GM WATCH COMMENT: It's almost impossible to tally the claims that caused a storm of media interest at the start of the year with the facts as reported below by New Scientist.

Here's what we were previously told - US and Japanese scientists were claiming they had "used genetic engineering to produce cattle that resist mad cow disease... Writing in the journal Nature Biotechnology, the researchers said their cattle were healthy at the age of 20 months..." (Breeding breakthrough produces mad cow resistant cattle)
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7443

Now we're told there never were any such cattle, that attempts to do so are very time consuming and costly, and that even if they are ever produced they're unlikely to replace existing herds of beef cattle. There is also evidence to suggest that these cows could in any case develop health problems as a result of the deletion of the gene in question.
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No BSE-free cow
New Scientist, January 25 2007
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/bse/mg18224500.400-no-bsefree-cow.html

Reports that the first cow genetically engineered to be immune to BSE will soon be born have turned out to be misleading.

In theory, creating BSE-free animals is simple: delete both copies of the gene for the PrP protein that causes prion diseases when it becomes mishapen, and animals cannot develop the disease. But in practice, engineering such animals is time-consuming and very costly, and past attempts to create cows that lack the gene have failed (New Scientist, 5 January 2002, p 5).

So when Kirin Brewery of Japan this week announced that a cow was pregnant with a calf that lacks the PrP protein, the story received global press coverage. But the actual work is being carried out by Kirin's partner, Hematech of Connecticut, and James Robl, the company's chief scientific officer, told New Scientist that so far the US company has only created cell lines lacking the prion gene.

The aim of the work is to use BSE-free cows to produce pharmaceutical products such as human antibodies. This would guarantee there would be no risk of people getting vCJD, the human form of BSE. But BSE-free cows are unlikely to end up on the dinner plate - it would take decades and be very expensive to replace existing herds of beef cattle.

It remains to be seen whether BSE-free cows will be healthy. Some mice in which the PrP gene has been deleted seem to have altered sleeping patterns, which may indicate other problems too.