GM chickens to face "deadly epidemic"

In a new and important attempt to try to prevent the emergence of a deadly human pandemic, British scientists have developed genetically modified chickens designed to fully resist the flu.

Wendy Barclay, a professor of virology at Imperial College London, co-chair of the project, said the first generation of modified chickens would be hatched later this year at the Roslyn Institute, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

DNA has been modified for birds using a new gene modification technique known as Cresper.

In this case, the "adjustments" are made to remove part of the protein that the flu virus usually depends on, making the chicken completely resistant to the flu.

Barkley said the idea was to produce poultry that could not get the flu, and would be "a barrier between wild birds and humans," Reuters reported.

Experts on health and infectious diseases in the world point to the risk of a human influenza pandemic as one of their major concerns.

The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic killed about 50 million people.

The biggest fear now is that a deadly strain of bird flu will spread from wild birds through poultry to humans and then mutate into an airborne epidemic that can easily pass between humans.

"If we can prevent the influenza virus from moving from wild birds to chickens, we will stop the epidemic coming from its source," Barkley said.

One major obstacle to this approach was the concerns of poultry producers with regard to public acceptance.

"People eat food from farm animals that have undergone modifications over decades of traditional hybridization, but they may be worried about eating genetically modified food," she said.

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