Inventing the Third World

BOOK REVIEWSpolitics and were then legislated for owing to the effectiveness of pressure group politics than it is to write about the institutions and bureaucratic wrangling that invariably followed.Nonetheless, Kirchhelle's work allows us to see how animal welfare mirrors other contemporary sources of intense concern.Governments placed the onus on critics of intensive livestock farming to prove harm before they were prepared to take regulatory action.One thinks of historical work on responses to the use of chemical pesticides as well as broader histories of risk.As Kirchhelle makes clear, although Animal Machines was condemned by vested interests for its irrational emotionalism-a gendered claim that chimes with the reception of Silent Spring-it did have a significant effect on public opinion.In broad terms, these sentiments were upheld by the recommendations of the Brambell Committee, but it took an arduous period of scientific research in the 1970s to strengthen the position of the animal welfarists.Harrison could be frustrated by the speed with which academic research established what to her seemed self-evident, but as Kirchhelle comprehensively establishes, Harrison's moral purpose, energy and determination saw her help recast what constituted British politics in the second half of the twentieth century

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