In the following text, I have summarised the nature, objectives and content of my doctoral research into the human-animal relationship. This piece was in fact published in Onderzoekers: Jaarboek 1996 van de Universiteit van Amsterdam. Amsterdam: Vossiuspers AUP. pp.48-52.
ANIMALS, DISEASE AND HUMAN SOCIAL LIFE: THE HUMAN-ANIMAL RELATIONSHIP RECONSIDERED
Joanna Swabe
The nature of our relationship with other animals has come under increasingly close scrutiny in recent decades. It is a highly emotive topic which has stimulated passionate pleas - from both public and academic quarters - for a reconsideration of our attitudes towards and treatment of other animal species. More often than not, the discourse which surrounds human-animal relations is imbued with morality, anthropomorphic sentiment and a heavy dose of idealism. Our exploitation and use of other species has often been portrayed as excessive, inhumane and, in some instances, completely unnecessary. Vivisection, blood sports, intensive livestock farming and biotechnological research are but a few of the animal-related issues which have recently been targeted and criticised by both animal rights campaigners and moral philosophers. The discussion of such controversial topics within the public sphere has led to a heightened awareness of and sensitivity to our interactions with other species. This has, to some extent, also manifested itself in discernible changes in consumer behaviour, particularly with regard to animal produce and cosmetics. The moral condemnation of our exploitation of animals is indeed highly persuasive. The compelling evidence against humanity that animal rights groups present plays heavily upon our urban sensibilities and naïveté about the harsh realities of food production, nature management and scientific development. Consequently, it has become difficult - even in the realms of academic `objectivity' - to see through the veneer of ethics and anthropomorphism which coats discourse on human-animal relations.
From the very inception of my research project on the relationship between humans and other animals, I have endeavoured to leave my sympathy and sentiment for animals at home. In essence, animal rights and human wrongs do not concern me, at least not in my professional life. The problem is purely a sociological one; namely, that humankind is, and has always been, highly dependent upon the exploitation of other animals to meet a wide variety of its needs and requirements. Throughout the course of human history, animals have, for example, been used to satisfy human food demands, to provide traction, to entertain, to give companionship and to further scientific advancement. My task is to look at the changing nature of these dependencies and the consequences of transformations in human-animal relations for human society. I have, therefore, chosen to restrict myself to exploring humankind's relationship with domesticated animals, since these are the species upon which we most depend to meet our routine nutritional, economic and affective needs.
Our great dependence upon animals to serve our needs has, however, presented certain drawbacks. In order for these animals to be of optimum utility to humankind it is imperative that they be kept fit and free from disease. The need for animal medicine - in whatever shape of form it may take - has thus become pervasive to human societies. My research, therefore, focuses upon the role which animal medicine played throughout the ages in maintaining and servicing the animal resources upon which we depend. It is my contention that veterinary knowledge and practice has played a crucial, yet much understated, role in human history, by maintaining world agricultural systems and promoting human health, in addition to supporting military regimes, servicing transport networks and other human activities such as science and sport. In short, the aim of this research project is to examine the historical relationship between animal health(care) and human civilisation, taking into account the changing nature of both human-animal and wider social relations.
My story begins some 10,000 years ago when some, but by no means all, human groups began to take the first tentative steps towards domestication and livestock husbandry. The domestication of animals exacted a fundamental change in the nature of human-animal relations, for it transformed this relationship from being simply one of hunter and prey, to one - to put it at its most simplistic - of master and servant. Through domestication, humans turned their attention from the dead to the living animal and, more importantly, to securing the primary product of the live animal - its offspring. Meat and other by-products of slaughter were thus gradually superseded in importance by secondary animal products such as milk, natural fibres, excreta and muscle power: animals therefore became inherently more valuable alive than dead. Caring for these animals from the cradle to the table became an important preoccupation within human societies. Domesticated animals constitute an important natural resource which, although renewable, requires careful maintenance. As a result, people began to gradually develop the practical knowledge, skills and discipline necessary to ensure a continual and healthy supply of food-producing animals. Records, for example, dating from ancient Sumer reveal that animal attendants possessed a basic understanding of veterinary obstetrics and tended their livestock with considerable care.
The domestication of animals had an enormous impact on human societies, the shock waves of which are still felt today. Although domestication enabled humans to secure a fairly reliable food source - which, in the long term, made human existence in many respects more secure - the dependence on the social/agricultural arrangements involved in maintaining this food source also grew. New and better methods of maintain the productiveness and quality of livestock needed to be found. The more human mouths there were to feed, the more the agricultural mode of food production came to be relied upon and the numbers of animals kept to supply human needs increased. A greater degree of self and social control was also required to cope with the new problems that keeping livestock entailed. For instance, co-operation between individuals, in addition to self-responsibility and constraint, was required to maintain livestock. Furthermore, the inception of agriculture led to the growing differentiation of both behaviour and power, amongst and with human groups. Leading to the further specialisation of labour and increasingly more complex systems of social stratification. Animal domestication, therefore, not only resulted in a critical transformation in the relationship between humans and other species, but it also brought about profound changes in the structure of human society and the ways in which human beings related to one another.
The consequences of animal domestication, however, reach far beyond the realms of social change. This new-found intimacy with other species had more insidious consequences for humankind, for the incorporation of animals into the bounds of human social organisation profoundly disturbed the delicate ecological balances between humans, animals and disease-producing microorganisms. As the historian William H. McNeill argues in his book Plagues and Peoples, animal domestication created the ideal circumstances under which infectious disease could be communicated from animal herds to human populations upon a scale that, for reasons of socio-ecological dynamics, had never before been possible. McNeill in fact contends that most of the distinctive epidemic diseases of humanity, such as tuberculosis, smallpox and measles, most likely transferred to humans from animal herds. Certainly, human diseases often share a common ancestry with animal ones: measles, rinderpest and distemper, for example, are all closely related pseudo-myxoviruses.
In many respects, my own research picks up from where McNeill leaves off. I have gone on to argue that humankind's great dependency upon other animals has also rendered our species extremely vulnerable to the effects of animal disease in other ways. There are, for instance, multitudinous zoonoses - i.e. diseases that can be naturally transmitted between vertebrate animals and humans - to which humans are susceptible. Anthrax, brucellosis, leptospirosis and tuberculosis are but a few of the zoonotic infections that have at times plagued humankind. Eating animal flesh, drinking milk, handling animal hides, tending livestock are some of the potential routes of disease transmission. Further to these diseases which cross the species divide, epizootics, such as rinderpest and bovine pleuropneumonia, have, throughout the course of history, resulted in great economic damage, considerable hardship, malnutrition or starvation and, consequently, the reduction of human immunity to other infections. Thus, although humankind has reached an apparently high degree of control over the natural world, our species has become both increasingly dependent upon and vulnerable to it.
Dependency and vulnerability are, therefore, recurring themes in my research. I have sought to trace the measures which people have implemented to reduce the risks posed by animal disease in order to preserve the health of both human and animal populations. The devastating animal plagues of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries perhaps played the most pivotal role in the establishment of an effective veterinary regime within Europe. Strict governmental regulations, particularly with regard to the transportation of cattle and hygiene, and veterinary inspection were instituted to reduce and preclude the damage and dangers of epizootic disease. Veterinary controls and international cooperation have proved highly effective over the years in preventing animal disease, in addition to maintaining the stability of agriculture and food prices. As a consequence, it is all too often forgotten that veterinary medicine has played a crucial role in protecting both the economy and human health, in addition to animal well-being.
In our modern urbanised society, the vast majority are estranged from agricultural production and have little contact with food-producing animals; yet our dependency upon these animals has greatly increased. During this century, particularly in the post-war period, rapid population growth, a reduction in manpower in rural areas, the development of the animal feed industry and increasing consumer demands have necessarily led to the intensification of livestock farming practices. These developments have gone hand in hand with an increasing risk of infection, as increasingly more animals are kept in increasingly smaller spaces. The risks posed by intensive farming methods have been greatly reduced by strict veterinary controls. In our everyday lives, we are generally oblivious to the potential dangers and problems which animal disease can cause. Although very occasionally health scares, such as the recent one surrounding bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), rear their ugly head and remind us of our vulnerability to the natural world.
The twentieth century has most certainly borne witness to the exploitation of animal resources upon a scale far grander than ever before. The most striking development - as animal rights activists are keen to point out - is the way in which the cleft between ourselves and agricultural animals has grown as these animals have been increasingly accorded the status of `machines', through the development of the intensive farming methods deemed necessary to meet ever-growing human food demands. Yet whilst the divide between ourselves and food-producing animals has continued to expand, our identification with and dependence upon the smaller, more cuddly species that we keep as pets has also grown. We increasingly keep pets to satisfy our emotional, rather than material, needs and seem to gain tactile comfort and trust from them which might not be found elsewhere in our modern lives. This development has led the birth of small animal medicine and the pet food industry, both of which have done increasingly booming business since 1945. However, even the seemingly innocuous family pet that lurks in our homes, gardens and public parks can be potentially detrimental to our health. For example, pet animal excrement is not only an environmental nuisance, but can also harbour unpleasant infections, such as toxoplasmosis and toxocara, which can seriously threaten human health. Pets can also expose people to a variety of bacterial infections and cause severe allergies. Rigorous animal management and veterinary controls greatly minimise the risks that pet animals pose to human health. Yet again providing evidence of the efficacy of the modern veterinary regime in reducing the potential risks posed by our intimacy with and exploitation of other species.
In many respects, my research is ground-breaking. To the best of my knowledge, a historical sociological study of veterinary medicine has never before been attempted. Moreover, both the veterinary profession and the human-animal relationship have received precious little sociological attention. The long-term historical perspective which I have chosen is most certainly ambitious, but necessary to fully comprehend the nature of our dependency upon other animals and the consequences thereof. This research also crosses the disciplinary bounds, reaching far beyond the comfortable realms of sociology with which I am most familiar. However, conducting the research has most certainly presented a challenge and I hope that the fruits of my labour will be widely enjoyed when the project is eventually completed.
