Tue, 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]

/Agriculture | 3 writebacks | permanent link

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On 1/2/2007 10:58:47
Walter Jeffries wrote

It is wonderful how they are figuring out to do things the wrong way like making it so they can feed cows to cows without fears of the cows on either end being mad. One might wonder what potential effects there may be hidden down the road from knocking out the at gene. There may be garbage in the DNA, but there are also a lot of important pairs and scientists don't really understand the ramifications of playing with them. I'm all for technology, I enjoy the internet, but I'm not going to be their guinea pig. Of course, this won't help with preserving genetic diversity and heritage breeds, bio-diversity, issues with mono-culturing, plagues, etc. What it will do is give some company the ability to own the genetics of cattle so that farmers have to pay the corporation every time we breed an animal much like is being done with plant genetics. If the corp is smart they'll copyright the genes instead of patenting them since that monopoly lasts longer. Or they can just screw around with the patent system more to extend the patents to forever minus a day. Me, I'll continue to breed my own livestock, grown clown-free, sans-genetic modifications and raised on pasture. I would suggest consumers get to know their local farmers who can be a source of high quality foods as well as keeping dollars in the local economy.

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On 1/2/2007 11:25:58
Walter Jeffries wrote

It is wonderful how they are figuring out to do things the wrong way like making it so they can feed cows to cows without fears of the cows on either end being mad. One might wonder what potential effects there may be hidden down the road from knocking out the at gene. There may be garbage in the DNA, but there are also a lot of important pairs and scientists don't really understand the ramifications of playing with them. I'm all for technology, I enjoy the internet, but I'm not going to be their guinea pig. Of course, this won't help with preserving genetic diversity and heritage breeds, bio-diversity, issues with mono-culturing, plagues, etc. What it will do is give some company the ability to own the genetics of cattle so that farmers have to pay the corporation every time we breed an animal much like is being done with plant genetics. If the corp is smart they'll copyright the genes instead of patenting them since that monopoly lasts longer. Or they can just screw around with the patent system more to extend the patents to forever minus a day. Me, I'll continue to breed my own livestock, grown clown-free, sans-genetic modifications and raised on pasture. I would suggest consumers get to know their local farmers who can be a source of high quality foods as well as keeping dollars in the local economy.

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On 1/2/2007 11:27:16
Walter Jeffries wrote

Oops! Duplicated. Not sure what happened there. Sorry! Happy New Years!

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