Seaweed Treatment for Fescue Pasture - NYT 11/26/01

[Guest guest]

The New York Times

 

November 26, 2001, Monday

 

HEADLINE: Patents;

 

Using a seaweed to counteract a fungus that can harm cattle but is needed to

help the grass grow.

 

BYLINE: By Teresa Riordan; Patents may be viewed on the Web at www.uspto.gov

or

may be ordered through the mail, by patent number, for $3 from the Patent and

Trademark Office, Washington, D.C. 20231.

 

BODY:

 

VIVIEN GORE ALLEN and her colleague Korinn E. Saker have come up with a novel

way to keep cattle healthy: just sprinkle a pasture with seaweed.

 

According to Professor Allen and Dr. Saker, cattle are often afflicted by a

disease called fescue toxicosis. That is because tall-grass fescue, the

predominant grazing grass in the United States, is widely infected with a

microscopic fungus. Cattle that eat the fungus are inclined to loll about in

shady mud holes at a time when cattle ranchers would prefer them to be out

grazing, fattening themselves up. The main reason the diseased cattle prefer to

cool themselves rather than eat, says Dr. Saker, a veterinary nutritional

immunologist at Virginia Tech, is that, inexplicably, they never shed their

winter coats. So in the middle of summer, when they are supposed to have a

shiny, thin coat of hair, they have a thick, dirty, shaggy coat that causes a

persistently high body temperature.

 

"It's a major economic problem in the livestock industry," said Ms. Allen, the

Thornton distinguished professor in plant cell science at Texas Tech. Indeed,

it

costs at least $600 million a year in lost cattle or low carcass weight.

 

But getting rid of the fungus is not an option. The fungus protects the fescue

against all manner of disease; in exchange, the fungus -- which grows between

the plant's cells and which is not visible to the naked eye -- gets food and

shelter from the plant. Try to break up this cozy friendship, and it "opens up

a

Pandora's box for the plant," Professor Allen said. "If you get rid of the

fungus, the fescue is exposed to a lot of stress," she said.

 

In researching the disease, Dr. Saker and her colleagues discovered that the

animals were deficient in copper. Speculating that a copper deficiency might

trigger the toxicosis, they first tried administering a copper bolus.

"Essentially it's a big old capsule that you shove down their throat and it

sits

in their stomach and breaks down over time," she said. Copper supplements did

perk up the cows, she said.

 

But then they simply tried fertilizing the grass with Ascophylum nodosum, a

brown seaweed found off the coast of Nova Scotia.

 

Professor Allen and Dr. Saker, working with several colleagues, discovered

that

animals fed the seaweed-fertilized fescue were protected against toxicosis even

though the grasses they grazed upon harbored the fungus. "We got a more

long-lasting effect when we used seaweed," she said. Moreover, it was cheaper

and less labor-intensive than the copper bolus.

 

The fortified forage, it turns out, is full of antioxidants like copper,

vitamins C and E, superoxide dismutase, and glutathione reductase. "The turf

work has shown repeatedly that we're getting this increased antioxidant

activity

and our suspicion -- we don't have direct proof of this -- is that this is what

is affecting the animals' immunity," Professor Allen said.

 

The research, which was based on a study of about 250 cattle over three years,

was published earlier this year in the Journal of Animal Science. According to

that research, the blood samples taken at different periods showed increased

immunity for seaweed-nourished cattle. The cattle also gained more weight than

other cattle and, once they were slaughtered, the meat from their carcasses had

a longer shelf life.

 

These findings may have big commercial repercussions. This month, Professor

Allen and Dr. Saker and colleagues received patent 6,312,709, which is the

third

patent to be issued covering this seaweed supplementation. Several more patents

are pending and the entire patent portfolio has been licensed to Acadian Sea

Plants Ltd., based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

 

"They have been field-testing this extensively in two large commercial feedlot

operations and we're very close to getting a significant market for this," said

Walter Haeussler, director of technology transfer and intellectual property for

Texas Tech, which along with Virginia Tech owns the technology. "We've had to

do

a lot of research to determine the correct dosage and timing of feeding of

seaweed to cattle to get certain effects. If you give too much you can actually

get less than maximum benefit. It's not a matter of 'if a little bit works then

a lot works better.' "

 

Dr. Saker speculated that the seaweed would not only make the cattle healthier

but might also result in beef that is rich in antioxidants and thus more

healthful for consumers. "We're making the assumption that if it can happen in

cattle it can happen in poultry, in swine, in eggs and in milk," she said.

 

Does this research mean that health-conscious Americans should themselves

start

bingeing on seaweed, which is a common ingredient in Asian diets?

 

"This has very potent physiological effects, whether it's a plant or an

animal," Professor Allen said. "But we've got to know more about the long-term

impact before we recommend it to a human being. There are many different types

of seaweeds -- brown, red and green seaweeds -- just as there are many

different

kinds of dogs or trees. Will other seaweeds do it? We don't know, because we

haven't had the opportunity to test them." http://www.nytimes.com