Interspecies Sustainability to Ensure Animal Protection: Lessons from the Thoroughbred Racing Industry

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a compelling and thought-provoking topic and approach with potential to make an excellent contribution to the journal and scholarship more broadly. Some re-organization and revisions will make this manuscript suitable for publication.

I can see that it is rooted in a larger doctoral project, meaning that the author has a large collection of primary and secondary research from which to draw. This is advantageous but also seems to have contributed to some issues with readability and 'transferability.' In its present form and in simple terms, the paper is trying to say and do too much. My suggestions for how to address this and better elucidate the most salient dimensions for this venue and format are:

introduce the paper's original contribution and specifics much earlier greatly shorten and distill the literature review greatly shorten the conceptual discussion about alternatives to anthropocentric sustainability focus more on the data and include more of the author's analyses which I see as the most significant elements of the project. Work through the tensions and disjunctures in more detail.

I would be happy to review a revised version of this manuscript and look forward to seeing this paper published following revisions.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Brief summary - The submitted paper aims at developing a framework for interspecies sustainability and applying it to the thoroughbred racing industry. It relies on two sequential approaches: theoretical and empirical. This is a valuable contribution to the field with well presented arguments and conclusions. However, some issues may require rethinking.

Specific Comments

Title – The title, both informative and concise, is adequate.

Introduction – The introduction is very informative but it does not address the Thoroughbred industry. I think that chapter 3 should be sewed into the introduction. Moreover, I think that chapter in lines 116-129 does not belong to the introduction (more on this issue below).

Line 36 – Please include the year of the Brundtland report.

Line 83-84 – “This expansion of the livestock sector is expected to have catastrophic impacts leading to more habitat loss, soil degeneration, resource depletion and water extraction”,

Line 114 – ‘to explore’ instead of ‘to understand’.

Lines 116 and 309 – How were these key concepts identified? How did they emerge? Moreover, it can be argued that at least one prominent key concept is lacking, that is zoocentrism (e.g. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_450-1.pdf). The espoused theory is eminently zoocentric, although the term is never mentioned. Anthropocentrism, zoocentrism, biocentrism and ecocentrism are interconnected concepts. Is there any reason why zoocentrim was left behind? It could also be argued that domestic horses are not part of nature and that ecocentric arguments are less relevant than zoocentric ones for considering the study case, something you seem to acknowledge in lines 183-186. This is probably a good place to explore the concept of zoocentrism and how it can contribute to the debate. Finally, you seem to use the terms biocentrism and ecocentrism together without ever addressing their differences.

Line 116-129 - I think this paragraph belongs to the conclusion. You seem to present the main results of the study and, at this stage, it is not clear for the reader what you actually mean (e.g. ‘The thoroughbred industry engages mostly with four of the eight layers’ What four? What layers?). You also stress the relevance of the paper before we even know what you did. I think the paragraph would work well at the start of the conclusion in order to encapsulate the main results from the study.

Lines 130-135 – You not always seem to obey to your sustainability/sustainable development nomenclature. For example, in line 141 – don’t you mean: “…current dominant stunned discourse of sustainable development”? The same in line 148: “A critique of anthropocentric conceptions of sustainable development (?) from the perspective of ecocentrism has always been part of the modern sustainability discourse.”

Table 1 – You include biotechnical manipulation as part of Anthropocentric sustainability (and as something undesirable) and exclude it from interspecies sustainability. But can’t biotechnical manipulation be used for the benefit of nature and animals? For example, think about the genetically inbred and declining Isle Royale wolf population, couldn’t genetic manipulation or even artificial insemination be used for their own good and that of ecosystems? (cf. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/isle-royale-wolves-and-risks-extinction/593020/) What about having transgenic crops, more efficient and resistant to pests, that can maximize production while minimizing land use, water use and pesticide use? (cf. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21645698.2018.1476792). What about changing the rumen microbiota of ruminants to decrease methane production without changing their teloi? (cf.  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00248-017-1086-8). Why can’t these be part of interspecies sustainability?

Line 366 – ‘This article explores how…’ Do you refer to the present article or to that in Reference 73?

Chapter 5 – There is very little information about breeding. For example, was cloning never mentioned?

Line 595 - I found very interesting to know how veterinarians are perceived as being promoters of the status quo in horseracing, but the results are hardly discussed. It should be stressed that veterinarians are arguably the only regulated professionals within the racing industry, that are bound to obey codes of professional conduct (cf. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tvjl.2013.05.021). There were some prominent cases of disgraceful behavior by vets in the UK (e.g. https://www.rcvs.org.uk/news-and-views/news/berkshire-equine-vet-struck-off-for-dishonesty-and-breaching-rac/). I wonder if similar cases are known to have happened in Australia.

Line 659 – ‘Recently’ is probably not the right word. These three concepts have been introduced since the inception of animal welfare science.

Line 718 – “some industry informants express even more progressive views than some advocacy informants at the welfare end of the spectrum”. Can you elaborate with examples?

Line 818 onward - Others have identified that “the ways in which equine stakeholders understood the concept of welfare might have been acting as a barrier to the alleviation of some equine welfare problems.” (cf. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10888705.2016.1197776). Please relate these findings with our suggested eight layers.

Line 867 – do you mean ‘companion animals’ instead of ‘domestic animals’? (livestock and animals used in sport are also domesticated).

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx