It's a Gem

Table 1 and 2 below represent a study done by D.E. Kerr from the University of Vermont and others from the USDA in Beltsville, MA. This study was presented at the Regional NMC Meeting earlier this week. Basically transgenic science involves the duplication of one gene in an organism and the successful relocation into another animal. For instance, lysostaphin is an antibacterial enzyme normally found in Staphlococcus simulans that has been incorporated into a bovine.

The first table below list 13 cows that were inoculated with a Staphlococcus aureus in all four quarters with 80 colony forming units (cfu). The column to the far right represents the days in milk of the challenge.

Remarkably, regardless of your views on transgenic science, cow number 101 (table 2) successfully defeated S.aureus (the other two transgenic cows were S.aureus free soon after the time dictates of the study). Not only that,

“…the somatic cell response to the challenge was dramatically different between transgenic and control cows. Thus, in all of the non-transgenic cows, somatic cell counts rose to peak values of 30,000,000 cl/ml [4x the legal limit] within 24 to 30 hr post-challenge. In sharp contrast, the cell count was virtually unchanged in the challenged transgenic cows.