wild animals, onecould restore a much-needed sense of calm and relaxation:

Female 1: I do a lot of hill walking and in places like Scotland you can beamongst various different birds and I think it’s the fact that you’re at peacewith yourself, you know, up in the mountains but also that you’re linkedwith nature, you know, you’re as close to nature as you can be. Becauseyou’re away from the city and the places that you can’t think, you can’t


relax but you can relax more when you’ve got a calmness of nature andanimals around you … Yeah, I think you feel part of it. I think you feellucky enough to be part of their life whilst they’re flying around. …

Male 1: You’re definitely in their territory there aren’t you?Female 1: Well, you are.(Wildlife observers – north-west)

One recurrent theme in the discussions was the apparently shared ideal ofkeeping animals ‘in their nature’. Even the pet-owners were habitually strivingtowards an authentic relationship with their pets ‘in their pet-nature’, main-tained to be as free and genuinely animal-like within the constraints of domes-tication. Many people refused to have household animals precisely because theycould not offer such conditions. Indeed, even the dairy farmers spoke of theideal of keeping livestock ‘in natural conditions’, outside in the summer ingrassy fields rather than kept inside throughout the year.

Nature and Genetically Modified Animals

In the focus group discussions, people were asked to respond to the prospect ofgenetically modified animals. Following consultation with the AEBC the con-cept was introduced by reading out a carefully prepared text presented on alarge concept board accompanied by a range of (neutral) images of animals andgenetic modification. The text ran as follows:

We now possess the skills to alter the genetic make-up of animals. By altering thegenetic material it is anticipated that we can modify the characteristics of animals invery precise ways. The process involves transferring a gene, commonly a humangene, from one animal species into another. Animals altered in this way are calledtransgenic. Through this kind of process it is possible to produce transgenic animalsdesigned to manufacture pharmaceuticals, organs for xeno-transplantation, animalmodels for research, and other transgenic animals.

Possible future applications of genetic modification of animals include:

■ Cows that produce milk with lower cholesterol and enhanced nutrients■ Faster growing farm animals and faster growing fish■ Farm animals with reduced sentience to make them less distressed by farm con-

ditions■ Cats that do not cause human allergies■ Cats that have their hunting instinct reduced/removed■ Mosquitoes that cannot transmit parasitic diseases such as malaria which are

bred to replace, at least locally, wild populations■ Sheep or cows that make pharmaceutical products in their milk■ Pigs that are bred to produce organs, such as hearts, that can be xenotrans-

planted into humans.

Even though the concept board had been carefully drafted to be even-handed and impartial, the dominant response in all groups was negative. For


some respondents the response was visceral: ‘I don’t like any of that’, one per-son stated; ‘No, I don’t like any of that at all’, another agreed. Others called thepotential applications ‘scary’, ‘wrong’, ‘interfering’ and ‘ridiculous’. However,the one term used to characterize people’s sense of unease was that such appli-cations marked a radical departure from nature:

Female 1: It’s just taking away nature, isn’t it?Female 2: Mmm, it’s not natural.Female 1: None of it’s natural, no.(Non-animals group – north-west)

Female 1: I think that’s going a bit too far.Female 1: It’s just not letting nature take its course; it’s just interfering with

nature too much.(Non-animals group – London)

Female: It’s not right, it’s too much messing with nature.(Pet owners – London)

There appeared to be two dimensions to such responses. On the one hand,people adopted a ‘deontological’ reaction against the proposed technology asintrinsically a violation of nature and transgressive of so-called natural param-eters. On the other hand, people reacted more pragmatically, questioning theapparent ‘usefulness’ of the prospective applications and their known andunknown consequences. With the exception of the malaria application, peoplefound the applications dubious, dangerous and unnecessary. However, as we seebelow, typically such ‘intrinsic/deontological’ and ‘pragmatic/consequentialist’considerations combined:

Female 1: Yeah, I think it’s just taking it too far. I don’t agree with using organsoff animals for transplants. And the cholesterol: that’s down to your diet,isn’t it, not … It’s so unnatural.

Female 2: Just think, what about the next generation of those animals though?What if they were to breed?

Female 1: For instance, you know, and then what happens to them if they’vegot this gene inside them and if that gets broken down and other chromo-somes and whatever.

Female 3: You don’t know what the consequences are.Female 1: Yeah, you need to let, you know like the GM crops when that all

came out it was like a really big thing and then it all sort of went pearshaped … like we’re still experimenting with the beef. You know, they saythere could be another epidemic rising in another five years time. You don’tknow enough.

Female 3: And, you know, science makes mistakes and we don’t know howmany mistakes, what’s going to result from this. You know, cancer causingthings and …


Female 2: Just let nature take its course.Female 3: Look what happened with thalidomide, they thought that was a won-

der drug. You know, they make mistakes. Too dangerous.(Non-animals group – London)

The progression in the above discussion is illuminating. The passage com-mences with an account of how the applications of genetically altered animalslisted above did not appear necessary. Tacit here is the notion that such appli-cations may be justified in situations when there is a proven and authentic need.However, such an even-handed approach began to dissipate as people started tothink through the consequences of what was implied, and to focus on the reallife institutional handling of what appeared to be related episodes. Focusing onthe apparently analogous example of BSE, people began to ask what the unfore-seen effects might be. Contemplating the known and unknown consequences,people then began to question the intrinsic merits of such technological inter-ventions. Underpinning such discussions was the lurking sense that such inter-ventions appeared to violate a deontological sense of ‘nature’, and that such anature had a tendency to ‘fight back’ in vengeance:

Male 1: You’ll never beat Mother Nature.Moderator: What do you mean by that?Male 1: She’ll always come back at you one way or another.Moderator: So is this trying to beat Mother Nature, all this stuff, is that what

you’re saying?Male 1: In effect, yes.Female 1: Well it’s altering nature isn’t it.Male 2: No, I don’t think it, no. We are assisting nature, I don’t think we’re try-

ing to –Male 3: No, we can’t be assisting nature if we want to breed a cat that doesn’t

catch birds or mice. The whole essence of a cat being put on the Earth andnot by God is to catch birds and mice. That’s what they do. So we’re not –however many millions of years we breed cats they will always catch birdsand mice. What this can do is can take an animal and it can alter its char-acteristics, and that’s what I think you should be thinking about, is do wewant a dog that doesn’t bark, do we want a cat that doesn’t catch mice.

(Country sports enthusiasts – north-west)

More generally, people saw such applications as the attempt to solve prob-lems that were of their own making. Plants and animals had evolved over mil-lennia and to propose that one could ‘improve’ characteristics on a more or less‘instantaneous’ basis appeared to some respondents as arrogant, as hubris andas likely to rebound on humans (see Adam, 1998). The principles of ‘letting be’and the sensed need for ‘humility’ appear to be powerfully endorsed in the dis-cussions (Cooper, 1998).


Conclusion

This article has attempted to contribute towards an understanding of the fac-tors likely to shape the future acceptability of genetically modified animals inthe public domain. Ethical approaches, including those favoured in policyreports, have been found limited in their ability to capture the strength and con-tent of public concern.

Importantly, the research suggests that most people reject GM animals as‘going against nature’. Rejecting a priori the characterization of such concernsas ‘intrinsic’ and lacking in reason, this research has sought to throw light onthe deeper reasoning and contextual understandings shaping such expressedconcerns. Perhaps the most evocative illustration of this sentiment wasexpressed by one of the wildlife observers who responded to the proposedfuture applications of genetic modification of animals as follows:

Male: I think it has less, it looks towards nature even less. The two there, thefaster growing farm animals and faster growing fish, that probably fright-ens me the most that one, because I think that has no regard for this thingcalled nature. It’s just totally saying ‘sod nature’, we’re gonna changethings, we can do better. And … there’s so much evidence that says, ‘oh nowe can’t’. And the one I would probably be totally against would be thereduced sentience and everything. I think that has even more disregard forwhat should be and what is. I find that appalling.

(Wildlife observer – north-west)

This sentiment does not rely on an outright rejection of the technology perse. Rather, the argument is that such proposed applications do not appear tomerit the (known and unknown) risks associated with the corresponding tech-nological advance. People thus seem willing to make trade-offs in judging theboundaries between acceptable and unacceptable use; it is simply that concernsabout GM animals appear to reflect a number of further elements. Such ele-ments include the requirement to prove a genuine and authentic need for under-taking such procedures, commensurate with the moral act of ‘going into thelaboratory and altering the DNA’, ‘speeding up the genetic alteration’, and theanticipated likelihood of unanticipated mistakes arising from the speed, scaleand scope of such highly interventionist practices.

This suggests that the misgivings people express towards the applicationsof GM animal technologies appear to be reflections of broader syndromes ofmistrust towards those institutions seen as responsible for such applications.Repeatedly, the crises over BSE and GM foods were invoked in support of sug-gestions that institutions of science, government and agri-business were not tobe trusted as key institutions responsible for overseeing such innovations –dependent as they are on taking animals further away from their nature – in aresponsible and ethically sensitive fashion. Mistrust is thus not simply safetyrelated but rests on people’s accumulated experience of the past behaviour of


institutions responsible for the development and regulation of technologicalrisks (Grove-White et al., 1997; Wynne, 2001). Perceiving such institutions asbeing ‘in denial’ of such realities exacerbated people’s sense of the likelihood ofsubsequent retribution, of ‘throw backs’, of ‘nature striking back’, and of ‘usgetting carried away without thinking about the repercussions’. In such ways,treating such expressed concerns as ‘intrinsic’ in a literal manner, with thecounter-argument that we have always interfered with nature, is radically tomisread public concerns that may be more accurately represented as expres-sions of concern about the institutional commitments of those promoting andregulating biotechnology, including their ‘systematically embodied denial ofignorance, and associated hubris’ (Wynne, 2001: 471).

I conclude by pointing to some implications of this case study for widersociological debates. First, the research points to the apparent ‘reasonableness’of public responses, including the concern that genetic technologies would takeaway from the ‘nature’ of animals. Indeed, a striking feature of the focusgroups, regardless of the participants’ socio-economic standing, was the seri-ousness and fair-mindedness with which most people sought to engage in com-plex issues. Such responses indicate that the focus group encounter should beseen as a serious attempt to present people with the anticipation of very ‘real’dilemmas in the ‘risk society’, where risks are recognized as for the most partunpredictable and incalculable (Beck, 1992). Such a conceptual orientationappears to offer substantially greater explanatory insight than more conven-tional ‘moral panic’ literatures, which tend to identify social anxieties as con-jured or ‘produced’ by social forces (such as the media or ‘emotive’ NGOactors) rather than deriving from the objective standing of new conditions orevidence (see Ungar, 2001, for a useful critique of these two positions).

Second, the case study seeks to transcend the somewhat static debatebetween ‘realists’ and ‘constructivists’ by pointing to the significance of embed-ded social practices in emerging animal–human relations. In particular, the datapoint to the appeal of nature as a ‘valuable fiction’ through which people canwrestle with deeply unfamiliar and disturbing questions surrounding the phys-ical manipulation and transgression of boundaries, hitherto regarded as fixed innature (Mulgan, 2002). The urgency of the appeal to nature is itself a reflectionof its contemporary ‘other’, the threat of a technological runaway, possibly even‘posthuman future’, for which few if any of us, ‘expert’ or otherwise, have ade-quate vocabularies or concepts (Fukuyama, 2002). Against such barely imagin-able scenarios, the integrity of animals – their wildness, their freedom, theirwholeness – embodies a call for humility, and for institutional recognition ofour total lack of control. The appeal to the integrity of animals in the face ofbiotechnological intervention thus only makes sense in the shifting materialityof contemporary animal–human relations and practices (Benton, 1992). Ethicalconcern towards animals is both a product of history yet also firmly embeddedin social reality. Indeed, perhaps only through exploring and deliberating uponthe contingent, yet deeply felt, threats of animal biotechnology can we movetowards a fresh consensus of what might constitute appropriate ‘limits’ to ani-


mal intervention. And, through such deliberation we might create (or possiblyre-discover) the conditions for a moral relationship with animals ‘in theirnature’.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Robin Grove-White, Brian Wynne, John Urry, Greg Myers,Eeva Macnaghten, and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlierdrafts of this article. I would also like to thank the UK Agricultural andEnvironmental Biotechnology Commission for commissioning the research and fortheir support and encouragement. Finally, I would like to thank my fellowresearcher Majid Yar.

Note

1 I am here solely concerned with the treatment of ‘the ethical’ in expert policyreports. It is beyond the scope of this article to engage with the wider philo-sophical literatures on ethics and animal biotechnologies.

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Phil Macnaghten

Is Senior Lecturer and Director of Research at the Institute for Environment, Philosophy

and Public Policy (IEPPP) at Lancaster University. He has published widely on the soci-

ology of the environment and is author, with John Urry, of Contested Natures (Sage,

1998) and Bodies of Nature (guest editor of special issue of Body and Society). His

research interests centre on the embodied dimensions of people’s experience in, and

of, technology, the future and the natural world. He is currently directing a major new

ESRC-funded research project entitled ‘Nanotechnology, Risk and Sustainability: Moving

Public Engagement Upstream’.

Address: IEPPP, Lancaster University, Furness College, Lancaster LA1 4YE, UK.

E-mail: [email protected]


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