Peter Doherty, Nobel Prize Laureate for Physiology or Medicine–1996, and ILRI patron, on genomics, trypanosomiasis disease resistance, and increasing yields. Filmed in September 2016.
Livestock trypanosomiasis harms rural family incomes as well as Africa's economic development as a whole. In 2010, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and partners started a research project to breed cattle resistant to the disease.
The livestock sector contributes about 12% of Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It is also a source of employment for many people. But animal diseases such as trypanosomiasis (which is commonly known as Nagana) threaten their production and economic contribution. This disease is caused by Tsetse flies that also cause sleeping sickness in human beings.
In the face of environmental degradation and biodiversity loss from industrial agriculture, it is critical to transition to sustainable and ecological farming systems.1 But a new wave of research on genetically engineered animals is leading us in the opposite direction — by designing animals to better fit within industrial systems rather than addressing the underlying health, animal welfare and environmental problems associated with these systems.