Planetary Ruin

With no regard for the consequences, science once again meddles with life.  Who knows what harm the affects of altering animals from their natural order will cause?  Altering an animal to make it more useful to the humans on this planet cannot be a good thing.  What deceases or genetic mistakes introduced by our negligence, which could result in catastrophe are we opening ourselves too…..

SCIENTISTS have bred cows that produce skimmed milk and hope to establish herds of the cattle to meet the demands of health-conscious consumers.

The milk is also high in omega3 oils, claimed to improve brain power, and contains polyunsaturated fat. The saturated fats found in normal milk are linked to increased risk of heart disease. The cows, which have a particular genetic mutation, were bred from a single female discovered by researchers when they screened milk from millions of cattle in New Zealand.

Butter from these cows has the extra advantage of being spreadable straight from the fridge, like margarine.

Scientists at ViaLactia, the biotech firm behind the £55m research, have named the cow Marge. Russell Snell, ViaLactia’s chief scientist, said: “Marge looks like an ordinary Friesian cow but has three key differences. She produces a normal level of protein in her milk but substantially less fat, and the fat she does produce has much more unsaturated fat. She also produces milk with very high levels of omega3 oils.”

Marge was discovered in 2001 when ViaLactia’s researchers bought her from her owner for £120 and moved her to a secret location.

The key issue was whether her calves would inherit her traits. “You have to generate daughters and then they have to carry a calf and deliver milk,” said Snell. “The eureka moment was when we found her daughters produced milk like their mother.”

The Auckland-based company says the first commercial herds for spreadable butter could be expected by 2011.

A brief description of ViaLactia’s research is due to be published this week in Chemistry & Industry, a journal of the Society of Chemical Industry. A formal research paper for a peer-reviewed journal will follow.

Britain produces 24.6 billion pints of milk a year of which 7.7 billion is for drinking. Growing health concerns mean that full-fat milk accounts for only a quarter of sales. The rest is semi-skimmed or skimmed, according to Dairy UK, the industry association.

ViaLactia hopes Marge’s male offspring carry the same genes as her daughters. “To have a bull from Marge’s offspring who passes on her traits would be the holy grail. It would allow us to reproduce hundreds of thousands of cows like Marge,” said Snell.

The scientists are still trying to identify the genes behind Marge’s unique traits. Klaus Lehnert, 43, Snell’s deputy, said: “We do expect to find them. We are good at finding genes. Then we can use DNA tests to find if an animal has the trait, rather than rely on data from experiments.”

Milk was once universally regarded as a health drink, thanks to heavy pro-motion by the government. Generations of children grew up with slogans such as “Drinka pinta milka day”. Free supplies were given to schoolchil-dren and pregnant women. When questions began to be raised about the fat content of milk, the Milk Marketing Board switched to trying to sell milk as sexy, targeting housewives with slogans such as: “Is your man getting enough?”

Government health campaigns now push low-fat diets and sales of whole milk, which contains 3.5% butter fat, account for just 25% of milk sales.

By contrast, sales of semi-skimmed milk, which contains 1.7% fat, and skimmed milk, which has 0.1% fat, account for 75% of sales. The New Zealand animals are understood to have less than 1% fat in their milk.

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The ocean around Japan has warmed up faster than elsewhere in the world over the last hundred years partly because of global warming, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said on Tuesday.

The sea surface temperature around central, western and southern Japan has climbed by 0.7 to 1.6 degrees Celsius in the last century, far higher than the world average of a 0.5 degree Celsius increase, a survey conducted by the agency showed.

The findings were based on data collected by research and commercial vessels that started in the late 19th century.

The agency said global warming was partly to blame for the fast rise in the ocean temperature around Japan.

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It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world’s harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees’ navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive’s inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London’s biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: “There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK.”

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world’s crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left”.

No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks.

German research has long shown that bees’ behaviour changes near power lines.

Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a “hint” to a possible cause.

Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: “I am convinced the possibility is real.”

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An extra-cold winter on the Alaska Peninsula has frozen sea otters out of the bay and pushed them onto the tundra near Port Heiden where they’re easy prey for wolves, humans and hunger.

Some of the starving animals — with ribs showing — have waddled or belly-slid several miles inland, residents said. Others have been attacked by dogs near houses, killed by villagers for their hides, or died on sea ice where eagles and foxes pick at their remains.

No one knows how many have come ashore in the unusual exodus, said Mark Kosbruk, village fire chief. Natives have skinned at least 17 to make hats, gloves and blankets from the luxurious pelts.

They’ve clubbed some with 2-by-4s or axe handles, shot others and collected a couple of frozen carcasses, he said. Several rotted before they could be gathered or died on the sea ice where people won’t travel.

“When it first froze over, they were everywhere,” said Kosbruk, 34, who is teaching younger hunters how to skin and salt the hides for tanning.

The sea otters are probably on land looking for water where they might find food, said Douglas Burn, head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Alaska sea otter program. They usually scour sea bottoms for clams or sea urchins, but the ice froze them out.

Similar die-offs have been documented before, but biologists are worried and keeping an eye on the situation, he said.

Western Alaska sea otters from the Aleutian Islands to Cook Inlet are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. They number 48,000, a drop of more than 50 percent in the last 20 years, the agency estimates.

Some scientists blame increased predation by killer whales and a bacteria that causes heart lesions.

Burn and other biologists have been monitoring the ice in Port Heiden and other shallow bays on the peninsula, reviewing satellite images and other data, he said.

“We’re concerned about large concentrations of sea otters that might get trapped and not have a way into the water,” he said. “The hard part is, what would we do if we found that? We’d have to ask what are our options.”

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US beekeepers have been stung in recent months by the mysterious disappearance of millions of bees threatening honey supplies as well as crops which depend on the insects for pollination.

Bee numbers on parts of the east coast and in Texas have fallen by more than 70 percent, while California has seen colonies drop by 30 to 60 percent.

According to estimates from the US Department of Agriculture, bees are vanishing across a total of 22 states, and for the time being no one really knows why.

“Approximately 40 percent of my 2,000 colonies are currently dead and this is the greatest winter colony mortality I have ever experienced in my 30 years of beekeeping,” apiarist Gene Brandi, from the California State Beekeepers Association, told Congress recently.

It is normal for hives to see populations fall by some 20 percent during the winter, but the sharp loss of bees is causing concern, especially as domestic US bee colonies have been steadily decreasing since 1980.

There are some 2.4 million professional hives in the country, according to the Agriculture Department, 25 percent fewer than at the start of the 1980s.

And the number of beekeepers has halved.

The situation is so bad, that beekeepers are now calling for some kind of government intervention, warning the flight of the bees could be catastrophic for crop growers.

Domestic bees are essential for pollinating some 90 varieties of vegetables and fruits, such as apples, avocados, and blueberries and cherries.

“The pollination work of honey bees increases the yield and quality of United States crops by approximately 15 billion dollars annually including six billion in California,” Brandi said.

California’s almond industry alone contributes two billion dollars to the local economy, and depends on 1.4 million bees which are brought from around the US every year to help pollinate the trees, he added.

The phenomenon now being witnessed across the United States has been dubbed “colony collapse disorder,” or CCD, by scientists as they seek to explain what is causing the bees to literally disappear in droves.

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