02 Jan 2007
Creating Prion-Free Cows

Whoa! An ag story from Slashdot! Will wonders never cease? And more wonders: the very first commenter on the thread gets it exactly right:

This is great! Now we can go back to feeding the cows a healthy diet of dead sheep, which was how the whole "mad cow" thing started.

There's simply no need to "engineer" prion free cattle - feed them correctly and there will not be any prion disease! What a concept!

The other important note here:

The evaluation revealed no apparent developmental abnormalities in the prion-free cattle.

is the use of the word "apparent" in the concluding sentence. It can take many years and several generations for genetic defects to manifest, and yet these folks are willing to claim success after the first shot. This isn't science, this is voodoo, but come to think of it, it's the witch doctors at the USDA and FDA and other alphabet soup agencies that are causing most of the problems in the food supply that we face as we move into the 21st century.

Science Daily is reporting that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is reporting positive results from a recent study designed to create genetically engineered prion-free cattle. From the article: "ARS studied eight Holstein males that were developed by Hematech Inc., a pharmaceutical research company based in Sioux Falls, S.D. The evaluation of the prion-free cattle was led by veterinary medical officer Juergen Richt of ARS' National Animal Disease Center (NADC) in Ames, Iowa. The evaluation revealed no apparent developmental abnormalities in the prion-free cattle."

(link) [Slashdot]

06:59 /Agriculture | 3 comments | permanent link