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--></style><title>Chickens' past, present -- and
future?</title></head><body>
<div><font face="Georgia" size="+1" color="#000000">Financial Times
February 19, 2016 10:57 am<br>
<br>
Are these the chickens of the future?<br>
</font><font face="Georgia" color="#000000">Disease-resistant and
sustained by low-cost feed, genetically modified poultry could one day
be the answer to soaring global demand for meat<br>
</font><font face="Arial" size="-1" color="#000000">Anjana
Ahuja</font></div>
<div><font face="Cambria"
color="#FFFF00"><u
>http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/863e034e-d5c8-11e5-829b-8564e7528e54.<span
></span>html</u></font><br>
<font face="Cambria" size="-2" color="#FFFF00"><u></u></font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia" color="#000000"><b>Excerpt</b><br>
<br>
Today's commercially bred chickens look far bulkier than did their
puny forebears from a century ago - and vastly different to red
junglefowl, the wild bird from which they are thought to be descended.
After the second world war, consumers craved cheap protein. Breeders
selected birds for meatiness without always getting, or preserving,
the genes for correspondingly strong bones. Today, there are too many
broilers (chickens bred for meat) propped up by brittle skeletons and
serviced by overworked hearts. The animal welfare charity Peta says
the average breast of an eight-week-old chicken is seven times heavier
than it was 25 years ago.</font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia" color="#000000"><br>
"I don't think people understand how successful poultry-breeding
genetics has been in changing the characteristics of chickens since
the second world war," says Sang. "But those initial goals were
not particularly good for the welfare of the animal."<br>
<br>
All those changes were wrought by selective breeding, which means
basically picking out animals with the desired characteristics and
mating them. Now companies such as Aviagen, Hy-Line and Cobb-Vantress
- which sell trademarked pedigree breeds (such as Aviagen's Ross 308)
that are used to produce millions of supermarket birds - have realised
that science can replace pedigree information with genome information.
According to the British Poultry Council, selective breeding
programmes can already target 40 characteristics that fall under
genetic influence, from bone health and the oxygen-carrying capacity
of blood (a proxy for heart health) to food efficiency and growth
rate.</font></div>
<div><font face="Georgia" color="#000000"><b><br>
</b></font><font face="Cambria" color="#000000"><b>Full story
here</b><font size="-2">:</font></font></div>
<div><font face="Cambria"
color="#000000"
>http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/863e034e-d5c8-11e5-829b-8564e7528e54.<span
></span>html</font></div>
<div><br></div>
<x-sigsep><pre>--
</pre></x-sigsep>
<div><font face="Verdana" size="-1"
color="#000000"
>===========================================================<br>
"The effects of climate change will be 'severe, pervasive and
irreversible' within the next few decades if countries burn more than
just one-quarter of the fossil fuel reserves already found, according
to a major new U.N. draft report"<br>
<br>
"It warns that companies and governments have 'identified reserves
of these [fossil] fuels at least four times larger than could safely
be burned if global warming is to be kept to a tolerable level.'<b> In
short, 75 percent of the fossil fuels must remain in the ground to
forestall devastating impacts."<br>
</b> <br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size="-1"
color="#FFFF00"><u
>http://www.newsweek.com/leaked-un-report-climate-change-impacts-alre<span
></span>ady-inevitable-may-soon-be-irreversible-266860<br>
<br>
</u></font><font face="Verdana" size="-1"
color="#000000"
>===============================================================<br>
"I believe humanity is making risky bets in the climate casino.
Š. <b> But it is always possible that humanity will wake up
....</b> If that happened, fossil fuel reserves would indeed be
stranded.<b> Investors beware: the risk of that cannot be zero."<br>
</b> <br>
Martin Wolf. A climate fix would ruin investors.<br>
<i>Financial Times</i>. June 17, 2014<br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size="-1"
color="#FFFF00"><u
>http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5a2356a4-f58e-11e3-afd3-00144feabdc0.<span
></span>html#axzz3C5hyxJyx<br>
<br>
<br>
</u></font><font face="Verdana" size="-1" color="#000000"><b>Bold
emphases added</b></font></div>
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