Big Pigs
AP Financial
Mittwoch, 8. Dezember 1999 09:08:00
Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.@bThe information contained in this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of the Associated Press.
By PHILIP BRASHER
AP Farm Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Someday, hogs may not have to eat like pigs.
Scientists say they've found a way to genetically alter young
hogs so they grow 40 percent faster and larger than normal swine --
on 25 percent less feed.
The technology would be a boon for livestock farmers by lowering
their costs, and it eventually could even be used to treat children
with growth problems and to prevent muscle deterioration in AIDS
and cancer patients, the researchers say. The technology stimulates
release of the animal's own growth hormones.
"We think this clearly is one of the new ways that agriculture
will be improved in the next decade," said the lead scientist,
Robert J. Schwartz, a professor of molecular and cellular biology
at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
The researchers' findings are published in the current issue of
Nature Biotechnology.
The technology could be used in humans as a less-expensive, more
natural alternative to injecting AIDS patients with growth
hormones, a treatment that costs as much as $20,000 a year,
Schwartz said. A drug could be administered to switch patients'
hormone secretions off and on.
The prospect of biotech hogs is likely to raise new questions in
a growing worldwide debate over genetically engineered food. The
United States already is locked in a trade war with the European
Union over the EU's ban on beef from cattle injected with hormones.
Livestock and poultry have been getting steadily bigger, leaner
and faster-growing for years because of improvements in genetics,
nutrition and housing and the use of hormones in cattle, but the
results reported by Schwartz's team are especially dramatic. All
the improvements made in hog production over the past two decades
have pigs maturing only 10 percent faster than they used to.
The key to the new technology is a synthetic chemical that's
inserted into a biodegradable piece of DNA, then injected into the
leg of a 2-week-old pig. The chemical in turn causes the pig's
pituitary gland to secrete higher than normal levels of growth
hormone.
Two months after the injection, treated pigs weighed 92 pounds,
compared with 65 pounds for an untreated hog. The treated pigs eat
25 percent less feed, which would amount to huge savings for the
farmer, and they are ready for slaughter two weeks earlier,
Schwartz said in an interview Tuesday. The price of feed alone
accounts for half the cost of raising a hog.
The pigs also are expected to produce less manure, he said. Hog
waste is a growing environmental concern in many states.
Additional research will have to be done to show that the meat
is safe for human consumption, and the treatment has no negative
long-term impact on animals. The treatment would have to be
approved by the Food and Drug Administration before it could be
used commercially.
"This is extremely interesting work, but it has some problems
with how the consumer will receive it," said Max Rothschild of
Iowa State University, one of the nation's leading authorities on
pig genetics.
"Will consumers eat animals that are treated in such a fashion?
The jury is still out. ... In Europe, the answer is absolutely
not," Rothschild said.
It would be less controversial to continue improving pigs by
identifying genes that control growth and other traits, he said.
Rebecca Goldburg, senior scientist for the Environmental Defense
Fund, said in an interview Tuesday she's skeptical the treated pigs
would be as healthy as normal ones. "Animals as a whole are less
plastic than plants. When their systems are disturbed by genetic
engineering, their whole system can go out of whack," she said.
The study was financed by the Baylor College of Medicine, the
Agriculture Department's Children's Nutrition Research Center, the
National Space Biomedical Research Institute and private sources.