Everyone calls them "Super Cows" or "Monster Cows", but their real name is Belgian Blue. These are animals modified by humans by reducing myostatin, the protein that inhibits muscle growth. This allows them to grow abnormally and consequently provide more delicious meat due to the absence of fat.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
Everyone calls them "Super Cows" or "Monster Cows" (monster cows), but their real name is Belgian Blue. These are animals modified by humans, through the reduction of myostatin, the protein that inhibits muscle growth (through artificial selection). This allows them to grow abnormally and consequently provide more delicious meat due to the absence of fat.
A segment of a National Geographic broadcast offers a glimpse into the mysterious world of this breed, whose origins date back to the 1800s, when scientists and farmers in Belgium decided to breed this breed. strong and muscular hybrid cattle. Over time, they selected the strongest and largest animals of each variety and raised them together to create supposedly superior offspring.
“Selective breeding is being used by farmers to enhance desirable traits in animals - says the National Geographic Channel - It's all about sex management. To create Belgian Blues for over 100 years, farmers only allowed cows and bulls with more muscle mass to mate. And the result is a bull that weighs over a ton ”.
Centuries have passed and this tradition is still alive. But today the methods are more selective and technological advances have given farmers a new vision of genetic modification. As a result, the specimens have a inherent genetic defect, which allows the muscles to continue growing, giving the cows their enormous size.
To ensure that the defective gene is passed on, mating has been replaced by technology in the form of artificial insemination. Here is yet another case that demonstrates how industrial production does not go hand in hand with good at all animal health.
UPDATE OF 04 SEPTEMBER
In these hours many are shouting at the hoax, from the web to social, speaking of cow "not modified by man", but of "NATURAL mutation caused by the malfunctioning of the myostatin gene, a mutation that led this breed to develop the characteristics we see today" (it is a copy paste and the 'h' plus it's not my mistake).
Indeed, and the article does not say the opposite at all, the initial mutation is natural, but it is the selection made by man, through artificial insemination and caesarean sections, that allowed the defect to be transmitted to create bigger and bigger cows. .
So, yes, we reiterate it: Belgian blue is, in this sense, the result of an artificial, human selection. They are not genetically modified organisms, as some have made us believe we said (we never wrote that). Just watch the National Geographic video and read the wikipedia page under "Myostatine ” to understand that there was human intervention and how. We would have liked that they had lost at least 5 minutes in reading the piece well, before putting things in our mouth that are not written here. Whose is the real hoax?
Roberta Ragni
