Hope or hype: manufacturing consent on bioengineered animals

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1 Hope or hype: manufacturing consent on bioengineered animals The Food Alliance September 9, 2018 Daniel Maingi Contact: Website: www. kenyafoodrightsalliance.net Mobile: Growth Partners

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4 US Federal government paid farmers to kill 1.5 M cows. Why?

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6 Biotechnology: Health problems - use of rbovine Growth Hormone - more cases of mastitis, leads to use of more antibiotics to combat the infections - over a 25% increase udder infections (mastitis), - 50% increase in lameness (leg and hoof problems), - and serious animal reproductive problems, such as infertility, cystic ovaries, fetal loss and birth defects

7 Genetically modified salmon - AquaBounty From a health and safety standpoint, they are just as safe to eat, The only difference between our salmon and other salmon is that it grows faster, it gets to market faster. It s more feedefficient.

8 Multigenerational studies- GMO (rpgh) The Good: Pigs expressing the bgh gene showed significant improvements in both daily weight gain and feed efficiency and exhibited changes in carcass composition that included a marked reduction in subcutaneous fat. The Bad However, long-term elevation of bgh was generally detrimental to health: the pigs had a high incidence of gastric ulcers, arthritis, cardiomegaly, dermatitis, and renal

9 Advances in Animal Biotechnology Cloning promotes the objectification and commodification of animals, treating these living sentient beings as mere machines for human manufacture. The health and welfare of a significant proportion of clones has been found to be adversely affected. in 1996 Dolly, the cloned sheep A abolished century-old dogma differentiated cell cannot be reprogrammed into a pluripotent stage.

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11 Cutting edge Biotech-Gene Editing & Gene Drives large deletions or Rearrangements of DNA around the target site Cells successfully edited with CRISPR were more likely to have mutations in a gene that helps to prevent cancer

12 Gene-edited 'micro-pigs' to be sold as pets It's questionable whether we should impact the life, health and wellbeing of other animal species on this planet light-heartedly

13 Professor Allan Bradley-Wellcome Sanger Institute On Gene drives.. Caution! Caution! Caution!

14 Gene drive approaches If one nation decided to release such genetically engineered mosquitoes, neighboring countries quickly would become part of the experiment whether they liked it or not. The kind of gene drive that is invasive and selfpropagating is in many ways the equivalent of an invasive species, International negotiations might be required before such genetically modified mosquitoes were set loose. That s not a question for scientists to answer on their own,

15 Fighting Malaria with CRISPR/Cas9: Ethical Implications September 2016, the UNESCO Medical University of Vienna meeting of infectious disease experts Advantages and disadvantages of genome editing applied to mosquitoes to fight malaria. Consensus - any ethical debate needs to involve African stakeholders living in malaria areas - and to consider future generations and the environment. The precautionary principle should be taken into account in any discussion, as should be the human cost of doing nothing.

16 Regulatory frameworks in Animal Biotechology National Biosafety Authority (NBA), has a draft guideline on contained use of transgenic animals.

17 The hype and the bad of Gene editing The new gene-editing technique CRISPR allows researchers to edit genomes, quickly, and cheaply but not precisely. Scientists can now permanently introduce a genetic alteration into the population and eco-system The absence of clear safety guidelines, coupled with ambiguous government regulations, has nurtured fears of an accidental or voluntary release of a gene drive in nature that could cause irreparable damage. On the security front, the presumed simplicity and accessibility of CRISPR raise the possibility that states, terrorists, or rogue scientists might use the technology to modify genomes to develop malicious gene drives and create novel bioweapons that could spread more quickly, cheaply, and globally than traditional bioweapons agents.

18 Undermining UN Regulations? Gene drive technology is currently being discussed in the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), where a group of experts (the Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Synthetic Biology) have recently warned that they pose new risks to the environment, for which current biosafety assessments might not be sufficient or adequate. Gene drives are a powerful and dangerous new technology and potential biological weapons that could have disastrous impacts on peace, food security and the environment, especially if misused, said Jim Thomas of ETC Group. The conclusions of Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group (AHTEG) will be discussed by CBD in 2018.

19 Regulations about to fail? The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is $100 million for gene drive research. DARPA appears to be the largest single funder of gene drive research on the planet. Gene drive development is now being primarily funded and structured by the U.S. military raises alarming questions about this entire field.

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