The Belgian Blue, the Arnie breed of the cow world, stirs mixed feelings. You may view this as funny, grotesque, perverse, sad, or mouth-watering if unashamedly carnivorous. In the future, the veterinary profession may look back on their creation with some embarrassment.
Defended as the outcome of ‘natural selection’, it’s more accurately described as experimental evolution, or selective breeding, gone wild. It’s true, without direct manipulation of DNA this isn’t the product of a GM testtube, but it’s hardly natural. These beasts would quickly die-out in the wild, and only survive with the reproductive, nutritional and obstetric support available on the laboratory farm.
‘They are as healthy as other intensively raised animals’. So when compared against a 6-week-old broiler chicken which grows so rapidly it can’t stand; the weaner pig dependant on antibiotics to control respiratory disease; or the anaemic crate-raised vealer, the Belgian Blue a picture of perfect health. It would be interesting to study of the incidence of skeletal, obstetric and metabolic complications of ensuring a ‘defective gene is passed on’.
These bovines stand as a monument to the twisted end-points when commercial and scientific self-interest are in the drivers seat of a selective breeding program. I’m not too certain this is a genetic triumph of which veterinary science should be proud; more the akin to the tragedy of Mary Shelley’s Frankentein.
The body hair grooming takes it to a whole new level of fetishism, and makes you wonder if these creatures may be an expression of a latent dysmorphia, by proxy, amongst their creators, not unlike the muscle car.
Tags: artificial insemination, Belbian Blue, bovine, cow, dysmorphia, genetics, GM, selective breeding, vet, veterinary, video
I saw this is a doco – they were trying to test russian heavyweight lifters to see if they were genetically born with similar gene mutation. They didn’t manage to convince the teenage female weightlifter’s father to consent the test based on their Jahovah’s Witness beliefs.
i’m sure there’s many working to isolate the gene in man, and heaps of athletes lining up to have it spliced into their DNA or recieve the transcribed protein. sidestepping the performance enhancing drugs issue, transgenic athletes are already rumoured to be in circulation.