Donkeys and me: applied animal welfare scientist, Dr Kate Fletcher

What was your PhD research?

I investigated equine welfare at slaughter, so not the most cheerful topic but I lived and breathed this research for four years. I researched the slaughter of horses and donkeys in various countries - the UK, Italy, Mexico and Ghana. Ghana was specifically bush slaughter of donkeys.

I looked at equid welfare and behaviour from the moment they arrive at the abattoir or, in Ghana, the field. It included how they’re handled, the slaughter methods used, and pathology and pathophysiology (changes in the way the body works that result from disease) after they’ve been slaughtered. The aim was to understand the practices and make recommendations for how it could be done better or how suffering could be reduced.

Slaughter is an emotive subject. How did you end up researching it?

It’s going to sound really cheesy, but I think it was meant to be.

My career has not been your standard animal welfare scientist career at all. I’d always wanted to work with animals and in low-income countries but studied English at university and wanted to be an investigative journalist - you don’t get that job straight out of uni. I got a very unsatisfying corporate publishing job, which wasn’t ‘me’ at all, so I got a job at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home. Then after a couple of years, I became an RSPCA inspector and did that for 10 years.

Towards the end of my time at the RSPCA, after having major spinal surgery which took me out of operational field work, I completed a masters in equine behaviour and training, and I really enjoyed the research element. My masters degree supervisor convinced me that it would be a good idea to do a PhD but COVID was limiting funding opportunities.

Instead, I got a job at equine charity Brooke managing the team who do the animal welfare interventions and programmes all over the world. I learned all about the donkey skin trade - how horrific it is, and how it was affecting donkeys and the families that rely on them. I became really passionate about addressing that. There was no scientific research on it and the Royal Veterinary College had obtained funding from equine charity World Horse Welfare for a PhD student to research horse and donkey slaughter across the world, which I felt would go some way towards addressing the evidence gap.

The Brooke role was 12 months maternity cover and it was supposed to be my year of travel, but because of COVID it became a year of sitting instead. The PhD had travel opportunities. I applied, got it and that’s how I ended up in my PhD.

It was very aligned with my interests overall. As an RSPCA inspector, I used to do wildlife euthanasia and was trained in firearms. I also had an ex-racehorse. He had multiple physical and behavioural issues that unfortunately I wasn’t able to fix, and he had to be euthanised.

I did my masters because I wanted to understand him and the whole industry better. Then I suddenly find myself in abattoirs where lots of ex-racehorses get sent. It was very strange that the first horse I ever saw slaughtered as part of my UK data collection was a big chestnut thoroughbred, the same as my horse. It felt like that was my calling. But I was always hugely passionate about going to a low-income country and seeing donkey slaughter, because we didn’t have any research on it.

What drives me is investigation. I think wanting to be an investigative journalist, an RSPCA inspector and then researching these little known subjects, it’s how my brain works. There is a thread running through this unusual career path.

It must have been incredibly difficult to be an observer in your research. How did you manage your emotions?

It’s certainly been a learning curve. I was perhaps a little bit complacent about what it would be like. I’d worked for the RSPCA for 10 years. I’ve seen pretty horrific things and been in very challenging situations, violent, hostile. The difference is that with the RSPCA, you’re not normally there when abuse is actually taking place.

Being in Ghana was one of the toughest things I’ve ever done. My instinct is to intervene and help, but we were doing observational studies. As a scientist, I had to just watch, record it scientifically and collect data. That makes you feel very powerless.

When I got home, I had to listen back to my dictaphone recordings. I heard myself struggle to hold it together and get emotional. My usual coping mechanism is focusing on the end goal, like seeing a person in court. But, with research, the end outcome is unclear. I felt completely overwhelmed and struggled to adjust when I got back to the UK.

I have worked through it with specialist counselling, and the support of my colleagues and my supervisor. In animal welfare research, whether it’s compassion fatigue or the impact it has on you watching animals suffer on a daily basis, it’s not really talked about enough.

If you could make the decision again, would you still choose to research slaughter?

I definitely underestimated how difficult a PhD was in general, and how challenging my PhD would be. I’m a different person now than I was four years ago, for better or worse, but I still passionately believe that the research is needed.

Some PhDs get sat on a shelf, whereas mine led to legislative changes and conversations internationally. I feel really honoured to be a part of that. If I can make a tiny bit of change, it will all have been worth it. I do feel lucky that I was given this opportunity, as hellish as it has been at times

What do you think are the important things that people know about your research?

It’s not just an animal welfare issue. You can’t be in Ghana, seeing the levels of poverty and struggle, without feeling compassion towards the people. It’s a One Welfare issue - we are not going to help the animals unless we help the people and vice versa.

The individuals involved in the donkey slaughter trade were so engaged, eager to talk and support. We can’t sit in a privileged position and say what they are doing is horrific and must be stopped, when we have never been in the situation where we have to rely on animals for our livelihood and we’re not supporting them with alternatives.

We take for granted much of what they don’t have, whether that’s shoes or running water, let alone the protective equipment and resources that slaughterhouses in high income countries would have.

The attitude towards animals is also a challenge. Women process donkey carcasses with newborn babies strapped on their backs and eight-year-old children kill donkeys before they go to school each day. How do we change attitudes when they’re exposed to that level of brutality from such a young, impressionable age?

My passion lies in working in low-income countries to achieve sustainable change by working with the communities, rather than against them. It is so key if we’re going to help animals, people and the environment. It’s all interlinked.

Were there any similarities in slaughter between countries?

They’re all doing it commercially. They treat the animals as commodities and are there to get it done as quickly as possible. Horses and donkeys are treated the same as cattle or sheep, because they are being processed for their meat and by-products.

Because we don’t eat horse or donkey meat in the UK, this is still quite abhorrent to us. When we think about equines being killed, we think of our pet horse. In other places in the world, they breed horses and donkeys for meat and milk, and they are seen very differently.

What does change look like?

It has to be led by the communities doing the actual work and we have to take a One Welfare approach to it through participatory research.

Certainly one area of work is in the attitudes towards animals. We can support communities in understanding animal sentience - that donkeys can feel pain, fear and actually it can also impact on meat quality. There are benefits to them if they slaughter the donkeys more humanely. And then it’s about providing access to resources and equipment.

In high-income countries, they have far more resources, education and training opportunities, so the support for change there will look very different to low-income countries. There’s no point making recommendations unless it’s context specific, led by the communities and feasible for them.

I hope the next stage of research in Ghana is a project to co-create actions with the communities to improve welfare for donkeys at slaughter.

How did you come to join The Donkey Sanctuary after completing your research?

I saw the job description for Policy & Engagement Manager as I was finishing my PhD. It was like it was written for me. It asked for someone who was passionate about animal welfare research and ethics, working internationally in low-income countries and tackling the donkey skin trade.

I wanted a job where I could use the skills and experience from my research, and take it forward to drive policy and legislation to create sustainable change. This was it!

I’m excited to work with lots of stakeholders in different countries to improve policy. It’s very different from what I was doing before as a researcher. The world of advocacy is new to me, but it is a very logical progression.

What is the role of policy and legislation?

Legislation and policy should be there to support best practice and minimum standards for both the organisations trying to encourage improvement, and the people who are doing the work itself.

Research should give policymakers and organisations an evidence basis for their recommendations and programmatic interventions, but you also have to take into consideration local priorities. Is enforcing donkey slaughter welfare a priority when they are dealing with humanitarian crises, poverty and lack of child education? We have to link the work to wider interventions that fit with the broader motivations of the area.

What does the future look like for you?

I’m excited to use my skillset and knowledge as a researcher in my new role in policy with The Donkey Sanctuary. Part of my new position is to identify the gaps in our knowledge and work with people to fill them so we can use it to help design and implement policy. Through this, I’m still involved in the research but in a new way.

My gut tells me that I’m not done with research yet. My drive to investigate things, and find evidence of how we can better help animals through tangible outcomes, means that I’m always coming up with ideas for new research studies. I need to identify the right opportunities to explore them more!