Creating Prion-Free Cows 340
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."
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=d (Score:3, Informative)
I'm so embarrassed.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=define%3
Had to look it up (Score:3, Informative)
"Mad cow disease" is a prion disease.
Re:That is one solution... (Score:5, Informative)
It would be easy to fix (Score:1, Informative)
Even a break of feeding rendered meat for 1 complete cow generation would clear the contamination out.
The problem is the renderers have a strong lobby group and want to continue the practice, however unsafe, so they got a compromise. Instead they promise to only feed dead cows and sheep that were healthy. So they continue to feed infected meat to cows, just as long as the prion infection was at a too early stage to be detected. The US executive branch has gone along with this 'voluntary' code and practically no inspections are made to check it's being done.
It's why I don't eat US beef, because the US views the problem as something to fix in the PR dept., not something to fix on the farm.
Yet it's so trivial to fix, switch to vegetation based protein supplements for 1 generation of cattle, and poof the problems gone.
Re:Dead sheeps (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Soylent Green... (Score:4, Informative)
In all seriousness, you make a good point. BSE was first spotted among the cannibals of Papua New Guinea (where eating of the dead was a sign of respect).
http://www.gwinnettdailyonline.com/GDP/archive/ar
Here are a ton of articles on BSE & vCJD:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/bse [newscientist.com]
You've been eating too much beef (Score:1, Informative)
I think you've been eating too much beef.
Tube Steak Precursor (Score:2, Informative)
If they can sucessfully remove prion issues, then commercial artificial meat is a real possibility (though those issues dissappear once the culture medium fluid can be reliably and cost effectively made through wholely artificial means).
I for one welcome our vat-grown meat progenitors.
Re:*Puts on tin-foil hat* (Score:2, Informative)
This wouldn't prevent BSE (Score:3, Informative)
Re:That is one solution... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Eggs (Score:3, Informative)
Not quite the same disease (Score:4, Informative)
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:A better idea (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:It would be easy to fix (Score:3, Informative)
Still, if this part is true, I can understand why they didn't let them do it:
Bad science is bad science. Let's not have 'security theator' become 'safety theator'.
From what I've read, you have a better chance of dying from the flu than catch Mad Cow.
Re:Dead sheeps (Score:3, Informative)
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 don't like them. And Ostriches and Emus are both extremely hazardous to raise. A friend told me a story about some friends who got an obscenely expensive pair of breeding Emus (something like $50,000 in value) as a wedding present from a wealthy relative. Feeling that they couldn't just get rid of them, they began raising Emus. They learned quickly that when they put their head down, you run like hell, because they're coming after you. And you'd better be far away, because they run a hell of a lot faster than you do with those reverse-articulated legs.
You could probably raise carnivores to be more docile, though I doubt you could ever take it out of them entirely through breeding. But why? That would be a lot less efficient than just raising tastier herbivores.
Summary of some existing research. (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleU
which talks about CPEB in Aplysia californica, the California sea slug. The results are pretty interesting, but it's unclear whether they apply to higher organisms. I haven't yet found anything where they test this in mice, but that doesn't mean the paper doesn't exist.
Another paper at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/utils/fref.fcg
found that: "Whereas the Zurich I Prnp null mice, as well as mice from a later PrP knockout line designated Edinburgh Prnp -/- (Manson et al., 1994) were clinically healthy, mice of other knockout lines, for example Nagasaki Prnp-/- (Sakaguchi et al., 1996) came down with ataxia and less of cerebellar Purkinje cells at 6-12 months of age. In the Zurich I and Edinburgh mice only the PrP open reading frame (ORF) was ablated or interrupted, while the lines developing ataxia had deletions extending from within the second Prnp intron to the 3' non-coding region [which runs into another gene called Doppel]."
To summarize: at this moment it doesn't seem that taking out only the coding region of PrP wrecks anything blatantly obvious in mice (though other papers I haven't cited show some other effects, not all of them neuro).