Democratizing Animal Biotechnology Inquiry and Deliberation in Ethics and Governance

Animal biotechnology is controversial. It is one of the fastest-growing areas of technological innovation in the life sciences. Its rapid developments, ranging from new drug therapies to genetically engineered livestock, hold a great promise for a variety of fields of application. At the same time, the potentially high impact of these developments gives rise to numerous political and cultural concerns with regard to the distribution of risks and benefits. Moreover, these developments lead to societal concerns about wider issues such as the alteration of social meanings, identities and forms of life. Also in the Netherlands, the introduction of animal biotechnology instantly heated the socio-political debate. The Dutch society first came into contact with animal biotechnology in the 1980s when scientists from a small biotechnological company in Leiden introduced the later famous “Herman the Bull”, one of the first genetically modified animals in the world. Indeed, the public concerns about animal biotechnology not only related to possible negative consequences for health and welfare of the modified animals, but also to the perceived ‘unnaturalness’ of the technical intervention in an animal’s genome. The arrival of animal biotechnology in the public sphere immediately turned it into a social controversy.