Shaileen
Bio
Participation4
I'm an animal scientist-turned-animal advocate, who specialised in farmed animal breeding, genetics(omics), and bioinformatics in my career (to date). I started learning about EA in 2020, and have since changed my world view on farmed animal agriculture. I want to use the knowledge I've built over the years in this domain for good, with specific interests in alternative proteins and farmed animal welfare policy reform. I have volunteered for Faunalytics, Animal Advocacy Careers, Tälist, and donate to EAA organisations. I've previously worked in the animal health and genetics space (most recently at Zoetis) in roles spanning from business development to senior scientist.
I love to read, run, boulder, and sing (really badly!) in my spare time.
How others can help me
Looking for opportunities to use my background in animal science and genetics / bioinformatics to do good for farmed animals.
How I can help others
How animal breeding and genetics(omics) can positively impact the lives of farmed animals, animal genetics in general, farmed animal science, science communication, data crunching, report proofing, etc. Please check out my LinkedIn if you'd like to see where I could support you.
Comments3
I really enjoyed reading this. Sharing information is so important when it comes to influencing those levers you mention.
This got me thinking about how this applies to the Alternative Protein Industry, and how it solves for the same problems as the Effective Animal Advocacy movement (even though many in the alt protein space may not know much about EA, so probably not EA-aligned, but can still do a impactful work for the EAA space).
I have wondered before, what good would it do if we flipped all of the past governmental and industry investments in farmed ag research on 'how to breed for productive animals' to 'here's a shortcut to selecting the best donor animal cells for cellular agriculture, and the best gene variants for fermentation-derived alt proteins'. Of course, there's foundational considerations like 'well those variants may not be optimal for proteins grown outside of the animal' etc., but I think the industry isn't tapping in to that information that's already there. I've been toying with the idea of drafting a piece on this for open source dissemination (but between procrastination and not really knowing where to start, its still just an idea bouncing around my head). Maybe its the animal geneticist in me that thinks the overlap would be good, whereas someone less immersed in it might think its not so useful?
Thoughts welcome!
I like this line of thinking! I'll be entering civil service for my next career move, and being new to the EA community had got me thinking along these lines - I've been asking myself 'how can synergies be created at these intersections?'.
Thank you for writing this post, and sharing your resources Fai! Very interesting read. As an aside to your note #25 on examples of the start-up or incubators for factory farm AI, I've also come across Innovent Technology (pigs), and CattleEye (dairy cows). They have received funding from VC and/or Government to develop their technologies.
Do let me know if you'd like some input for your projects - I might be of use!