Monday 30 June 2008

A pig of an issue

The piggy bank is actually a concept derived from the old tradition of pig husbandry. Once, the pig was a valuable asset to the family
Photo: Christopher Bruno

My favourite author, Anthony Burgess, once told a newspaper that as he grew older, he found himself yearning for the food he used to grow up on, no matter how much he loved curry.

Not long ago, I wrote a blog about the relationship between livestock and different societies and cultures around the world. For example, chickens and ducks. Far Easterners and Southeast Asians really like their chickens and ducks.

Jo Power, one of our writers, who is also a former agriculture correspondence, once explained to me the significance of the pig in the British society. Around the time of the Industrial Revolution, it was normal for families to rear pigs in the backyard.

In the days when garbage collection was a novelty, probably not even heard of, and pretty much most types of waste were biodegradable, if not recyclable, having a pig was really useful. If you’re left with leftover scraps, you know who to feed them to. And pigs eat anything. Jo told me that pigs are not necessarily dirty – if you keep their habitat in an acceptable condition, they don’t have to be dirty or smelly.

In those days, the cured meat of the pig could sustain a family for months.

Now, you might think that the relationship between pig and man in this context is rather utilitarian. In a way, it is. But like the relationship between our Oriental friends and poultry (or to be exact, my mom and her ducks), it can be emotional as well.

How can you be emotional about something you keep in captivity? And eat?

Being an immigrant who is nosy by nature, I feel obliged to know a bit more about my adopted country and its gastronomic history. I am still not a fan of pork scratchings (although haggis I can tolerate), but I am intrigued to discover that the piggy bank is actually a concept derived from this old tradition of pig husbandry. The pig was a valuable asset to the family.

I was recommended to read Lark Rise To Candleford by Flora Thompson to learn more about the history of the British rural life.

So next time you see pig farmers protesting about the threats to their livelihood, you should know that they are also giving a voice to their concerns about the future of their customs, their cultural identity and their ways of life.

Oh, and why the mention of Anthony Burgess? Why not. His books (not The Clockwork Orange, obviously) got me into writing.

Optimism is quite an effort

The Genomia Fund aims to use R&D to come up with solutions for biomedical applications, livestock for food and sustainable agriculture
Photo: SCapture

You can change the world. But to do that, you have to change your world first.

I am not quoting Eric Clapton. I am rephrasing the words of René Dubos, the microbiologist and humanist who once said that you can help solve global environmental problems by considering the ecological, economic, and cultural aspects of your own surroundings.

For those of you who have not heard of RenĂ© Dubos, he was the guy whose famous maxim is used in so many charity and NGO marketing pitches: “Think Globally, Act Locally”.

Even Royal Shell, not a known friend of the pro-environment movement, (mis)appropriated it for their advertising campaign. At least we know their marketing people are well-read.

It’s quite rare to encounter Dubos-type of optimism in R&D and veterinary medicine, unless it is to do with philanthropic initiatives. So imagine my surprise when I read the online overview of the Genomia Fund’s objectives (Moredun in the money”, 30th June 2008).

The Genomia Fund, a consortium led by Moredun with the involvement from institutions such as the Institute of Animal Health, the Roslin Institute and the Rowett Research Institute, receive £3m to help the transfer of technologies from consortium members to the market.

The aim of the fund is to use R&D to come up with solutions for biomedical applications, livestock for food and sustainable agriculture, and also to attract more money to the sector.

The Genomia Fund says that livestock plays a significant role at domestic level in tackling the global changes brought about by the explosion of the world’s population, the economic growth and the rapid urbanisation of developing countries.

It is key “in sustainable agriculture and rural development in the UK”.

“Products of livestock agriculture are worth about £25 billion a year at retail in the UK alone, and are responsible for the employment of about 0.5m UK residents,” it says.

“Over 60% of the land in the UK is only suitable for forestry or livestock agriculture. Grazing livestock is critical to the maintenance of our landscapes so attractive to tourists.”

Despite some setbacks in animal biotechnological developments, the Genomia Fund says there are plenty of commercial opportunities available – provided that the sector puts itself forward as an attractive investment proposition.

Glad to see some optimism at last. I can’t say much about the animal R&D industry, but from my experience in journalism, the one thing that is hard to change is attitude, and the one thing that is hard to be is optimistic. It takes open-mindedness to accept that the non-sale or the non-marketing work you do can generate revenues.

I once wrote a blog (not for Down on the Pharm, and not using this pseudonym) lamenting the journalist’s lack of commercial sense, and the death of traditional journalism as a result of that.

But you know what Dubos said? “"History teaches that man without effort is sure to deteriorate, man cannot progress without effort, and man cannot be happy without effort."

And that was a scientist, not the Dalai Lama, talking. Optimism is quite an effort. But it’s an effort worth doing.

Thursday 12 June 2008

No chicken feed

This could save lives

Who would have thought this day would come? Online health news website HealthNewsDigest reported that scientists at Ohio State University's Comprehensive Cancer Center are now working on turning chickens into a cancer-fighting food.

It works like this: you feed the chickens with a type of feed that contains gossypol, a natural substance found in cotton, and then you feed the chickens or their eggs to humans.

We find that hugely interesting because gossypol was used to keep the population under control in China. It was discovered that cottonseed oil used for cooking actually make a reasonable, if not 100% reliable, male contraception. A website dedicated to male contraceptives claimed that "researchers found that men taking a daily gossypol pill had reliable contraception and no complaints about change in libido".

Will gossypol-fed chickens also be a food for male contraception one day? Who knows, but this latest news certainly proves that chicken is no longer to the boring and ordinary meat we took it to be. This should expand the portfolio of cancer-fighting foods to include not just greens, fruits and teas – the usual vegetarian fare – but also white meat as well.