GENETICS CHANGING THE ANIMAL WORLD 

In 1945 North American dairy farmers with 25 million cows, were producing almost all the milk the market required. Today they fill the increased demand with just 10 million cows. How do they do that?

With artificial insemination, which has been in universal use for the past 35 years. The "scrub cow" has been turned into a milk factory, by improving the breed at a rate far faster than possible by Mother Nature herself. Today 70 percent of all those 10 million dairy cattle in North America become pregnant through artificial insemination. The bulk of U.S. turkeys are bred via artificial insemination -- because breast meat is now such a large portion of male turkeys they cannot "get close enough to females to mate reliably", according to Dr. George Seidel of Colorado State University, a long-time authority in this relatively new field.

First reported from Japan in 1974, came the successful embryo transplant for horses. This non-surgical method obtained a 40 percent success rate. Today, surgicallly implanted embryos have reached much higher success rates -- up to 72 percent.

Embryo transfer is a method in which a high-quality cow (or other animal) is inseminated and a week later technicians can recover up to six embryos by irrigating the cow's uterus. These are then placed in surrogate "scrub" cows which carry the high-quality calves to birth. Dr. Seidel points out that "commercial use of embryo transfer began about 15 years ago, and today 100,000 calves are produced annually by this means in the United States and Canada".

This is just the beginning. The process has rocketed ahead so fast and branched into so many new methods and technologies that the slow older methods have been bypassed for these newer, faster systems.

Tomorrow will bring animals that never existed before. Animals that will be carrying not only genes from other species but also delivering offspring that come, not from male/female coupling as in the past, but from either two females or two male parents plus cloned animals and plants that will quickly number in the thousands.

These will be superior animals, reaching more quickly superior levels of breeding and production than achieved by the tremendous improvement provided during past decades by artificial insemination. They will be stronger physically, and will produce much better products for the food market. Because of their increased value they will be treated like expensive throughbred horses, because they will be the new "wealth-generators" of the future.

Farmers who do not keep up with such developments will be unable to compete in the future. Farming from now on will be based on information and intelligence and will be a far-higher calling (and much better paid) than in the past. If the foregoing sounds dramatic remember that the improvement process has been going on for centuries in a slower way. Farmers have always tried to breed better strains so results would be more productive and work less demanding. Now biotechnology has set up a moving sidewalk to handle the pace of genetic change. Environmental sensitivity is even being "built-in". Obviously 10 million cows consume less food and produce less methane gas and run-off effluent than 25 million animals. This helps keep food prices low and quality high, while putting fewer demands on the environment. After all, the average grocery store today with its thousands of different products, displays one of the miracles of distribution science, another discipline now attaining much higher profile in Japan than ever before but which is almost unknown in North America where it was "invented".

Some new techniques are being used only on cattle because the expense prohibits them from being used on such smaller animals as goats or sheep because of the lower-per-animal return. However, that is today. Their turn will come.

"Transgenis" allows scientists to create "new" animals and plants by gene manipulation inside an embryo. If a fish or a plant, has a desired gene that prevents disease, improves lactic flow or produces a "jungle pharmaceutical" it could be inserted into the "new" animal or plant, with the resultant improved trait then carrying on in all the offspring of that animal.

Various existing systems make this relatively simple: gene injection, retrovirus delivery or incorporating desired genes into undifferentiated embryonic cells. A newer form coming up is the transplantation of cellular nuclei. This "could yield thousands of identical offspring" according to Dr. Seidel. This allows the transfer from each cell in a 32-cell nucleus, of original genetic information to be fused "through a pulse of electrical current". Such embryos then develop into other 32-cell units and are split and grown again. Pretty soon three embryos have turned to nine, to 28, 89, 284 and up. Even more exotic techniques are gynogenesis, birth by only female parents, and androgenesis, the production of offspring by two males. For cattle, the latter has even more advantages as we now know more about the genetic quality of bulls since the advent of artificial insemination. "Researchers have already bred poultry, fish and amphibians from parents of the same sex, although not for commercial purposes", says Dr. Seidel.

Admittedly, the ethics in "patenting" animals is being questioned. But "patenting" or trademarking has been going on in plants for decades. Roses are a common example. Dr. Seidel comments that "The economic benefits for consumers will be significant. Buyers will see a greater variety of food and fewer food-borne diseases. Even more important, the improved animals will produce larger supplies of food, which will lower prices, since demand for food is relatively inelastic". During the past decade the price of beef, in constant dollars, has dropped by almost 50 percent and milk prices in the U.S., due to recent farming efficiencies also costs less. Milk Marketing Boards in Canada meanwhile have supported much higher consumer prices causing weekend border tie-ups by Canadian shoppers who refuse to pay such higher, artificial prices.

If we don't use these new technologies here we won't be competitive in a global economy because you can bet it will soon be done "there".

More information: Dr. George E. Seidel, Dept. of Physiology Embryo Transplant Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523. Phone: 303/491-1101.

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