Animal sciences is a field that encompasses a wide range of disciplines, including animal behavior, physiology, nutrition, genetics, and reproduction, among others. The knowledge generated by research in animal sciences is essential to inform policies that regulate the use of animals in agriculture, conservation, and biomedical research. In this blog post, I will explore how evidence informs policy in animal sciences and suggest opportunities for strengthening the evidence base available on which to make decisions.
Evidence-based policy making is the process of using rigorous scientific evidence to inform the development and implementation of policies. This approach is essential to ensure that policies are effective, efficient, and equitable. In the context of animal sciences, evidence-based policy making requires the use of data and research findings to inform decisions related to the welfare, health, and management of animals. It is worth noting that science will rarely completely inform the content of policy. Written law should have a base in evidence but understandably reflects a delicate balance between competing interests, taking into consideration prevailing societal and economic factors.
This all seems fairly straight forward but, in a world, where information is abundant, and resources limited, the practical reality of sourcing and assimilating information is not so simple. Within, evidence-based healthcare the first step for tackling this process is the generation of a systematic literature review. These reviews use a transparent and reproducible process, source and collate all relevant information and critically appraise the studies within the review. In addition they provide some estimate of how certain we can be in the evidence presented. This is essential information as it forms the basis for decisions around actions based on this evidence. Without such a process there is a danger that at worst decisions may be poor and lead to adverse outcomes, at best they may come across as non-evidence based with a lack of transparency around their origin.
Given this best practice scenario, how does research evidence in animal sciences find its way into policy? Well the truth of the matter is that it is sometimes very hard to know. The EU has a transparent, multi-step approach to generation of evidence to feed into animal welfare laws. The EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) has as its core role to collect, appraise and integrate evidence to assess risks. This group produces substantial reviews on a topic of interest using systematic review methodology. However, in other jurisdictions the approach appears to be much more ad hoc. Within Australia reviews of the literature are occasionally commissioned during the process of law reform. For example, during the development of the ‘Pig’ Standards and Guidelines. However, use of systematic methods for these reviews is inconsistent, and they rarely use formalised critical appraisal methods or structured assessment of certainty in the evidence. Alternately, for many areas of animal law reform there appears to have been no formalised review process, or at least one of a transparent, publicly-accessible nature. This leads to lack of detailed linkage of the law with science and an apparent disuniformity between jurisdictions, as we uncovered in our recent research on the law around lamb marking practices. The lack of formalised approach may be due to challenges of resourcing such detailed documents. As a result reviews are often commissioned by the industry involved, leading to concerns regarding independence. This is an issue not encountered in the centralised EU system. However, there may be other barriers to use of robust synthesis methods.
In contrast to the situation in medicine where evidence synthesis tools are well developed, there has been less attention directed towards developing tools for the animal sciences and many of these tools are non-existent. Due to differences in study design, trial performance and external factors such as climate or geography influencing translation to practice, tools need specific tailoring for this discipline. This needs considerable effort and international collaboration. But, I think the effort is worth it. Robust evidence synthesis tools will: minimise wastage of research resources through identifying the totality of current research and effect sizes; provide transparency around the evidence basis for law reform; and ultimately lead to improved practice with economic and animal health gains.