Sarah is a veterinarian and animal welfare scientist who has worked in private and government veterinary practice and has previous experience in dairy farm management and calf rearing. More recently, she has held national animal welfare management roles within the Australian Dairy Industry and within commercial beef production and processing. She holds a PhD in Veterinary Science (Animal Welfare) from the University of Melbourne and is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow within the University of British Columbia’s Animal Welfare Program. Sarah’s work centres on the welfare of food production animals and approaches to complex ethical challenges in agriculture, with a particular focus on vulnerable animals, including surplus dairy calves.
You can visit Sarah’s profile here.
- How did you first get interested in animal welfare? How did these early experiences prepare you for your research today?
Being in the presence of animals has always been one of the smallest building blocks of happiness in my life. This is really what led me to become a veterinarian, motivated mainly by a desire to care for animals and provide them the best quality of life possible. My interest in animal welfare science and ethics began to deepen while I was working as a large animal veterinarian. It was during this time that I became passionate about better understanding and addressing what I had come to see as systemic issues in our food production systems, including the management of low-value animals such as non-replacement dairy calves and cull cows.
- What will your upcoming research focus on? What led you to be interested in this topic?
My work centres on the welfare of food production animals and complex ethical challenges in agriculture, where the needs of all stakeholders, including the public and the animals, need to be understood and accounted for. My doctoral dissertation focused on the welfare of surplus dairy calves and included the use of participatory methods to identify and integrate the needs of farmers, value chain stakeholders, the public, and the animals themselves. My postdoctoral research deepens this focus on calf management to include cow-calf contact dairy systems, and broadens to include other low-value animals in food production systems and the ethical challenges they present.
- What impact do you hope your research will have?
My overall research aim is to support the implementation of food production systems that are simultaneously environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable. I’m very focused on applied research, aimed at affecting real-world improvements in the lives of animals and the people that care for them. I’m also passionate about making sure we’re continually looking toward the horizon and promoting dialogues about where we need to be in 10, 20, 50 or 100 years from now. I’m always very eager to talk about the ‘next’ thing coming down the pipeline in terms of challenges that need to be met and the conversations that need to be had.
- Why did you choose to come to UBC?
I was fortunate to collaborate with members of the UBC AWP team during my PhD, which I undertook at the University of Melbourne. Drs Nina von Keyserlingk and Dan Weary are world-renowned when it comes to utilising interdisciplinary research to affect change in the lives led by animals. The opportunity to further my research under their guidance was therefore one I simply had to take.
- Where do you see opportunities for collaboration?
My research to date has relied heavily on collaborations between academia and industry, including a broad range of stakeholders from across the animal agriculture value chain and the broader public. I also place a huge amount of value on collaboration across disciplines, including animal biology, veterinary medicine, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and human-animal interactions.
- What do you find satisfying/interesting about research?
Ultimately, I see research as a tool to understand the needs of humans and non-human animals, and how we might go about meeting those needs. In reality, this is an ever-distant horizon that we’ll never actually ‘arrive at’. There will always be new things to understand and new challenges that need to be addressed. But this is what I find most exciting about working in animal welfare research – there is always more work to be done.