Bearing Witness

This open access book is the biography of one of Britain’s foremost animal welfare campaigners and of the world of activism, science, and politics she inhabited. In 1964, Ruth Harrison’s bestseller Animal Machines triggered a gear change in modern animal protection by popularising the term ‘factory farming’ alongside a new way of thinking about animal welfare. Here, historian Claas Kirchhelle explores Harrison’s avant-garde upbringing, Quakerism, and how animal welfare debates were linked to concerns about the wider ethical and environmental trajectories of post-war Britain. Breaking the myth of Harrison as a one-hit wonder, Kirchhelle reconstructs Harrison’s 46 years of campaigning and the rapid transformation of welfare politics and science during this time. Exacerbated by Harrison’s own actions, the decades after 1964 saw a polarisation of animal politics, a professionalisation of British activism, and the rise of a new animal welfare science. Harrison’s belief in incremental reform allowed her to form ties to leading scientists but alienated her from more radical campaigners. Many of her 1964 demands gradually became part of mainstream politics. However, farm animal welfare’s increasing marketisation has also led to a relative divorce from the wider agenda of social improvement that Harrison once bore witness to. This is the first book to cast light on the interlinked histories of British farm animal welfare activism, science, and legislation. Its unique scope allows it to go beyond existing accounts of modern British animal welfare and will be of interest to those interested in animal welfare, environmentalism, and the behavioural sciences

Pyrrhic Progress

Pyrrhic Progress analyses over half a century of antibiotic use, regulation, and resistance in US and British food production. Mass-introduced after 1945, antibiotics helped revolutionize post-war agriculture. Food producers used antibiotics to prevent and treat disease, protect plants, preserve food, and promote animals’ growth. Many soon became dependent on routine antibiotic use to sustain and increase production. The resulting growth of antibiotic infrastructures came at a price. Critics blamed antibiotics for leaving dangerous residues in food, enabling bad animal welfare, and selecting for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria, which could no longer be treated with antibiotics. Pyrrhic Progress reconstructs the complicated negotiations that accompanied this process of risk prioritization between consumers, farmers, and regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. Unsurprisingly, solutions differed: while Europeans implemented precautionary antibiotic restrictions to curb AMR, consumer concerns and cost-benefit assessments made US regulators focus on curbing drug residues in food. The result was a growing divergence of antibiotic stewardship and a rise of AMR. Kirchhelle’s comprehensive analysis of evolving non-human antibiotic use and the historical complexities of antibiotic stewardship provides important insights for current debates on the global burden of AMR

Toxic confusion: the dilemma of antibiotic regulation in West German food production (1951–1990)

• Cultural risk prioritization strongly influences antibiotic regulation. • West German risk vernaculars and epistemes were residue-focussed. • Hazards resulting from bacterial resistance selection were neglected. • Successful bacterial resistance regulation depends on effective risk staging

Why is the UK subscription model for antibiotics considered successful?

Commen

Reinventing the antimicrobial pipeline in response to the global crisis of antimicrobial-resistant infections

Opinion article. The pipeline for new antibiotics is dry. Despite the creation of public/private initiatives like Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (Carb-X) and the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Centre, the current focus on ‘push-pull’ incentives for the pharmaceutical industry still relies on economic return. We propose a joint, internationally-funded antimicrobial development institute that would fund permanent staff to take on roles previously assigned to pharmaceutical companies. This institute would receive ring-fenced, long-term, core funding from participating countries as well as charities, with the aim to focus on transforming the largely dormant antimicrobial pipeline. Resulting drugs would be sold globally and according to a principle of shared burdens. Our proposed model for antimicrobial development aims to maximise society’s investment, through open science, investment in people, and the sharing of intellectual property

NIMble innovation — a networked model for public antibiotic trials

Antibiotic research and development is at an inflection point. Faced with ongoing problems with commercial innovation, we argue for a networked public approach to support and coordinate existing research and development initiatives by sustainably moving promising compounds through clinical trials. We propose a global public infrastructure of institutes tasked with (1) conducting all trial stages up to market authorisation, including small-scale compound production; (2) negotiating licensing agreements for global production and distribution by industry partners; and (3) using public purchasing agreements or subscription models to ensure commercially viable drug production at equitable prices. We invite stakeholders to consider our Networked Institute Model's benefits for unblocking the public and private antibiotic pipeline

Antibiotic Arrivals in Africa: A Case Study of Yaws and Syphilis in Malawi, Zimbabwe and Uganda

The mass production of antibiotics in the 1940s enabled their travel beyond Europe and America, but to date the significance of the ways in which these medicines co-constituted colonial regimes at the time has not been systematically described. Through a case study of yaws and syphilis, this research article traces arrivals of antibiotics in three countries of Eastern Africa—Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Uganda. We draw attention to the emergent roles of antibiotics at the intersection of colonial governance and humanitarianism in these different settings. Through this analysis of archival and ethnographic materials, we explore how antibiotics became ‘infrastructural’ in material, affective, and political ways. Achieving a better understanding of the entanglement of antibiotics with human systems and lives is crucial to address the pressing issue of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). With this article we join in the global multidisciplinary efforts to tackle AMR, pointing out the often-overlooked role of colonial history in the circulation of antibiotic drugs, and opening a line of research that will provide valuable insights for the development of effective measures to prevent and reduce the spread of antibiotic resistance

COMPARING NO-FAULT COMPENSATION SYSTEMS FOR VACCINE INJURY

The policy responses to redressing serious adverse reactions caused by vaccines are many and varied. Scholars have identified three broad options for responding to the need for support of those who have been subject to vaccine injury. The first is a minimalist approach that entails injured persons bearing the costs associated with their injuries with assistance provided solely by means of standard social welfare and health benefits provided by the state. Second, compensation may be sought through legal proceedings brought against those responsible for producing, or in certain cases distributing, the vaccines in question. Third, compensation may be sought from a dedicated compensation scheme outside the normal litigation system, generally premised upon no-fault liability. The discussion in this Article focuses on the latter schemes, which are generally government-created and specifically respond to vaccine injuries. The advantages of such a mechanism over the other options, which entail either patients bearing the costs themselves or seeking compensation though litigation against private sector, have been widely discussed, and we will also examine the broader rationales below