MSc student Rachel Fricke explores the intersection of overconsumption, animal welfare, and nutrition and offers tips for conducting interdisciplinary research. Over the past year, I completed my dissertation entitled ‘Overconsumption of animal sourced foods in the United States and the impacts on farm animal welfare’ as the final component of my MSc in Global Food Security and Nutrition from the University of Edinburgh. Previous research has focused on either human nutrition or animal welfare, rarely considering the nexus between them. I wanted to fill that gap in my dissertation research and provide evidence for including animal welfare in planetary health diets, which, to date, have focused on just human and environmental health. The objectives of the study were to determine how many eggs are consumed in the United States in excess of the recommendations, how many chickens are involved in the production of the eggs that are overconsumed, and the number of suffering years experienced by chickens in the egg-laying industry under various conditions as a result of overconsumption. Image Egg overconsumption Due to the interdisciplinary nature of this project, I used various types of data collection including a literature review, secondary data analysis, and primary data collection. I found that over 20 billion eggs are overconsumed in the United States each year. To supply this demand above-and-beyond the American Heart Association’s one egg a day, an additional 153 million chickens are required. There are many welfare concerns for chickens in the egg industry, especially restrictive housing and the culling of male chicks, as well as induced molting. Induced molting is when birds are artificially stimulated, through feed restriction, to replace their feathers and cease reproductive function. This increases the birds’ productive lifespans and improves egg quality. Consuming more than recommended amounts of animal sourced foods has important implications for animal welfare. Future research could apply a similar method to other farm animals, e.g., broiler chickens, dairy cattle, beef cattle and pigs. Tips for interdisciplinary research For any students considering an interdisciplinary thesis, the following are my top tips to help the process go more smoothly: Keep the focus narrow With interdisciplinary research, there is a great deal of information to explore, so it can be helpful to narrow the focus to a particular area. At the start of my dissertation year, I planned to study the overconsumption of all types of animal sourced foods, including red meat, poultry, dairy, and eggs and the welfare consequences for all the animals involved. However, as I began reading the literature and forming an outline for the project, I quickly realised the amount of detail and information that needs to be considered for just one food product or animal. Given the time restraints of the project and the available consumption and production data, I decided to focus specifically on chickens and eggs while designing the methods in a way that they could be repeated with other animal products in the future. By keeping the focus narrowed to one food product, I was able to gather more in-depth production, consumption, and poultry welfare data and draw more meaningful conclusions. Keep the literature organised When it comes to reviewing literature for interdisciplinary research, there are considerably more papers to sort through given the multiple subject areas. It can be helpful to start with an interdisciplinary database such as Web of Science to provide a comprehensive list of potentially useful papers. It may be necessary to have a separate set of search terms for each topic included in the study. It is therefore critical to clearly define the search terms for each subject and to use a reference manager to keep the results organised. Have a solid, yet flexible outline Interdisciplinary research is multi-faceted and may include several types of data collection methods throughout each phase of the study, so having a strong, yet flexible plan is very important. Early in planning my dissertation, I focused on defining the nutrition guidelines, gathering the consumption data for eggs, and exploring the available production data for chickens from the USDA. Although I had some ideas for how I would quantify animal welfare, the details needed further refinement. However, I did not focus on this component until I knew the extent of egg overconsumption in the United States and the number of chickens that were involved in this production. As I reviewed previous literature on the quantification of animal welfare, it became clear that I would need to gather some primary data to determine the severity of different welfare conditions that chickens face that were specific to my study. It would have been beneficial if I had factored in the need to conduct a survey earlier in the planning process to avoid needing to complete two separate ethics applications and to allow more time to collect and analyse responses. Having a solid plan for each phase of the research at the start can be very helpful in keeping everything moving smoothly throughout the project. However, it is important to note that plans will change as the project evolves, so while having a strong outline is very beneficial, always be willing to make changes and adapt as needed. Include a diverse supervisory team When conducting interdisciplinary research, having more than one supervisor is essential. For each subject area included in the research, have a supervisor who specialises in that area. In the case of my study, it was especially helpful to have one advisor specialising in nutrition and one in animal welfare. With a diverse supervisory team, they will be able to offer specific advice to their areas of expertise such as what data is publicly available or how to best collect primary data. Each supervisor can also comment and give feedback on the areas they are experts in, which is very helpful throughout the writing and editing process. Overall, this study has expanded my scope of knowledge in animal welfare, human health and nutrition, and the environmental implications of consuming and producing animal sourced foods. This multidisciplinary study connected many areas ranging from human health to sustainable farming to animal welfare. Throughout the process I improved my critical thinking, problem-solving, and written communication skills while learning about many aspects of the academic research process. In the future, I hope to continue taking a holistic approach to animal welfare, sustainability, and human health and recognising how they are all interconnected.