Animal Welfare Concerns At Biotech Meet
Scientists
using genetically engineered animals to make breakthroughs in medicine
and other fields were warned they must also convince the public that they
are treating the animals in a humane way.
Experts on
ethics and animal behavior raised the concern at a conference called "Biotech
in the Barnyard: Implications of Genetically Engineered Animals," sponsored
by the non-profit Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology.
Transgenic
cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens and rabbits have been given an extra
gene through genetic engineering during the past 20 years. They were used
to produce everything from promising new vaccines to silk so strong it
can withstand a bullet.
Dr. William
Velander, a professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and a pioneer in
genetic engineering, explained to about 150 participants how his research
with transgenic pigs has produced a protein that shows great promise in
the treatment of hemophilia.
The protein
produced through milk of the transgenic sow is less expensive and more
abundant that it could be produced through a regular stainless steel bioreactor.
"For example,
it is estimated that the milk from only several hundred happy and healthy
transgenic pigs could satisfy the worldwide clinical demand for hemophilia
A or B," he said.
Velander showed
slide pictures of the swine at his laboratory to show that the pigs are
well cared for. Later in the program others on the panel addressed the
animal welfare issues that arise in a discussion of transgenic animals.
Dr. Joy Mench,
a professor of animal science at the University of California-Davis, pointed
to a recent survey that found the general public more accepting of biotechnology
in the production of crops than it was with animals.
Dr. Gary Comstock,
director of the Research Ethics Program at North Carolina State University,
said the treatment of the transgenic animals has improved in recent years.
"All of us
want to minimize the suffering of the animal," he said.
"No one who
is involved in this type of research wants animals that would be able to
produce the desired pharmaceutical but live a kind of miserable life in
the process."
Velander said
his animals are treated well.
"These animals
are treated better than 99 percent of the population of humans on the Earth
right now as research animals," he said. "We have intense regulation by
USDA inspectors as well as campus animal care committees."
The issues
are critical as a number of public policy decisions must be made in the
next few years on regulation of clones and transgenic animals. The Food
and Drug Administration is expected to release its first safety standards
for clones next year and then issue guidelines for transgenic animals in
2004.
Some animal-rights
organizations, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, known
as PETA, have accused transgenic researchers of cruelty in experiments.
In a report
issued in February, PETA accused one researcher, Gerald Schatten at the
Oregon Regional Primate Research Center, of torturing rhesus macaques for
research purposes in trying to create identical and transgenic monkeys.
"Dr. Shatten
obtains the sperm for his experiments through the process of penile electro-ejaculation,
which can burn the animals' genitalia. ... Records show that one monkey
was subjected to electro-ejaculation on at least 241 separate occasions,"
PETA said.
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Copyright 2002 by United
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