The business of collaboration

Having developed an expertise in the social side of science, the CEO of the Cooperative Research Centre Association, Professor Tony Peacock, is putting his skills to the test in building collaborations between researchers, industry and the community.

Lab+Life Scientist: What led you to study agriculture?

Professor Tony Peacock: I grew up in Sydney and am the youngest of seven children. We owned a hobby farm of 250 acres in the Watagan Mountains north of Sydney and of the seven kids I was the only one who had an interest in agriculture so I spent a lot of time there.

The farm was quite well designed. My father was an engineer and was often trying to invent new ways to do things at the farm.

My mother was from the country and liked the idea of a few cows and a weekender, but my father didn’t do anything by halves - what was meant to be a few cattle and horses became up to 80 cattle and 80 horses!

LLS: Can you explain how your PhD research led to changes in practice at piggeries?

TP: I was looking at what was called summer infertility in pigs for my PhD.

We expect pigs to reproduce year round, but in the wild pigs are a seasonal animal, their breeding is linked to day length. It’s still a major problem for the industry.

My supervisors were Gareth Evans, at the vet school at Sydney University, and Bob Lovell. Bob and Gareth thought the pigs were responding to day length rather than the heat of the season. But when you’ve got fertility of about 85% dropping to about 75%, you can’t do that sort of work on a 10-sow experimental piggery at a university - you’ve got to do it at the industry level.

We worked in a large commercial piggery of about 3000 sows at Menangle. Plus we had some controlled environment rooms at Camden.

We showed that pigs have a diurnal rhythm of melatonin, the same as other animals.

A series of PhDs were conducted after we established that pig infertility was largely because of seasonal day length. We played around with melatonin implants and found there was an underlying likelihood that sows would become infertile during the early phase of the year but you could overcome it with nutrition, housing and good welfare at that time of the year.

That was the start of a type of movement that said you should have your sows ‘fit but not fat’. The industry is now moving away from stalled housing, reportedly for welfare reasons. But the move to group housing of pigs traces back to research at Sydney University in the 1980s where we showed that farmers are probably better off to have their sows housed in groups.

Stalled housing has some advantages in that it stops animals fighting and you can feed them individually much more easily, but it has the disadvantage that consumers don’t like to see dry sow stalls.

Group housing has basically become the norm. I think by about 2017 there’ll be no dry sow stalls in the Australian industry.

LLS: And you continued working at a very pragmatic or applied level with the pig industry?

TP: Yes, I ended up with an industry-funded scholarship and worked for the pig industry for about 15 years. I just went to the launch of their strategic plan at Parliament House last month - I think I will always have an affiliation with them.

I came back from a research position at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada in 1993 and was research manager for the Pig R&D Corporation in Canberra.

In my first few years there we did a lot of work on welfare, stock handling and the industry standard, and supported a program called Prohand - the professional handling of pigs.

It came out of the Victorian Department of Agriculture and Melbourne University and really was ahead of its time. The Victorians showed that fear of humans can be measured in pig sheds and that professional handling of the pigs is really important.

For example, you might slap a pig on the bottom to move her along a laneway but she’ll perceive that as aggression and develop a slightly higher level of stress.

I noticed this when I was working at the Pig R&D Corporation. In certain piggeries all the pigs would go to the back of the stall when I walked in, whereas in other piggeries they’d be snuggling up to you being really friendly. The attitude and culture of a place was important - it would only take one bad apple on the staff and the pigs would be scared of all humans.

We developed a multimedia program and showed people working in piggeries how to use a sow-moving board. Rather than hitting an animal you use a board and give her no alternative but the board and she will move forward. By using these tactics a shed’s production will increase by about 7%. More importantly, it’s safer and less stressful for the staff.

LLS: Can you explain how the R&D Corporation works?

TP: It’s recognised around the world as one of the best ways of doing agricultural research.

Every time a pig was killed a levy went towards research. In those days it was 70 cents and the government matched that under the Rural R&D Corporation Levy. The legislation was brought in by John Kerin when he was Minister for Primary Industries.

It’s a compulsory levy and makes it possible for relatively small groups of farmers to be involved in research. And because the farmers pay for it, they have a stake in it. Even though half of the money is from the government, the R&D Corporations really do work for the farmers.

The farmers generally respect the advice of the researchers and the researchers feel they are working to make money for the farmers.

Now the marketing and the R&D have largely joined up. It’s basically still the same system. That’s how we now have Australian Pork Ltd, which does the job the Pig R&D Corporation did and also represents the pig farmers.

They have to account to government for the levies they use on R&D and they also have a levy on marketing - the government collects that levy for them but doesn’t match marketing money.

That’s what pays for the pork advertising that you see. I think it’s a good move - anything that brings the research closer to the market and what consumers want.

LLS: What led you to work with the cooperative research centres?

TP: When I was leaving the pig industry, Bob Seamark, the head of the Pest Animal CRC, was retiring from the job as CEO - I knew Bob, he was a very good reproductive biologist.

The CRC was looking at changing the fertility of foxes, rabbits and mice, and because I’d done my PhD on fertility in pigs it was a natural fit and it was amazing science.

We were genetically engineering viruses to make the animals infertile. We could actually make 95% of mice infertile in a laboratory situation but we couldn’t fulfil the requirement for spreading the virus outside of the laboratory. We were using a myxoma virus in rabbits but we were unable to identify a fox-specific virus.

We set up a series of milestones that dictated if we couldn’t make it work over a couple of years we would need to look for other solutions.

In the meantime, two major events happened in the industry: zinc phosphate was registered for poisoning mice during mice plagues and rabbit haemorrhagic disease or calicivirus came along.

In addition, at the start of that CRC there was no Office of the Gene Technology Regulator overseeing genetic engineering. In the decade that the CRC was doing that work a set of rules for genetic engineering in Australia was developed.

The outcome of all that was that the work wasn’t worth going on with.

LLS: Were you involved in the Gene Technology Regulator?

TP: Yes, I sat on the original interdepartmental committee - on behalf of the R&D corporations - that was involved in the development of the gene technology regulation legislation.

Back in the 1980s, the Pig R&D Corporation was slowly getting out of genetically engineering pigs when it had gone over to private industry.

There was the genetically engineered Australian super pig. That failed because to do the experiments at a big enough scale the companies had to start breeding hundreds of pigs, but the pigs weren’t allowed into the food chain. The experiments were becoming unviable, plus there was a lack of regulation so the companies pulled out of that work.

It also came down to the time frame for doing those experiments and producing the pigs. The genetics of the pigs were improving by a percent or two a year anyway, so the genetics would eventually outstrip the work if there was 20 years of research to do.

The committee developing the legislation for gene technology regulation was initially in the Department of Agriculture, but it got transferred to the Department of Health because of the perception that agriculture would push things through. And that is where the regulator continues to sit.

LLS: Do you think the super pig could have been accepted by the public?

TP: My predecessor at the CRC, Bob Seamark, actually started the work on the super pig at Adelaide University. It was curiosity-driven research. They thought it was a good idea and wanted to see whether the growth hormone gene could lead to pigs growing quicker.

Bob often said he wondered if they had picked another gene that gave better attributes to the meat or was green or clean technology then consumers may have been more accepting. But the Canadians did that 20 years later when they genetically engineered pigs to excrete less phosphorous and make more environmentally friendly pigs - they ran into the same problems that we did at the consumer end.

I think there’s some real lessons there for scientists. Scientists used to go out and educate the public about what they were doing and then expect the public to agree with them.

Nowadays that’s not the way you do research. Many people are offended by the idea of being educated - they want to be involved and talked to as equals. Scientists need to get out more and talk to people. They can’t just assume they’ll be given a social licence for their work.

That’s one of the reasons I have such a strong philosophy that in applied research the end users, the people who use the end product and are most affected by it, have to be on board.

LLS: What are some of the highlights from your time at the CRC?

TP: Probably the biggest achievement was changing the Pest Animal Control CRC around from a single technology and seven partners to become the Invasive Animal CRC with 42 partners and a whole range of technologies.

That was a massive change of culture, although it’s a hard thing to pinpoint. Changing from an elitist research group that might end up producing something of benefit to the industry to a much more people-focused, industry-based research group that was doing what the industry wanted.

It was really about trying to open the research up and get people more involved. There’s some people around who are passionate about feral animals, and it’s everyone’s problem, but it’s not the first problem for a lot of people.

LLS: Can you give an example of the CRC’s feral animal work?

TP: The CRC pioneered what we call the nil tenure approach, which is managing things on a geographic scale for animals such as wild dogs. That’s been a huge advance. It’s not a silver bullet type of answer, but it involves the people in an area in the planning and execution of programs.

People used to laugh at us and say wild dogs were not a problem. But when you talk to people who are affected by wild dogs, it’s like they are in a trauma situation. They are staying up at night, not sleeping; they feel like they are under attack and no-one is listening to them.

The dog control programs we developed bring all the people in an area together to look at what the dogs are doing in the whole area - whether it’s a national park, a state forest, Aboriginal land, a family farm or a corporate farm.

If you’ve got wild dogs attacking your sheep, it’s very likely they are coming from a neighbouring property or crossing four properties to get to your place. And they will be maintaining a pattern of activity that you can predict.

Trying to wipe out every dog is not a good strategy because they play a role - if they are in a national park they are top predator. If you shoot a few of the animals in an ad hoc fashion you might spark a lot of breeding and dispersement of the young animals. The best approach is to have area-wide management plans for controlling and managing the dogs.

A successful program will reduce sheep and goat losses to minimal amounts. But getting everyone to take responsibility is huge. It’s completely different research, it’s social science research.

LLS: Are you enjoying being chief executive of the CRC Association?

TP: It’s very enjoyable. I never thought I’d be a lobbyist and I’m not officially a lobbyist, but I spend about half my time advocating for the CRCs. It’s very easy to advocate for something you believe quite passionately in.

We’re a tiny program - we make up about 1.5% of what the government spends on research - yet we tick so many boxes. The issue is always getting people to realise the CRCs exist - we’re below the radar for a lot of people.

The CRCs bring together the elements. You can’t steal the credit off the players who are actually doing the research, but the fact that they are doing it together means they are likely to produce an outcome. We fund the arrows between the boxes, if you like, in the research industry collaboration. People might think that would have happened anyway, but without the funding and the motivation to work together it never would have happened.

LLS: What do you think the future will bring from the federal government?

TP: I’m cautiously optimistic. We thought we’d done our heavy lifting, as the current Treasurer kept saying, before the Budget. We were already coming off the old Backing Australia’s Ability Program that had boosted the CRCs for a number of years.

Throughout the entire Rudd-Gillard governments’ terms we were coming down regarding the amount of money we got each year. And we were due to turn back up and start rising a bit but the current government found it necessary to make this $80 million cut.

LLS: The CRC Association has a review coming up?

TP: Yes, it’s about to start. We’ve just heard we will be reviewed by businessman David Miles, so any time now we will start the process.

The last review was done by NSW Chief Scientist Mary O’Kane in 2008. We’ve had a lot of reviews over the years and generally we do very well.

At the moment in Australia, I’d say people are more aware about the need for collaboration and more aware of the need for industry-research organisation interaction than ever before.

Industry Minister Ian MacFarlane keeps saying that collaboration is key - there’s no doubt that he is really aware of it.

The Chief Scientist, Professor Ian Chubb, has released his plan for the future, which calls on greater collaboration and much greater industry involvement with public research.

We need a variety of collaboration mechanisms and the CRC is not for everyone. But the CRCs are regarded around the world as one of the really good mechanisms for doing that sort of research, so we hope to do quite well.

If we don’t then hopefully they’ve found an even better way into it.

It depends whether the government wants to do a review of the whole innovation system or whether they just move to what Professor Chubb is recommending. I expect the government will do it in a staged approach by moving programs to be closer to addressing the issues Chubb is recommending.

LLS: What are your thoughts on Professor Chubb’s statements like we “lack a science strategy” and we don’t have a “national science policy”?

TP: I’m very supportive and think Chubb’s absolutely right in saying we should have a more comprehensive strategy for science, and particularly in Australia where we have a federation. Some of the state governments have completely dropped the ball on research. Victoria is miles ahead on support of science at the moment than the other states in my view.

We should have a more coordinated plan in place but it’s equally important to carry out that strategy and look at how you’re going every now and then.

There’s a Churchill quote on strategy: “However beautiful the strategy you should occasionally look at the results.”

Australia is a federation, not just a single government, and yes, the national government is always going to be the biggest supplier of cash, but the states and business are vital as well. Business outspends government by 2 to 1 on research.

We need to have an attractive total environment for doing research. If we just yell at the federal government to put more money in that’s not going to be enough.

LLS: Do you think the government is listening?

TP: I think Ian Macfarlane is listening.

If you look at this government they have made a big commitment to medical research with the MRFF - and that’s become more complicated than it could have.

I expect that science, and particularly industrial-type science, will be one of the higher priorities if the government can get the Budget in order. They are very focused on that right now and Ian Chubb’s been very careful not to go out calling for huge amounts of more money. When it’s borrowed money people react to that.

The level of collaboration is picking up. It’s gone up to about 10% of research-active businesses that are now collaborating with universities. That’s really low - and Ian MacFarlane recently said it’s atrocious - but it is improving.

You can only make industry work with carrots not sticks. You can make public organisations work via a stick but you’re still going to need more carrots.

Image caption: The Governor General, Sir Peter Cosgrove, presenting Tony Peacock with his Churchill Fellowship earlier this year.