Andart

Food Safety Through Cloning

Cloned cows get sane future: Genetic technique may yield BSE-proof calves. (based on a paper by Kuroiwa et al. in Nature Genetics)

A nice demonstration of how cloning can be used to reproduce a successful transgene, in this case cows that do not produce prion protein and hence are resistant to BSE.

As the comment above mentions, it is unlikely there is a big market for this guaranteed BSE-free beef at present given people's worries about cloning and genetic modification. In the case of BSE it might also be such a low-risk threat it solves that it is simply not worth it. But imagine Salmonella resistant poultry? In the US alone, 1.4 million people are infected and 600 people die each year. Even if the modification carried some risk, it is hard to imagine it being worse than the present state.

But the "natural is good" ideology will likely keep food poisoning on the menu. Especially people eating organic foods are susceptible to these bacterial infections. Animals are not given antibiotics and manure is used as fertilizer. GMOs are probably the most versatile and through way of not only making organic food safer but to improve its efficiency (the lower yields per hectare of organic farming requires more farmland, offsetting the ecological benefits from the farming itself). But since organic food has been defined in terms of avoiding modern chemical and biological enhancements rather than aiming at enhancing ecosystem health through any means, it is unlikely to happen. Once again a good aim (improving biodiversity and sustainability) becomes hi-jacked by an anti-modern perspective, essentially locking out the possibility of pro-ecological GMOs and chemicals.

The first blog entry in this blog was about prions. The cow experiments are interesting in this respect: if the Si, Kandel and Lindquist hypothesis is right these cows ought to have learning disabilities. They provide a powerful test of the theory, despite being intended for BSE-free pharmaceutical production rather than research. Who knows what neuroscientific discoveries will emerge from our dinner plates?