White Angus headed our way

Through the use of modern biotechnology techniques developed for human medicine, a startup in the United States called AgGenetics is about to place white Angus genetics in recipient cows.

The embryos have been edited to contain the white hair gene from Silver Galloway cattle and the short hair gene from the Senepol breed on background show champion Angus genetics.

An improvement in heat tolerance of a little over 8 degrees Celsius, with no losses in production, carcass and meat eating qualities of top-end Angus genetics, has been validated by numerous independent studies.

However, it’s common sense, say the business’ founders Dr James West and Dr Warren Gill.

To keep cool, you wear white and get a haircut.

AgGenetics’ business model estimates these set of traits in the Angus breed could add $12b in value to Australia’s beef industry.

Dr West, who runs a laboratory at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee with over 20 employees and more than $5 million in annual funding, said the new white Angus cattle would not start developing any heat stress at all until around 32 degrees Celsius.

So while they will still have some heat stress, it won’t be enough to prevent their use in far warmer regions of Australia where currently Brahman cattle are the dominant breed, he said.

“Next year, we will do testing in Brazil under similar climatic conditions as northern Australia so we will then know for sure how these cattle will perform,” he said.

“In the second generation, we’re hoping to increase their density of sweat glands, to increase their heat tolerance even further.”

AgGenetics, which is currently taking investment interest, is already in discussions with Australian breeders interested in the heat-adapted genes.

Dr. Gill is a leader in micronutrient research and has owned and run a commercial cattle ranch for 40 years.

The two first collaborated on copper deficiency but when Dr West’s experimentations with coat colour modification in mice showed potential to ‘turn cattle white’ the obvious advantages to the beef industry were evident.

Improving animal productivity while simultaneously enhancing welfare has been the underlying goal, the scientists say.

“Through proprietary gene discovery and editing techniques, our solution is to replace the black coat normally found in Angus cattle with a white coat that will reflect sunlight and black skin to resist sunburn and melanoma,” Dr West said.

“These genes were discovered in the Silver Galloway cattle breed. We’ve also added a naturally shortened coat from a gene we found, and patented, in Senepol cattle to keep them even cooler.

“Nearly 82 per cent of the world’s 1.2 billion cattle can be found in developing countries where heat tolerance is considered to be one of the most important adaptive aspects and the lack of thermally-tolerant breeds is a major constraint on cattle production.”

AgGenetics will sell its white Angus genetics via straws of semen to be used in artificial insemination.

“We’re planning on pricing the semen to be comparable to the prices from the bulls we use as the genetic background, so although all of them will come from champion bloodlines we don’t plan to be charging a significant premium for the heat adaptation traits themselves,” Dr West said.

So what is the difference between gene editing and genetic modification?

“Genetic modification is introducing either synthetic genes or genes from another species,” Dr West explained.

“Gene editing is just making changes to the genes already there.

“We’re not doing anything in the lab that 30 years of crossbreeding couldn’t do - we’re just doing it a lot faster and cheaper.”

With the first calves due in early 2017, AgGenetics expects to have multiple heat tolerant genetic lines ready for market in 2018.

Visit www.aggenetics.com