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Creating Prion-Free Cows

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tue Jan 02, 2007 05:25 AM
from the un-mad-cows dept.
Biotech Science
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."
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  • Dead sheeps (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Per Abrahamsen (1397) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @05:34AM (#17430186) Homepage
    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.

    • Re:Dead sheeps (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WindBourne (631190) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @05:38AM (#17430208) Journal
      Actually, that is not proven. It it THOGUGHT that scrapies is the same as Madcow ( and MC CWD CJD), but they are not certain. But even with that, I want to know how accurate is the test these days? It is great that they did not have any positive in what was suppose to be negative cattle. But will they get a good positive in an infected animal?

      • Re:Dead sheeps (Score:4, Insightful)

        by slashbob22 (918040) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @09:27AM (#17431228)

        But will they get a good positive in an infected animal?
        As far as I understand with MC, CWD, Scrapies, CJD and Varient CJD the only way to ensure accuracy of tests is through a biopsy of the brain tissue of a dead subject. While there are tests for live subjects (clinical observations) they are not definitive [wikipedia.org].

        • Not quite the same disease (Score:4, Informative)

          by DrYak (748999) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @10:24AM (#17431706) Homepage
          BSE and CJD are very similar (same mechanism) but not exactly the sane disease (not exactly the same "diseased" protein shape), which also explains the longer incubation time.

          the only way to ensure accuracy of tests is through a biopsy of the brain tissue of a dead subject. While there are tests for live subjects (clinical observations) they are not definitive.


          Also there *ARE* good tests to determine the ESB both faster than the biopsy and not needing to put down the cow, much better than clinical observations.
          Intensive research has been done in German and Swiss laboratories. The first test working on live animal has been developped in Göttingen, Germany. Thus sadly, the information is only available in the German version of wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. (Though the german article mentions a later Texan discovery).

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by slashbob22 (918040)

            BSE and CJD are very similar (same mechanism) but not exactly the sane disease (not exactly the same "diseased" protein shape), which also explains the longer incubation time.

            I agree since CJD occurs spontaneously (or with genetic pre-disposition), varient CJD is determined to have very similar properties to BSE and is the one which is believed to be linked to BSE.

            The first test working on live animal has been developped in Göttingen, Germany. Thus sadly, the information is only available in the German version of wikipedia. (Though the german article mentions a later Texan discovery).

            My German is not strong, though I was able to get some information out of it (babelfish helped as well); these are interesting developments. Earlier in the wiki it states that Prionen cannot be proved until around 24-30 months of age and the test is 89% accurate with no false positives (quite good). My only concer

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Syrrh (700452)
              Presumably the testing isn't over, the researchers just decided that 2 years is a pretty good success indicator, especially when they've been injecting BSE prions *directly into the brains* of the test animals. If the infection can't take hold in that condition, I'd say it pretty well surpasses any naturally occuring scenarios. Still too early to say with absolute certainty, but they have good reason to celebrate so far.

              I'm more interested in where this heads beyond the BSE scare, since it'll be a lot harde

          • Re:Not quite the same disease (Score:4, Funny)

            by dosquatch (924618) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @12:18PM (#17432888) Journal

            BSE and CJD are very similar (same mechanism) but not exactly the sane disease
            Best.
            Typo.
            Evar.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by MightyYar (622222)
      Well, Chronic Wasting Disease [wikipedia.org] has managed to do a number on deer without anyone feeding sheep to deer - so don't be so certain about the origin of mad cow. It might have spontaneously occurred in cattle populations, or there might be some other vector.

      For what it's worth, soybean meal is the primary protein source for cattle in the US, and it has been for a long time. IIRC, Europe was the only place where they had to grind up sheep and cows for protein because soybeans don't grow very well there in general.

    • Or dead people (Score:5, Interesting)

      by giafly (926567) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @07:01AM (#17430486)
      In 2005 a controversial paper in The Lancet introduced a theory that BSE might have originated in British cattle when they ate imported animal feed that included infected human remains from Hindu funeral ceremonies in India.
      Bovine spongiform encephalopathy [wikipedia.org]

      This theory has some merit because scrapie from sheep does not appear to infect people, whereas BSE from cattle does.

    • Re:Dead sheeps (Score:5, Funny)

      by AndroidCat (229562) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @07:38AM (#17430662) Homepage
      Why yes, they should have been feeding live sheep to cows...

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by SatanicPuppy (611928) *
          Carnivores are more expensive to raise in terms of calories than herbivores...Those cows that you have to feed and water then get fed to the tigers or whatever that you're raising for meat.

          Most efficient food is vegetable mass. Second most efficient is things that live on vegetable mass. Last comes things that eat things that live on vegetable mass.

          On top of that, even if you could solve the problem of food efficiency, it would be extremely difficult to raise them efficiently, as carnivores are usually soli

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by drinkypoo (153816)

            If a cow escapes from a cattle farm, it's probably not going to be a threat to nearby people, while a farm-raised carnivore is bound to be seriously feral and potentially very aggressive.

            Cows are as docile as they are today because they have been bred for about as long as any animal we today have. It's true they were taken from relatively docile herbivores but not all are that way.

            Llamas for example have been known to run people down and kick them for no apparent reason - presumably just because they

  • That is one solution... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by abscissa (136568) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @05:34AM (#17430188)
    ... or you could just not feed them parts of their dead relatives?

    • Re:That is one solution... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Oswald (235719) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @05:50AM (#17430252)
      Isn't it encouraging to know that, while your solution works in theory, it's not good enough in practice because you can't trust people not to do that.

      Doesn't seem that hard, really, but people are pretty stupid.

        • Yet it's so trivial to fix, switch to vegetation based protein supplements for 1 generation of cattle, and poof the problems gone.


          The fix you propose cannot be patented; too much prior art and too obvious.

          . . . or can it?

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Firethorn (177587)
            Sheeshh... And people wonder why I often point out that the US is not entirely free-market.

            Still, if this part is true, I can understand why they didn't let them do it:

            USDA has sole control of the testing processes in meat plants. And its
            officials say they have rejected Creekstone Farms' pleas because the
            company's tests don't detect mad cow disease in animals younger than 30
            months. Most U.S. beef comes from 12- to 18-month-old cows.

            Bad science is bad science. Let's not have 'security theator' become 'safe

    • Re:That is one solution... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Miksu77 (768588) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @05:58AM (#17430296)
      Or you could take the road us Finns have taken: Nowadays each and every cow that dies here is tested and not a single piece of a particular animal may be used to produce food unless that animal has been tested.
      • Yes, but the Finns have a government that serves the people.

        • Re:That is one solution... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by RexRhino (769423) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @10:24AM (#17431702)
          Yes, but the Finns have a government that serves the people.

          Given the fact that Finns pay (on average) 22% more for food than the EU average ( http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Food+still+expens ive+in+Finland+by+European+standards/1076153030941 [www.hs.fi] ), and given the fact that 'Mad Cow' disease is so astronomically unlikely to infect anyone when absolutly no precautions are being taken, any reasonable person has to question the cost/value of food paranoia.

          I would say Finns requiring test for Mad Cow to be more about protectionism (it is against trade rules to outright ban foriegn beef, but if you require very specific and expensive testing on beef that isn't harmonized with other countries, and then subsidize the testing for domestic producers, you can essentially sidestep trade rules).

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Frangible (881728)
      No kidding. All cows are already created "prion free" naturally... it is our feeding them unnatural shit they should never eat that's the problem. You don't need to have a pharma company engineer a fucking cow to fix that problem. I like my steak as much as the next guy, but it's pretty messed up what we do to farm animals.
      • Was that:
        • pharma company engineer a fucking cow
        or
        • pharma company engineer fucking a cow?
        it's pretty messed up what we do to farm animals.
        Indeed!

  • http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=d (Score:3, Informative)

    by M0b1u5 (569472) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @05:34AM (#17430192) Homepage
    I confess; I had to look up what a prion is.
    I'm so embarrassed.

    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=define%3A +prions%3F&btnG=Search [google.com]

  • Had to look it up (Score:3, Informative)

    by antic (29198) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @05:36AM (#17430200)
    From Wikipedia: "a type of infectious agent made only of protein."

    "Mad cow disease" is a prion disease.
    • A "common" form of prion disease in humans is due to Cannibalism. I can't wait until they do an episode of House where that's the cause. I so nailed the Chimerism [wikipedia.org] in that one episode as soon as the bleeding disorder had completely different results.

  • Abnormal prions cause BSE (Score:5, Funny)

    by Timesprout (579035) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @05:39AM (#17430214)
    or Mad Cow Disease for those of you like myself who had no idea what the headline was about.

    The actual article headline "Mad Cow Breakthrough?" really should have been followed by a story about mad cow scientists were developing a doomsday weapon to destroy humanity, or that mad cow armies were breaking through our outer defense perimeter or some such. Would have been much more interesting.
  • What is so new in those cows? Two heads? Fallout style?

  • What about the positive effects of the prions? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tade (156618) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @05:54AM (#17430270)
    Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion [wikipedia.org] mentions this article http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=p ubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=159 31169&query_hl=6&itool=pubmed_DocSum [nih.gov] that mentions the prions in relation with long term memory. I wonder how well they tested the cows without the prions. (Abstract below)

    Changes in protein conformation drive most biological processes, but none have seized the imagination of scientists and the public alike as have the self-replicating conformations of prions. Prions transmit lethal neurodegenerative diseases by means of the food chain. However, self-replicating protein conformations can also constitute molecular memories that transmit genetic information. Here, we showcase definitive evidence for the prion hypothesis and discuss examples in which prion-encoded heritable information has been harnessed during evolution to confer selective advantages. We then describe situations in which prion-enciphered events might have essential roles in long-term memory formation, transcriptional memory and genome-wide expression patterns.
  • ARS, with assistance from researchers at Hematech and the University of Texas, evaluated the cattle using careful observation, post-mortem examination of two of the animals ...I'd be livid!

  • New study! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Aladrin (926209) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @07:16AM (#17430562)
    So how long until we get a new study that says Prions were indeed good things, and should have been left in our meat.

    From TFA: "Prions are proteins that are naturally produced in animals."

    Hmm... Removing natural things... Nope, doesn't sound like a good idea to me. I just can't wait until they find out that Prions actually helped prevent cancer or something and everyone on the planet now has a timebomb in their body.

    Seriously, they'd better do some SERIOUS studies on this before feeding this crap to me.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Vellmont (569020)

              I simply stated that they'd be fools to mess with things they don't know anything about yet.

              See, the thing is we actually DO know a lot about nutrition and proteins. At the very least we know that prions provides us nothing we need in our diet. It sounds like you're the one that knows nothing about it. In the future I'd suggest not talking about things you know nothing about.

  • Two reactions - 1 cynical, 1 wistful (Score:3, Insightful)

    by punterjoe (743063) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @08:12AM (#17430818)
    I too wondered why "big science" would try to come up with a way to create cattle that can still be fed 'cannibal chow' without getting sick, instead of just changing the feed to something healthy, when I realised there are no IP licensing rights for natural, healthy cattle. This 'super cow' is surely patentable :(
        My other disappointment is that so much time & resourcefulness was spent on this rather than a way to prevent prion diease from taking it's toll on the untold people who have eaten infected 'industrial-beef' through fast food & other sources but won't show symptoms for many years.

  • "no apparent developmental abnormalities" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gweihir (88907) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @08:49AM (#17430978)
    If that does not sound like wishful thinking, I don't know what does. Also keep in mind that they have a really strong interest in not finding anything....

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ebuck (585470)
      To a real scientist, "no apparent developmental abnormalities" means that they're hedging their bets. They haven't seen any developmental abnormalities, but as scientists, they know that it is impossible to observe every detail in their lifetime, so they're just saying that they haven't discovered one yet.

      A scientist doesn't have a strong interest in not finding things, finding things is what makes a scientist's career successful.

      Business sponsored research isn't science. Business sponsored research usual

  • This wouldn't prevent BSE (Score:3, Informative)

    by Programmer_Errant (1004370) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @09:35AM (#17431306)
    The prions that cause BSE are externally introduced through cattle feed. You'd have to have all the components of cattle feed be produced from prion free animals also. Not likely unless all cattle feed was constantly tested for the presence of any prions at all.

  • Not infectable or not affected by infection? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mr Z (6791) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @12:49PM (#17433312) Homepage Journal

    Ok, so BSE damages prions which leads to all the characteristics of the disease. No prions, no disease. But does that necessarily mean no infection?

    BSE can be passed to humans. Is it possible that these genetically modified cows are just modern day Typhoid Marys?

    --Joe

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Cederic (9623)

      I'd rather eat meat and die young. Pigs taste good.

      As for environmental factors, the planet will do just fine all by itself. Until the sun explodes and destroys it, so I guess we'd better build some big engines.
    • showing vegetarians lived 10-15% longer

      Yeah, but smug self-satisfaction knocks about 10% off the lifespan, provided you're not punched by an offended meat-eater beforehand. So it's basically a wash.

    • Re:A better idea (Score:5, Funny)

      by elrous0 (869638) * on Tuesday January 02 2007, @09:40AM (#17431356)
      I think vegetarians just coast on smug fumes for that last 10%-15%.

      -Eric

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Lord Ender (156273)
      Primates (tested on monkeys, very likely true for humans) who subsist at near-starvation levels of calorie intake life significantly longer than those that eat "normal" amounts of calories. Why aren't you starving yourself?

      Also, if meatless diets are so obviously better for your health, why do so few health experts choose meatless diets for themselves? Perhaps the evidence is not as clear as you think it is.
    • I have an educated guess regarding your findings: I think there is a correlation inbetween the "living 10-15% longer" factor and the "paying attention to what you stick in your pie hole" factor. I'm of the firm belief that all diets (vegetarian, Atkins, etc) are successful for the latter reason rather than a complex biological one.

      I'm thinking of marketing a Prime diet, where you only have to pay attention to what you eat on prime-numbered days of the month. I'll call you from my yacht filled with bikini

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Gordonjcp (186804)
              As for vegetarians, unless their idea of going vegetarian is going from hamburger and fries and soda to more fries and soda, it's not hard for them to eat healthier than their omnivore peers.

              Oh, I wouldn't be so sure. While I agree that our western diet (I'm in the UK, so not so very far west compared to probably most of the /. readership) probably has too much meat in it at the moment, I'd urge people to be cautious if they are only going to eat vegetables. Intensively-farmed vegetables may have all kind

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by ElleyKitten (715519)
              Logically it appears changing diet is the one thing you haven't tried.
              I've changed my diet, I just haven't tried meat. I eat a lot of protein now, and I've switched my bread and pasta to whole grain (can't give them up completely) and my weight is more under control now. What I probably need to do is stop pretending my Wii is excercising and go outside...

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by zenhkim (962487)
          >> Those meatarians out there should give life a long good look as decide how do I want to enjoy life: quick and painfull (and ignorant), or slow and healthy.
          >
          > Perhaps it is you who are "ignorant" of the fact that the human body is built around an omnivorous diet.

          *Sigh* Where to begin?

          Humans are omnivorous largely by choice (just because we like the taste of meat) or necessity (because there aren't always enough veggies around to keep us from starving). Nature, however, gives us clues as to w

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by ElleyKitten (715519)

            Out of curiosity, what is the purpose of getting your protein from eggs? I mean, if you're morally opposed to eating chickens, why wouldn't you be opposed to eating their abortions?

            The eggs we eat are not abortions. They are unfertilized eggs. If you ever accidently get a fertilized egg, you'll know the difference because when you crack the fertilized egg open it will be all bloody because it has an actual embryo in it. So, we are not eating baby chickens when we have scrambled eggs. Also, I don't ha

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