WHILE consumers and supermarkets remain wary of genetically modified food, a
team of researchers is suggesting feeding cattle GM fodder designed to keep them
healthy.
Every year, cattle farmers in north America lose billions of dollars when
their animals get “shipping fever”, a pneumonia-like illness often triggered by
the stress of being transported. But injecting conventional vaccines is
expensive, and also causes stress.
So Raymond Lee and his team at the University of Guelph in Canada are
developing an edible vaccine. They took the gene for leukotoxin, a major protein
in the bacterium Mannheimia haemolytica, which causes the disease,
stripped…
