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CSIRO: The Quest For Flu Resistant Poultry

 

 

# 6657

 

The idea of creating genetically modified chickens with a built-in resistance to the H5N1 virus has been around for some time, and given the threat posed by an avian flu pandemic, and the costs of the virus to the world’s poultry industry, I can understand the allure.

 

At the forefront of research in this field has been Australia's national science agency called CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation).

 

Below is a snapshot of a 2005 cover of CSIRO’s Livestock Research Magazine, where Cambridge University virologist Laurence Tiley stated, “The tools to make poultry resistant to flu infection already exist”. His bigger concern was whether they could persuade the public of the benefits of Genetically Modified (GM) poultry.

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Since 2005, research on how best to make resistant poultry has been conducted at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL), a BSL-4 facility located in Geelong, Victoria.


Earlier this summer, CSIRO released a 7-minute audio podcast where one of their researchers – Dr Tim Doran – is interviewed about the research.

 

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The audio and transcript are available at this link.

 

Overnight,  The Conversation – which is a combined journalistic effort by a number of Australian Universities – published details of a presentation by Dr. Doran at CSIRO’s Emerging Infectious Diseases Symposium, where he announced that the first `challenge study’ will be conducted on transgenic chickens later this year.

 

23 October 2012, 3.39pm AEST

 

Silencing the bird flu gene: scientists prep live hen trials

Researchers hoping to produce modified chickens hatched with in-built resistance to bird flu will conduct trials on live hens later this year, an Australian scientist said on Tuesday.

 

CSIRO research scientist, Dr Tim Doran, has been using a technique called gene silencing to “switch off” virus genes that make chickens susceptible to H5N1, the bird flu that has devastated livestock and killed 359 people worldwide since 2003.

(Continue . . .)

 


This experiment is being billed as a `proof of concept’, and given the regulatory hurdles that lie ahead, we are still quite some time away from seeing GM flu resistant chickens entering the food chain.

 

Assuming this challenge study works, the biggest barrier will be getting the public to willingly accept the idea of eating transgenic chicken & dumplings for Sunday dinner.

 

Although I’m not a part of the `anything genetically modified must be bad’ camp, I’m always mindful of the law of unintended consequences. History is filled with examples of experiments that `seemed like a good idea’ at the time, but turned out to be less so in the long run.

 

Two particularly famous examples of this law in action come from Australia. The introduction of rabbits for food stock in the 18th century, and the importation of the Cane toad (Bufo marinus) to control the cane beetle in 1935.

 

Both spread quickly as invasive and environmentally damaging species, and both continue to require expensive control programs to this day.

 

The rabbit overpopulation became such a problem in the 1950s, scientists deliberately released the Myxoma virus into the rabbit population. While that virus quickly decreased the rabbit population, the resistant survivors quickly re-gained lost ground.

 

Another attempt was made with the release  of RHD(Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease) in the 1990s, and while initially effective, its efficacy appears to be waning (cite).

  

 

Given the furor we’ve seen over the release of GM mosquitoes (see Key West: Public Debate Over GM Mosquitoes), and some high profile miscalculations in the past, getting the public to accept transgenic chickens at this point may prove a hard sell.

 

Of course, one severe flu pandemic springing out of poultry, and public sentiment might change in a hurry.

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Australia
Bird Flu
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