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Science has always been an international endeavor, but it might surprise some that the Estonian University of Life Sciences‘ Institute of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Sciences has been shaped by not one but two born and bred English scientists over the course of 35 years.
One of these scientists is Clive Phillips, an expert on animal welfare, who is a visiting professor at the Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tartu, as well as an adjunct professor at Curtin University in Australia. The other is David Arney, a former student of Phillips, a professor in animal welfare at the Estonian University of Life Sciences Both born in England, Phillips and Arney met each other at a university in Wales, where they were involved in the study of animal husbandry. Their paths have been intertwined ever since, including at the Estonian University of Life Sciences, where they have contributed to its animal sciences and veterinary medicine programs.
Phillips, who first visited Estonia in the late 1980s, when it was still a part of the Soviet Union, has detailed some of his work here in his new book, Towards an Ethical Approach to Animals: A Life Learning about Animal Welfare, which was published by Springer last month. The book interweaves his own scientific approaches with personal memoir, and delves into the ethical questions around how animals are used, advocating changes at the personal and societal level.
In an interview, he makes it clear that his book is a wakeup call. “We have lost something like two-thirds of our wildlife over the past 50 years through habitat destruction and climate change,” Phillips says. “If complex animal life is rare, and has only happened once in the universe, then surely we should be looking after it better than we are.”
An emerging science
Such concerns have driven Phillips’s research since he obtained a bachelor’s degree in agriculture from the University of Reading and a PhD from the University of Glasgow in dairy cow nutrition and behaviour in the early 1980s.
Though institutional public concern about the welfare of animals dates back to the 19th century (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was established in 1824) animal welfare only began to emerge as a science at the time that Phillips was starting his career. It was a study that captured his attention and took him around the world, including a visit to Estonia at the tail end of the Soviet era when agriculture was still collectivized and most dairies were run as massive state farms, called sovkhozes or co-operatives (kolhkozes).
Such state-owned enterprises were operated like villages, he recalls, with both men and women employed in their operations, and the children looked after in farm daycares. “I remember seeing an enormous room with 50 kids sleeping in it, having their midday break,” Phillips says.
“I had never seen anything like that before.”
Estonia, as he notes, has a tradition of dairy farming. Before World War II, it was one of the leading milk-producing countries in Europe. The International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS), a Tallinn-based think tank, has previously reported that agriculture accounted for 59 percent of Estonia’s industry during the interwar period.
With the Soviet collapse and resumption of independence in 1991, Estonian agriculture returned to its privately owned model, and the European Union, seeking to align practices in Eastern Europe with what it considered Western norms, made available funding for researchers like Phillips and Arney to do projects in the east. This is what led Phillips to first Romania, later Hungary, and eventually to the Baltics, where Arney and he became acquainted with the Estonian University of Life Sciences and began to cooperate.
‘A good home’
Meelis Ots, a professor of feeding science at the Estonian University of Life Sciences, says that Phillips was one of the external scientists that helped to modernize the university’s animal husbandry studies in the 1990s. Ots also notes in a recent statement that Phillips has given lectures to students, and that the university is at this time developing a new one-year master’s program in animal welfare within the Institute of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Sciences.
According to Phillips, who resides in Brisbane, he tries to visit Estonia each time he is in Europe. As someone who witnessed its transition from collectivized agriculture to privately held agriculture over the past three and a half decades, he has experienced its changes first hand.
One of his early projects in collaboration with the Estonian University of Life Sciences was specifically focused on developing the agricultural education system at the school. Eventually, given his longstanding ties with the university, he was appointed as a visiting professor. “I have found it to be a good home,” says Phillips. “And I have enjoyed having connections there.”
Phillips also includes the university as an affiliation in his publications, and through Phillips the university is linked to top animal welfare researchers in the field, including those at the Estonian University of Life Sciences. Last month, Phillips together with Arney and Francesca Carnovale, another researcher at the Institute of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Sciences, published a paper analyzing animal welfare incidents after transport to Australian export slaughterhouses.
“This is a study of abattoir casualties, animals that arrive at export abattoirs that have been maimed or injured during the journey,” says Phillips. The work was discussed in The Guardian.
‘Much more autonomy’
Like Phillips, David Arney’s connections to Estonia also date back more than 30 years. He first came to the country in 1993, at which time he was pursuing a PhD in Animal Science from the University of Wales. Arney remained in Tartu at the Estonian University of Life Sciences until 1996 when he returned to the UK, but was enticed back to be a professor in 2007. He’s been at the university ever since and became a professor of animal welfare in 2014.
“I like it a lot,” says Arney in an interview. “I have much more autonomy here, I can pursue my academic interests and teach and supervise students with fewer management restrictions.”
Being at the Estonian University of Life Sciences also gives him more freedom to travel than he might enjoy elsewhere to take part in scientific conferences and sharing of education. Since much of the funding is provided by the European Commission or the Estonian Research Council, scientists feel less the presence of interest groups, which often commission studies in hopes of a certain outcome.
And as for having an impact, Arney notes that some of the people involved in setting state policies are former students. “In Estonia, things are more personal. It’s a small country where you can meet and talk about reevaluating the morality of how we work with animals,” Arney says. Farms are easier to access for studies, he adds, and the university has its own farm near Tartu.
Having both Arney and Phillips on board has helped the university to connect with international researchers, Arney points out. Both Stephen Hall, an emeritus professor of animal science at the University of Lincoln in the UK and Donald Broom, an emeritus professor of animal welfare at the University of Cambridge, have been to the campus in Tartu to speak.
“This is great for the students as they aren’t just listening to me,” says Arney. “They get access to well/known figures in the world of animal welfare and production,” he says. “It’s great for them to hear these people.
And as for the future, Arney says that by the time he retires, he would like to leave behind a competent group at the university that is confident and innovative in the field of animal welfare. Phillips, though officially retired from Curtin University, is preparing for a trip back to Europe and is continuing to liaise with the group in Tartu as well as livestock researchers around the world.
“I’m always broadening my fields of interest,” says Phillips. “I’m working closely with livestock scientists, encouraging them to step back and look at what is happening in the livestock industry,” he says. “I see that as an increasing part of my role.”
This article is written by Justin Petrone. This article was funded by the European Regional Development Fund through Estonian Research Council.
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