Options Considered and Their Various Merits

5.1 Key Characteristics

The Research Advisory Group considered models for future collaboration.  It believes that the centre should have the following characteristics:

1. It should have a separate, national, R&D identity
   
   
2. It should be created with the vision of a long-term entity, coordinating a strategic national research agenda
   
   
3. It should be collaborative and inclusive
   
   
4. The focus should be on improving the scientific basis of animal welfare.
   
   
5. All six sectors must be able to be represented
   
   
6. Where a sector has the capacity to invest, it should be engaged for co-contribution.

Existing funding arrangements offer a number of alternatives.  Models considered were:

• Cooperative Research Centre
  
  
• ARC Special Research Centre / Centre of Excellence
  
  
• Network centre modeled on Animal Health Australia
  
  
• Network center modeled on existing ad hoc centres.

5.2 Alternative Models

5.2.1 Cooperative Research Centre

The CRC Programme is an Australian Government funded initiative, which commenced in 1990.  It supports world-class research with the aim of turning Australia’s scientific innovations into successful new products, services and technologies, making industries more efficient, productive and competitive.   There are presently over 50 CRCs spread across all sectors of science and technology.

The Program emphasises collaboration between business and researchers to maximise the benefits of research through an enhanced process of utilisation, commercialisation and technology transfer. It also has a strong education component with a focus on producing graduates with skills relevant to industry needs.  The Programme encourages international collaboration. 

The Australian Government grants between $20-40 million in funding to CRCs over a seven year period.  This funding must be at least matched by cash and/or in-kind contributions from CRC participants.  In practice, the level of partner inputs has been 2-3 times that of the Australian Government’s grant.  The quantum of a CRC is thus in the region of $100m – a very significant enterprise.  With this size comes profile, authority and a ‘lightning rod’ effect which sees CRCs attract attention and resources in their field, shading-out others.

The seven-year duration of funding is an attractive feature of the program, allowing collaborating groups enough time to invest in sustained R&D programs.  A second positive feature has been the ability of CRCs to embrace a wide spectrum of interests – small and large companies and interest groups and a broad span of research providers.  CRCs commonly now have 20-40 partners.  Each CRC is managed by an independent board, with partners mimicking the role of shareholders in a public company. They normally support dispersed research projects, conducted at nodes where the greatest expertise is found, managed from a central HQ.  Coordination/management costs may be 20-25% of the Government grant and 7-10% of the total centre budget.

Investment by end-users normally carries with it commercialization rights.  These arrangements may be uncomfortable for, or hard to negotiate with, research providers.  Collaborative ventures now find Intellectual property rights a significant discussion point with universities and CSIRO, prior to and during cooperative centre establishment.

Competition for new CRCs has occurred every two years; one is due to be announced in late 2007.  The number of applications (between 30 and 50 serious bids) for a small number of grants (10-14) results in a 30% success rate, illustrating the fierce completion.  In the last two rounds of competition, the Programme has emphasised excellence and generation of products and services, with industry partners both helping direct the work and commercialising the output.  ‘Public good’ bids have not been successful and some high-profile CRCs have not been re-funded.  In 2006 the Productivity Commission advised that the selection criteria should be widened to accommodate ‘national benefit’.  While this may open the door for public-good bids it will also increase the total number of bids and, in the absence of significantly increased Australian government funds, make the competition even harder to win. 

The structure of CRCs makes this a good model for the Animal Welfare Centre.

5.2.2 ARC Research Centre

The ARC is one of the country’s largest research-funding bodies.  It is the preferred research funding source by universities because its grants positively affect their formula-based block funding.  It is preferred by academic researchers because of its peer-review system and (at least for Discovery grants) its support of fundamental research.  There are well-established protocols for ownership if intellectual property.

The Australian Research Council’s ‘National Competitive Grants Program’ currently supports three types of Centres.  These are:

• Centres of Excellence - are prestigious hubs of expertise through which high-quality researchers maintain and develop Australia’s international standing in research areas of national priority.  They promote a high level of collaboration occurs between universities and other organisations in Australia and overseas.  However, the ARC is not planning new Centres in this format before 2009.
  
  
• Special Research Centres - funded on the basis of research excellence and potential to contribute to the economic, social and cultural development of Australia. Subject to satisfactory performance, the Special Research Centres have been funded for nine years.
  Despite their success, the ARC does not now fund new Centres under this program.
  
  
• Co-funded Centres of Excellence

The ARC co-funds three Centres of Excellence:

• the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics, with the Grains Research and Development Corporation
• the Australian Stem Cell Centre, with the Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources
• National ICT Australia (NICTA) with the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts.

Applications for co-funded Centres of Excellence are invited periodically, to fill national strategic gaps, but not frequently. 

Notwithstanding the prima facie attractiveness of the ARC centre model, the absence of planned investment in this ‘national centre’ format makes it a low-likelihood option.

The ARC’s main ongoing programs are Discovery and Linkage.  Discovery has a number of components, supporting individuals or teams undertaking excellent, fundamental, research.  It is competitive and has a low success rate (≈20%).  Linkage supports long-term strategic research alliances between higher education institutions and industry to apply advanced knowledge to problems, or to provide opportunities to obtain national economic or social benefits.   It requires co-investment by participants – particularly industry.  The grant size is uncapped and may be up to $500,000 p.y.  The success rate for Linkage applications is higher, at 35-40% and there are two application rounds per year.   Linkage grants can focus on international collaboration as well as domestic partnerships. 

Linkage grants represent an existing funding source the Australian Animal Welfare Centre should explore for support.

ARC projects are administered by a host university and commonly have undemanding administrative and reporting protocols.  ARC Centres / projects may have advisory committees but there is still significant academic latitude.

5.2.3 Networked centre after Animal Health Australia as a model

Animal Health Australia is a not-for-profit public company established by the Australian Government, state and territory governments and major national livestock industry organisations.  Its primary focus is production animal disease, detection, prevention and cure.

The partnership initiates and manages collaborative programs (currently eight) that improve animal and human health, food safety and quality, market access, animal welfare, livestock productivity and national biosecurity.

Animal Health Australia has 25 members spread across four categories; the Australian government, all state and territory governments, livestock industry organisations and service delivery organisations.

Members are involved in the management of all activities and have formal input to the development of company annual and strategic plans via AHA’s National Animal Health Consultative Group. Through such mechanisms, members have the opportunity to ensure that issues of importance to their jurisdiction or industry are addressed.

Members fund the company's activities via annual subscriptions that are calculated by a formula based on the Gross Value of Production of the industry or jurisdiction, using a three-year rolling average.

Programs range from vaccine production and management, national code development and certification, through surveillance protocols to training and emergency response. 

Despite governance arrangements which suggest a corporation with an independent board etc, it works in a highly regulated environment with significant compliance / reporting obligations according to Australian and state laws. While it is not envisaged that an incorporated structure of this complexity is necessary for an R&D centre the model would allow for .animal welfare R&D work to be advanced in a strategic manner with oversight from a representative board.

AHA has some R&D interests; it is a member of the Australian Biosecurity CRC.

Given that AHA’s core work program is funded equitably by its members it is an attractive model for any proposed centre as Commonwealth funding for the AAWS ends in June 2009. The working group reviewed this model and a number of points follow from those considerations:

• AHA’s operations are restricted to livestock and production industries. AHA does not cover any of the other AAWS animal use sectors.
  
  
• This is not necessarily a negative for the proposed AAWS R&D portfolio in that livestock industries are generally well organised, having peak industry bodies and fund-raising mechanisms from their members.
  
  
• The current workplan for AHA includes animal welfare issues, in the context of production animal health.  AHA’s company objects do not explicitly include a mandate to cover welfare matters.
  
  
• A network animal welfare research centre, to be operated under a similar arrangement, would be able to advance cross-sectoral work assuming other animal use sectors could input separately and equitably.
  
  
• The fact that livestock industries also already have industry–based work programs which include aspects of animal welfare R&D (e.g. research supported by AWI, MLA and APL) must be acknowledged.  To be accepted as of value for the R&D bodies in the production sector, any ‘new’ player would probably need to focus on work of common interest across the livestock industries and to be of strategic nature.
  
  
• From the investigations to date, there are areas of R&D interest that would fall into this category and that are of similar importance for the other AAWS sectors.  If those sectors could develop a funding mechanism then such work could expand readily to encompass them. However, if no funds were forthcoming from those sectors it would be difficult, on governance and equitable grounds, to argue that livestock producers, in effect, providing funds for other sectors.
  
  
• Those other mechanisms, for funding work prioritised by other sectors must be defined if this model is to work (refer to point 6.3). 

Following the group’s discussion of these points, two alternative options for developing a collaborative centre working within an ‘AHA’ type of arrangement were considered:

a) as a new centre governed and funded in the same way as AHA.

A drawback for this is that livestock industry animal health and some animal welfare issues are already undertaken within AHA.  The funding and governance arrangements of AHA have been tested and work.  A new structure would have to develop those arrangements ab initio, and be attractive enough for industries to be prepared to, in effect, pay for AHA, their own R&D bodies, and a strategic nationally endorsed portfolio of animal welfare R&D.

b) As a centre with its own sub-board to sit within AHA and be subject to the AHA rules and regulations.

• This has implications for the funding from livestock industries – in effect AHA’s operations, mandate and company objects would expand.  A side-effect could be that additional governance costs might be reduced, compared with a stand–alone centre.
• In addition, advice from the R&D Centre’s Board would have to be progressed to the full AHA Board for ratification to make certain that work in other AHA programs did not clash.
• If not set up as an inclusive operation, such a model may significantly constrain the broad AAWS research agenda.

Further investigation of the feasibility of each of these options needs to explore with the AHA board whether it could consider development or inclusion of a separate ‘arm’ of its corporation to cover animal welfare, including animal welfare R&D, to be performed in a collaborative manner for necessary and strategic cross-sectoral purposes.

5.3 The Research Focus?

Information elicited at the National Workshops and during site visits allowed the Research Advisory Group to form views that:

a) There is a significant intellectual base for animal production / environmental research in Australia, supported by adequate, though not excess, infrastructure capacity.


b) Animal welfare research is an accepted component of the animal biology mix – and it is generally recognised that animal ‘health’ and ‘welfare’, though linked, are not synonymous.


c) There is noticeable openness and collaborative willingness among the individual, somewhat scattered, professional researchers.


d) There is a paucity of national focusing mechanisms and most researchers, naturally, encouraged to promote and focus on their individual areas of expertise.


e) The animal production Rural R&D corporations (AWI, MLA, Dairy Australia, Australian Egg Corporation, Australian Pork and Livecorp) invest in work to improve the competitiveness of their industry sectors.  There are some overlapping interests and joint projects (e.g. AWI and MLA’s Integrated Framework for Welfare Measures project in 2005).  As noted in 3.3 (above) there is room for a national agenda addressing fundamental, supra-industry, issues.


The Research Advisory Group does not recommend a particular research portfolio, at this stage, but does consider it is vital that research support and have a channel to deliver, sound advice which can be used in public policy formulation.  The following issues warrant further systematic exploration in a collaborative R&D environment:

• Unifying animal welfare assessment methodologies.  This is a fundamental issue; the Research Advisory Group was presented with compelling advice that it is the argument of a number of alternative concepts which prevents science from having a stronger voice and validating different animal welfare practices. In turn, this prevents the scientific community from informing the broader society of benefits and drawbacks in an objective manner.  This point is reflected further in other issues below
  
  
• Issues of human-animal interaction
  
  
• Control of pain to reduce ‘distress’ in animals during necessary procedures
  
  
• Physical and social requirements of animals – preferred resource choice being used to assess optimal ‘fit’
  
  
• Assessing the impact of alternative husbandry practices
  
  
• Investigation of factors involved in managing animal welfare risks during transport of animals in order to provide animal industries with verified ways to underpin improved outcomes
  
  
• Develop objective measures of animal welfare to underpin ethical livestock production
  
  
• Humane and non-lethal controls for pest animals
  
  
• The integration into animal welfare of biomedical science review processes and risk assessments used in food safety
  
  
• Identification of ethical and practical environments to maximise animal physical health, psychological health and reproductive capability, acknowledging animals are kept for many purposes including production, conservation, companionship and research
  
  
• Genetic tools for analysing animal welfare and selection for positive traits, including consideration of the genetics of ‘suitability’ for different production systems
  
  
• Varying societal pressures as stimulants of innovation

The topics chosen as the initial R&D agenda will be ‘enabling’ research, which fills gaps in existing knowledge and can be drawn-on by industry-oriented researchers.

Additionally, the research environment of the AAWRC should enable international collaboration and national events, conferences, topic-specific workshops etc.

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