British experts from the fields of genetic modification of animals, animal welfare, ethics, and consumer affairs faced the public here this evening to debate the implications of biotechnology for animal production in the UK.

"We've been trying to identify what would be an appropriate use, if indeed there is one, for this technology," said Anna Bradley, the convenor of the Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission (AEBC)'s Animals and Biotechnology subgroup, who had organized the debate.

Indeed there is no such "appropriate use," said one activist, in no uncertain terms.

"I object fundamentally to the genetic modification of animals ... Let's talk about where we get the rights to do it. Do we have a God-given right? Is it our intellectual 'prowess'? I would say NO!" said Joyce D'Silva, who is director of Compassion in World Farming, an organization that campaigns to end "factory farming."

As to the science, "the first thing to say," intoned Grahame Bulfield, the Director and Chief Executive of the Roslin Institute in Scotland, "is that there are no genetically modified animals used in agricultural practice." (Roslin was the birthplace of Dolly, the first cloned sheep.)

"One of the major advantages of GM technologies is that, right from the beginning, you're dealing with a gene you actually know about," said Bulfield, comparing this with the relatively random approach of traditional breeding. However, he did add the caveat that one can never know all the actions of a single gene without knowing the whole organism.

In any case, Bulfield says we are a long way from creating genetically modified animals for agricultural production. But he sees possible applications for the future.

"I suspect the first area you will see [for the technology] will be in disease resistance," Bulfield told BioMedNet News. There are areas of sub-Saharan Africa where you cannot keep modern domestic animals, he says. Perhaps, he suggests, disease resistance could be engineered into livestock to solve these problems. You would have to have a real problem worth tackling, he adds, because the technology is very expensive and would be difficult to justify in developed countries where stock is relatively cheap.

The Roslin Institute is also interested in knocking out the prion gene in sheep to combat scrapie. "Nobody knows what a cow or a sheep would look like without prions," he warned, but knockout mice are perfectly healthy, so it's a possibility he is keen to pursue. And you wouldn't need to replace every single sheep in the country with a genetically modified version. "You'd only need a few animals at the 'top of the pyramid'," he said. From then on "you'd breed it normally," he explained.

"If animals are going to be genetically modified and are going to be used on any scale, we need to know what the effect will be," said Donald Broom, professor of animal welfare in the Department of Clinical Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge. "We need to know that for every animal," he concluded.

Tonight's event, held at the Royal Museum here, was the AEBC's first public consultation on animals and biotechnology, and forms part of a program of debates and consultations. The AEBC is the British Government's advisory body on the future impact of biotechnology developments on agriculture and the environment. It was formed last year with three aims. Malcolm Grant, the chair of the Commission, and professor of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge, summarized them as: (1) farm-scale evaluation of GM crops, (2) "horizon scanning" - looking to see what's coming up next, and (3) examining the issue of animals in biotechnology.

Livestock welfare is high on the national agenda, after a string of agricultural dramas - from BSE, scrapie, and swine fever, to the current foot-and-mouth disease crisis. Genetic modification rivals animal welfare for a spot in the limelight. British farmers have been dropping out of GM-crop trials steadily, following mounting pressure from people who question the safety and ecological credentials of the technology.

Last week, a farmer from the Scottish Highlands joined the list, after what the Scottish Parliament's Minister for Environment and Rural Development, Ross Finnie, describes as "intimidation" from anti-GM campaigners.

"Depriving the Scottish Executive of the valuable scientific data which should be obtained from these trials does nothing to assist in reading an informed position on GM crops," he said.

How GM animals would fare in such a climate remains to be seen. The debate "will help kick-start our deliberation about what to advise the Government at this critical time," said convenor Bradley, who is also director of the National Consumer Council.