Pharmed animals require special care

With genetically engineered cows, goats and pigs being developed for pharmaceutical purposes, should the pharmaceutical industry start to think about incorporating farmers and meat and dairy producers in their operations?

Certain cows can now produce human antibodies in their blood, some goats can express in their milk an anti blood-clotting protein, and pigs are capable of producing a protein to help the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients; however, these high tech animals still need looking after and animal husbandry is not a skill in copious supply in the drug manufacturing sector.

Dr Harry Griffin, assistant director (science) at the Roslyn Institute, creators of Dolly the cloned sheep, says it is critical for operations like his to employ good stockmen and women. The shepherds who round up the thousands of transgenic sheep at partner company PPL Therapeutics need to know a few more scientific skills than ordinary shepherds. They inject the sheep that will be super-ovulating, as well as collect blood and keep meticulous data records.

Nevertheless, it is the husbandry work that is important, says James Robl, president of Hematech, the laboratory developing human antibodies in cows, and he draws on traditional agricultural know-how.

But will traditional farmhands be able to work with the UK's research-animal restrictions? The Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act is believed to be the most stringent policy in the world, involving unannounced inspections 11 times a year, a vet on call at all times and daily animal examinations.

That concern for safety will probably also separate any of these transgenic farm animals from those used for the food supply and require companies to hire farmers who have left the food industry. The UK Meat and Livestock Commission's Chris Warkup says the biotech companies are going to want assurance from any livestock producer that their animals have a very high health standard, and that probably means not having them raised on the same land as animals that can spread even mild diseases. 'They will be making sure these very valuable animals are well protected,' he stressed.

For now, the pharmaceutical-farming partnership is still marginal. The agricultural companies that are beginning to straddle the divide are the more science-heavy operations involved in embryo-transfer and high-tech breeding facilities. Dr Griffin says that unless cow-derived human antibodies take off for some types of cancer treatment, the area is likely to remain marginal for the foreseeable future.