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A recent BBC comedy written by Simon Amstell imagined life in 2067 when society has become vegan and people flock to support groups to cope with their guilt about their meat-eating past.

The premise might sound far-fetched to many viewers, but there an Oxford University philosopher says there are serious ethical arguments for giving up meat.

In a guest post, Julian Savulescu, the Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics at Oxford, says that cutting down on our consumption of meat and animal products is "one of the easiest things we can do to live more ethically".

Here, he gives five ethical arguments for giving up meat:

1. The environmental impact is huge

'Livestock farming has a vast environmental footprint. It contributes to land and water degradation, biodiversity loss, acid rain, coral reef degeneration and deforestation.

Nowhere is this impact more apparent than climate change – livestock farming contributes 18% of human produced greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. This is more than all emissions from ships, planes, trucks, cars and all other transport put together.

Climate change alone poses multiple risks to health and well-being through increased risk of extreme weather events – such as floods, droughts and heatwaves – and has been described as the greatest threat to human health in the 21st century.

Reducing consumption of animal products is essential if we are to meet global greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets – which are necessary to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. 

2. It requires masses of grain, water and land

Meat production is highly inefficient – this is particularly true when it comes to red meat. To produce one kilogram of beef requires 25 kilograms of grain – to feed the animal – and roughly 15,000 litres of water. Pork is a little less intensive and chicken less still.

The scale of the problem can also be seen in land use: around 30% of the earth’s land surface is currently used for livestock farming. Since food, water and land are scarce in many parts of the world, this represents an inefficient use of resources.

3. It hurts the global poor

Feeding grain to livestock increases global demand and drives up grain prices, making it harder for the world’s poor to feed themselves. Grain could instead be used to feed people, and water used to irrigate crops.

If all grain were fed to humans instead of animals, we could feed an extra 3.5 billion people. In short, industrial livestock farming is not only inefficient but also not equitable.

4. It causes unnecessary animal suffering

If we accept, as many people do, that animals are sentient creatures whose needs and interests matter, then we should ensure these needs and interests are at least minimally met and that we do not cause them to suffer unnecessarily.

Industrial livestock farming falls well short of this minimal standard. Most meat, dairy and eggs are produced in ways that largely or completely ignore animal welfare – failing to provide sufficient space to move around, contact with other animals, and access to the outdoors.

In short, industrial farming causes animals to suffer without good justification.

5. It is making us ill

At the production level, industrial livestock farming relies heavily on antibiotic use to accelerate weight gain and control infection – in the US, 80% of all antibiotics are consumed by the livestock industry.

This contributes to the growing public health problem of antibiotic resistance. Already, more than 23,000 people are estimated to die every year in the US alone from resistant bacteria. As this figure continues to rise, it becomes hard to overstate the threat of this emerging crisis.

High meat consumption – especially of red and processed meat – typical of most rich industrialised countries is linked with poor health outcomes, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes and various cancers.

These diseases represent a major portion of the global disease burden so reducing consumption could offer substantial public health benefits.

Currently, the average meat intake for someone living in a high-income country is 200-250g a day, far higher than the 80-90g recommended by the United Nations. Switching to a more plant-based diet could save up to 8 million lives a year worldwide by 2050 and lead to healthcare related savings and avoided climate change damages of up to $1.5 trillion.'

This article takes extracts from a longer article by Professor Savulescu and Francis Vergunst of the University of Montreal, which was first published in The Conversation.

With one of the biggest fan-clubs in the animal kingdom, penguins are undeniably cute. From Pingu to Happy Feet and the countless wildlife documentaries centred around them, they continue to capture the public’s imagination.  Despite their enduring popularity though, the knock-on effects of climate change and over-fishing have sent species numbers into decline.

To mark World Penguin Day, ScienceBlog talks to Tom Hart, penguinologist at Oxford University, about his team’s massively popular ‘citizen science’ platform, Penguin Watch. Now in its third year, Penguin Watch harnesses technology and people power to help protect this universally loved seabird. Tom discusses the evolution of the initiative and his plans to use automation to take the research to the next level.

What is Penguinology and what are your research goals?

Penguinology is a term that I came up with, that quickly went viral. I stand by it and love it, because it actually explains what I do. Penguinology at Oxford University operates on two levels; firstly, population genetics, which is the study of penguin movements and how they change over time.  This is quite a technical work-stream, understanding colony populations and how they evolve.

A lot of penguin research studies focus on colonies in isolation, which is logistically pretty easy to do and useful if you want to study single elements in detail. We focus on big picture research, answering broad 21^st century specific questions like ‘what is the human impact of fishing and climate change?’ Studying a single colony doesn’t answer that question. To gain that level of understanding you have to gather and use data on a huge scale, which is not so easy.

The Penguin Watch team setting up the cameras in Antarctica Image credit: Tom Hart OU

What sets Penguin Watch apart from other ecology studies?

We use a series of time lapse cameras, set up across the Southern Hemisphere to capture data on penguin behaviours, breeding habits and timings.  The cameras cover a wide geographical area, in some of the most remote places on Earth. They monitor continuously throughout the year, so collecting the data can be a challenge. The images gathered can tell us about the winter activity of penguins, and how they behave in their daily lives, breeding habits etc. Breeding is quite synchronous, so from the patterns observed we can understand and make predictions around these habits. For example, when they breed and lay eggs, when the chicks hatch and how many will survive per nest. We leave the camera for anything from one to five years, and then go and collect the cameras.

Penguin Watch itself is the ‘Citizen Science’ initiative that we set up to manage all the incoming data, from these photographs. If you imagine we have over 100 cameras taking a photo every hour throughout the whole year, which amounts to 8,000 photos per camera, you can see how it quickly builds up into a dataset that we couldn’t manage just the two of us. We tackle that by hosting the pictures online, and inviting members of the public, of all ages, to log on and count the penguins for us. By clicking the penguins in each photograph, they have identified them for us. In terms of raw data the programme allows us to capture a real breadth of detail. Everything from the number of penguins to the number of eggs laid and chicks hatched, and of course the date and time that the activity was observed, captured throughout the whole year.

VIEW THE VIDEO 'A PENGUINOLOGIST'S LIFE' HERE:

How has Penguin Watch evolved over time?

Over the years our approach to outreach has improved and increased - particularly with schools. We engage much more with children now than we used to. Fiona (Fiona Jones, Penguinologist and PHD student, working with Penguin Watch) does a lot of great work in this area.

Each image is shown to multiple participants, and we use the clustering algorithm data to work-out a consensus from there. This means that we can filter out any mistakes, and just benefit from the kids’ enthusiasm. We learnt quickly that even when participants were relatively young their input still added value.

Science and innovation go hand in hand in today’s society, what role does innovation play in your work?

Innovation is integral to our work. I think of innovation as not only being about how you use technology, but also coming up with new and creative ideas to solve existing, practical problems.  Our camera technology is relatively simple and off the shelf, the equivalent of a point and shoot camera with a time lapse clock. Thanks to the internet and tech developments like the evolution of the smart phone, the Citizen Science model, involving public volunteers in research, has progressed a lot in the last ten years ago.

The platform has a really nice, dual benefit. From our point of view, we get our penguin data processed, and the general public also get to be a part of the research process. People enjoy being useful - and they are.

Do you have any plans to expand the programme further?

In the beginning, we were working with Professor Andrew Zisserman and Carlos Arteta, in the Department of Engineering, and the intention was always to automate the cameras. But it transpired that it was a lot of work. It was Andrew that first suggested that Penguin Watch should be a ‘Citizen Science’ project. Being at Oxford University, we were fortunate to have the best possible platform for a public engagement model already.

Looking at how much we are able to do with the images collected at this stage, the logical next step for us is to look again at introducing automation into our work. If you think about it, our cameras are already taking our place in the field, and are in fact better than us at the legwork. They already take hourly pictures without fail, all we need to do now is make them a bit smarter and more interactive.

L-R Fiona Jones, Penguinologist and PHD student working with Penguin Watch and Tom Hart, Penguinologist and founder of the programme. Image credit: Tom Hart OU

How do you plan to do this?

We are building our own camera tech, and using machine learning to programme them to operate independently - like a Mars rover . For example, if the lens were to become covered with snow, we would teach the camera to recognise the white covering, and to heat the lens, melting the snow away. Penguin behaviours are also quite synchronous, so if anything unusual happens within view, the camera will detect that something new is happening, and take more photos of it.

How do people respond to Penguin Watch?

The platform has a really nice, dual benefit. From our point of view, we get our data processed, and the general public also get to be a part of the research process. People enjoy being useful, and they are.

Did you always want to become a penguinologist?

The short answer is no. I wanted to make a difference and knew I wanted that difference to be in marine ecology. I came to the field via an interest in fisheries, which as a response to environmental pressures then turned into penguins.

Penguins in Antarctica Image credit: Tom Hart, OU

What do you hope the impact of Penguin Watch will be long term?

That the camera network will take over the world! Lots of people use time lapse cameras now, and the technique is definitely catching on. But I would say that end to end, our approach is unique. At the moment it is just us and our collaborators that are using our system, but it is a nice and effective model to use anywhere, and to monitor seabirds in general.

What has your career highlight been to date?

In the field, it would have to be landing on the South Sandwich Islands or the Danger Islands for the first time. Being the first to discover a new colony to science is indescribable. But for our research in general, I am very proud, not just of the computer vision involved, but the introduction of automation into how we process data.

Tom Hart, Penguinologist and founder of the Penguin Watch initiative. Image credit: Tom Wilkinson OU

With initiatives like Ocean Optimism and the recent Conservation Optimism Summit, the general mood in the nature conversation seems to be more positive at the moment, would you agree?

I really like the idea behind this, but we have to be pragmatic. I think it’s great to have something positive amongst the doom and gloom. It is of course important to know which are declining but also which are stable and thriving. We can come up with good examples of species in specific regions that are bouncing back, where appropriate conservation action makes a difference and can reverse declines. For example in the case of the Blue Penguin in Australia. But overall it is a bit sad, in that 12 out of 18 species are declining. Being optimistic will not change that.

Is there anything that people can do on an everyday basis to support the protection of penguins?

There have been shocking reports of detention and extra-judicial killings of gay men by Chechnya’s security forces this month.

Dan Healey, Professor of Modern Russian History at Oxford University, studies the history of sexualities and gender in modernising Russia. In an interview, he explains the difficult plight faced by gay people in Chechnya and in Russia more widely.

‘I would say that the big difficulty for gay people or lesbians in a place like Chechnya is that you have to be straight on the outside and you ‘can only be gay or lesbian on the inside,’ he says.

‘In other words, there’s no tolerance of any kind of openness about same-sex love in the Chechnya Republic and much more widely in Russia.’

He says the allegations fit a pattern of behaviour from the Chechen government. ‘This is a fairly peculiar government,’ he says.

‘It’s in the process of trying to pacify a wartorn region that has endured two wars in the last 20 years to try and separate from Russia, and it uses violence against its own people in that pacification process.

‘So we shouldn’t be too surprised to see this kind of lashing out at a particular community.’

Prof Healey says that taboo around homosexuality in Chechnya means that gay people are also at risk from their own families.

‘Honour killings are a particular danger in this kind of society,’ he explains. ‘Most honour killings we know about are directed against women but here they would be meted out by other family members and that is because they would find it hard to stand up in their own communities having a visibly or known gay person in their family circle and family counts for a great deal in that society.

‘So there is a kind of vicious circle with no easy way out for LGBT people in a place like Chechnya.’

Prof Healey hopes the attention of the world’s media will put pressure on Russia to improve the position of gay people in Chechnya and Russia.

‘I think this attention is really necessary because Chechnya does not exist in a vacuum,’ he says. ‘It’s part of the Russian Federation which pretends to be a democracy which respects human rights and cares about the welfare of its citizens, and I think this kind of attention can prod the Russians to do the right thing and stop this kind of violence happening in a particular region of the country.’

He says that although male homosexuality is now legal in Russia, a law in 2013 which banned propaganda for LGBT lifestyles in Russia has been used to silence the voices of gay people.

‘The 2013 law has been used hundreds of times against Russian citizens across the Russian Federation to shut down gay websites and to silence people who speak out about injustices or abuses or the persecution of LGBT people.’

Professor Healey was interviewed on the BBC World News Channel on Friday 21 April. 

To mark World Malaria Day on 25th April, Prof Philippe Guérin, Director of the Infectious Diseases Data Observatory, based at the University of Oxford, explains the need to maintain our focus on the elimination of malaria.

World Malaria Day is an opportunity to take stock in the battle against a disease which still kills approximately half a million people each year, most of them children under the age of five in Africa. We have made great progress in recent years, with the global death rate cut by almost 30% between 2010 and 2015, yet malaria remains a complex public health challenge for which there is no simple—and no single—solution. Fighting this deadly disease is a truly collaborative effort that includes preventive measures on the ground, like distributing mosquito nets to limit infection, and scientific research in the laboratory to boost efforts to create new drugs or new vaccines.

World Malaria Day

Image credit: Copyright Pearl Gan in association with Oxford Clinical Research Unit, Vietnam ; Eijkman Oxford Clinical Research Unit, Jakarta and The Wellcome Trust.

www.asiamalariaimages.com

Ending malaria for good – which is the theme of World Malaria Day this year – also means preserving the effectiveness of available tools. Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) are currently the primary treatment for the most lethal strain of malaria caused by the Plasmodium falciparum parasite. However, there is currently no replacement therapy to succeed ACTs, and emergence and/or spread of resistance is a major public health problem that could roll back the gains we have made.

In the last decade we have seen resistance to artemisinin and its partner drugs emerge and spread in pockets of Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar, and in South China. Should resistance emerge or spread further into India and Africa, it could have devastating consequences, particularly in Africa, where the majority of malaria cases are from P. falciparum. Assessing and predicting this risk is extremely difficult, but we cannot take the chance that it won't happen.

WWARN is working with more than 260 institutions around the world to produce evidence and tools to understand the drivers and spread of antimalarial resistance, and to protect the efficacy of current and future drug therapies. The organisation has pioneered a data-driven approach to collecting, curating and analysing the results of individual clinical trials around the world, allowing researchers to make stronger inferences about drug resistance and efficacy. The organisation’s 25 collaborative study groups are currently investigating key areas of malaria science, including the effect of malnutrition on treatment outcomes in young children, and the impact of malaria in pregnancy on pregnancy outcomes.

We are pleased with how far we have come in the fight against malaria, but there are many challenges ahead. Containing resistance and maintaining the efficacy of our current treatments requires a concerted effort from everyone involved in malaria research, policy-making and drug development, so that we can work together towards malaria elimination.

Prof Philippe Guérin is Professor of Epidemiology and Global Health at the University of Oxford and Director of the Infectious Diseases Data Observatory, a collection of data platforms encompassing the WorldWide Antimalarial Resistance Network, a scientifically independent multidisciplinary platform that generates evidence and tools to inform the malaria community on factors affecting the efficacy of antimalarial medicines.

Based on the strong reactions that it provokes from people, it would be fair to say that mathematics has an image problem.

Maths is one of the few skillsets, unlike reading for example, that people are not embarrassed to admit they do not possess. Class room memories of daunting equations and fractions with no immediate resonance to the real world, scare people into declaring they are frankly, “rubbish at maths”.

In reality, mathematics underpins the world around us in more ways than we could ever imagine. Just by paying bills, measuring home improvements and making everyday decisions, people do maths, often without realising.

Our new Scienceblog series will tackle these preconceptions, highlighting the role that maths plays in shaping our understanding of science, nature and the world at large.

In the first of the series, Michael Bonsall, Professor of Mathematical Biology at the Oxford University Department of Zoology, discusses his research in population biology, and what it tells us about species evolution and why grandmothering is important to humans.

What is mathematical biology?

It is easy to get lost in the details and idiosyncrasies of biology. Understanding molecular structures and how systems work on a cellular level is important, but this alone will not tell us the whole science story. To achieve this we have to develop our insight and understanding more broadly, and use this to make predictions. Mathematics allows us to do this.

Just as we would develop an experiment to test a specific idea, we can use mathematical equations and models to help us delve into biological complexity. Mathematics has the unique power to give us insight in to the highly complex world of biology.  By using mathematical formulas to ask questions, we can test our assumptions. The language and techniques of mathematics allow us to determine if any predictions will stand up to rigorous experimental or observational challenge. If they do not, then our prediction has not accurately captured the biology. Even in this instance there is still something to be learned. When an assumption is proven wrong it still improves our understanding, because we can rule that particular view out, and move on to testing another.

By using mathematical formulas to ask questions, we can test our assumptions. The language and techniques of mathematics allow us to determine if any predictions will stand up to rigorous experimental or observational challenge. 

What science does this specialism enable – any studies that stand out, or that you are particularly proud of?

Developing a numerate approach to biology allows us to explore, what at face value, might be very different biologies. For instance, the dynamics of cells, the dynamics of diseases or the behaviour of animals. The specialism allows us to use a common framework to seek understanding. The studies that stand out in my mind are those where we can develop a mathematical approach to a problem, and then challenge it with rigorous, quality experiments and/or observation. This doesn’t have to happen in the same piece of work but working to achieve a greater understanding is critical to moving the science forward.

You recently published a paper: ‘Evolutionary stability and the rarity of grandmothering’, what was the reasoning behind it?

Grandmothering as a familial structure is very rare among animals. Whales, elephants and some primates are the few species, besides humans, to actually adopt it. In this particular study we took some very simple mathematical ideas and asked why this is the case.

Evolution predicts that for individuals to serve their purpose they should maximise their reproductive output, and have lots of offspring. For them to have a post-reproductive period, and to stop having babies, so that they can care for grandchildren for instance, there has to be a clearly identified benefit.

We developed a formula that asked why grandmothering is so rare in animals, testing its evolutionary benefits and disadvantages, compared to other familial systems, like parental care and co-operative breeding for instance, (When adults in a group team up to care for offspring). We compared the benefit of each strategy and assessed which gives the better outcomes.

What did the findings reveal about the rarity of grandmothering and why so few species live in this way?

Our maths revealed that a very narrow and specific range of conditions are needed to allow a grandmothering strategy to persist and be useful to animals. The evolutionary benefits of grandmothering depend on two things: the number of grandchildren that must be cared for, and the length of the post-reproductive period. If the post-reproductive period is less than the weaning period (the time it takes to rear infants) then grandmothers would die before infants are reared to independence.

We made the mathematical prediction that for grandmothering to be evolutionary feasible, with very short post-reproductive periods it is necessary to rear lots of grandchildren. But if this post-reproductive period is short, not many (or any) would survive. Species with shorter life spans, like fish, insects and meerkats for instance, simply don’t have the time to do it and focus on parental-care. Evolution has not given them the capability to grandparent, and their time is better spent breeding and having as many offspring as they can. By contrast long-lived animals like whales and elephants have the time to breed their own offspring, grandparent that offspring and even to great-grandparent the next generation.

We developed a formula that asked why grandmothering is so rare in animals, testing its evolutionary benefits and disadvantages, compared to other familial systems, like parental care and co-operative breeding for instance, (When adults in a group team up to care for offspring). 

How do you plan to build on this work?

Although grandparenting isn’t a familial strategy that many species are able to adopt, it is in fact the strongest. Compared to parental-care and co-operative breeding, grandparenting has a stronger evolutionary benefit – as it ensures future reproductive success of offspring and grand-offspring – giving a stronger generational gene pool.

Moving forward we would like to test mathematical theories to work out if it is possible for species to evolve from one familial strategy to another and reap the benefits. Currently for the majority of species rearing grandchildren instead of having their own offspring is not a worthwhile trade-off.

What are the biggest challenges?

Ensuring that the mathematical sciences has relevance to biology. Biology is often thought to lack quantitative rigour. This would be wrong. The challenge is to show how the mathematical sciences can be relevant to, and help us to answer critical questions in biology. This will continue to be a challenge but will yield unique insights along the way in unravelling biology.
 
 What do you like most about your field?

So many things. Firstly, the people. I work with a lot of very smart people, who I look forward to seeing each day. I also get to think about biology and look at it through a mathematical lens. Finally I think the specialism allows us to do fantastic science that has the potential to improve the world.

Is there any single mathematical biology problem that you would like to solve?
 Developing a robust method to combine with biological processes that operate on different time scales - as this would have so many valuable, and to use one of my favourite words, neat, applications to our work.

Why did you decide to specialise in this area?

Because of the perspective that we can gain from it and because I love biology and maths. Unpicking the complexities of the natural world with maths and then challenging this maths with observations and experiments is super neat. And I can do (some of this) while eating ice-cream!

‘Evolutionary stability and the rarity of grandmothering’ Jared M.Field and Michael B.Bonsall is available to download from the science journal Ecology and Evolution.