Consumer Wariness May
Stifle US Biotech Animal Research
By Bill Tomson
Of DOW JONES
NEWSWIRES
Agriculture Online
WASHINGTON (Dow
Jones)--
improve cows by modifying their
genetic structure and then cloning them, but
industry fears over public reaction
and government regulation has dampened the
prospects of some of the initial
success.
U.S. Department of
Agriculture scientist Robert Wall, in an interview with
Dow Jones Newswires, said a government project was
completely successful in
creating cows impervious to
bacterial infections that lead to mastitis, a
costly bovine illness for the dairy
industry that cripples milk production.
"It absolutely
does work," Wall said. "It worked exactly like it was supposed
to."
Even if the science
is an initial success story, said Rob Byrne, a senior
vice president for the National
Milk Producers Federation, neither the public
nor the
The U.S. Food and
Drug Administration on Thursday unveiled its plan to
regulate the eventual entry of
genetically modified livestock to the commercial
market, but promised a rigorous
approval process. The "draft guidance" released
by FDA is an initial step in the
process, but the regulatory framework isn't
yet complete, FDA officials said.
Wall and other
scientists created cows to secrete lysostaphin, an
antimicrobial protein, to fight the
mastitis-causing bacteria. The genetically
modified cows were created to
produce varying amounts of lysostaphin and,
therefore, fought off mastitis to
varying degrees.
To gauge the
results, both conventional and the transgenic cows created by
scientists at USDA's facility in
Among the traditional, non-engineered cows, 79% became
infected. Only 9% of the
transgenic cows became infected.
But the scientists
also separated the cows that were engineered to produce
especially high amounts of lysostaphin and those were "100% protected" from
the
bacteria, Wall said.
Wall was pleased
with the success and hoped to follow it up on new fronts,
but dairy industry fears of public
reaction to genetically modified cows as
well as concerns over government
regulation has damped demand for new research.
"The consensus
from the farm community was: 'It's great technology; make it
even better, but don't give me an
animal that I have to deal with on my farm,'"
Wall said.
The dairy industry
is interested in science that can improve milk and the way
it's made, but it may be quite some
time before producers will be willing or
able to accept the technology,
Byrne said.
"At the end of
the day, you have to make a product that the consumers are
willing to purchase," Byrne
said. "The first step is having regulations in
place. The second step would be
having the technology there...The third step
would be having consumer
acceptance."
That third step -
consumer acceptance - is likely the most important, Byrne
said. And for that to happen it's imperative the government decide if it will
be safe to drink milk or eat meat
from genetically modified livestock.
The USDA project to
genetically modify cows for mastitis resistance is
essentially complete and success
was declared, but the testing is not over. The
cows are being put to death this
week in Beltsville, USDA's Walls said, and
their bodies will continue to
provide new insight to how their bodies reacted
to genetic manipulation.
Wall and other
scientists will "take them apart and examine every piece of
tissue," he said, looking to find
out: "Did the gene turn on and only in the
right places where we expected it
to be, and did it cause any other part of the
body to do anything weird that we
didn't expect?"
Some possible side
effects that scientists should be looking for from
genetically modified animals
include new proteins that could trigger allergies,
said Jaydee
Hanson, a policy analyst for the nonprofit Center for Food Safety.
"While (genetic
manipulation) may confer resistance to one organism, does it
make (the animal) more susceptible
to others?" he asked.
-By Bill Tomson, Dow Jones Newswires
agriculture.com