While most geneticists around the world aim to produce drought-resistant livestock that can survive the spread and prolonged drought periods threatening the food supply globally, Chinese geneticists are racing to radically improve product output. Two of their more interesting efforts are in modifying cattle to produce human breast milk and perfect, tasty steaks that would rival even Japan’s famous and ultra-tender wagyu, aka Kobe, beef.
While the two end goals seem radically different, the approach to each is actually very similar. The effort to make dairy cows produce human breast milk involves transgenics, i.e. the insertion of human genes to add enzymes and proteins unique to human breast milk to the milk of domesticated animals.
China is arguably in the lead on bringing this cow produced human milk to market which is predicted to be available on store shelves sometime in 2014. Meanwhile, other countries are struggling to keep pace. Animal scientists at the University of California-Davis in the U.S. for example are working to produce human breast milk from goats to treat and prevent lethal childhood diarrhea primarily in underdeveloped countries.
While it is difficult to bring these products to market in the Western world, primarily due to a religion-based repulsion to transgenics, China says that the world’s first ethical and ‘pro-life’ duty should be in saving human babies and feeding starving children.
There are other human lifesaving reasons to pursue transgenic work in livestock as well. For example, the U.S. is developing cows that can produce milk designed to ward off the ill effects of chemical warfare.
As to producing the perfect steak, China has already produced two calf clones, Jing Qin 1 and 2, both of which have been given an extra gene to increase the fat marbling, and therefore the taste and tenderness, of their meat. Yes, the pursuit of the perfect steak also involves transgenic cows. These cows were given a fatty acid binding protein. Success of the project can’t be determined until the calves mature. But China isn’t standing still waiting on the final taste-test. Scientists there are hard at work on transgenic lambs with a gene from a roundworm which leads to high levels of omega-3 fatty acids usually only found in fish like salmon.