Introduction to special issue on animal biotechnology: do animal biotechnologies have a latent liberatory imaginary?

The essays in this special issue emerged from a workshop held at Cardiff University in September 2010. As sociologists based at the dual-site (Lancaster and Cardiff) Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics (Cesagen) funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, we have both been engaged in researching ethical and social issues around animal biotechnologies for a number of years. The aim of the workshop was to address various examples of animal biotechnology and consider their potential effect on the future of human/animal relations. We employ here a broad definition of biotechnology to include various types of bioscience innovation instead of restricting ourselves to genetic modification (GM). In particular, we discern that several different types of biotechnology are bound up in a latent promissory discourse deployed by both scientists and animal advocates that perhaps surprisingly forecasts a benefit to the lives of other animals themselves through the uptake of particular technologies