LEGISLATION - Illinois Bill Gives Research Animals Chance at Adoption

A bill currently at the Illinois State Capitol, if passed, would create the Research Dogs and Cats Adoption Act.

This act would require “(i) an institution of higher education located in this State that receives public funds for scientific, educational, or research purposes or (ii) a facility that provides research in collaboration with an institution of higher education with the use of public funds and that confines dogs or cats for scientific, educational, or research purposes and plans on euthanizing the dog or cat for other than scientific, educational, or research purposes must first offer the dog or cat to an animal rescue organization.”

The bill is sponsored by both Democrats and Republicans and gives animals a chance for a home who may otherwise have just been euthanized.

The Beagle Freedom Project is actively lobbying for this bill to pass since beagles are very often used in research.

Testing done on beagles in university and other research facilities includes medical/pharmaceutical, household products and cosmetics.

The Illinois motion dovetails with the Beagle Freedom Bill promoted by the organization.

In 2014 Minnesota became the first state to pass the Beagle Freedom Bill and it has been successfully implemented. In 2015 this law was also passed in California, Connecticut and Nevada.

In addition to Illinois, the Beagle Freedom Project is currently supporting a similar bill in New York.

Chinese Producing Custom Dogs Through Gene Editing

Chinese scientists believe they are the first people to create custom dogs using gene editing. Gene editing is a process in which scientists can disable genes or rearrange DNA. Scientists have created a Beagle that has twice the muscling that a normal Beagle would have. This mutation has been created by deleting the gene myostatin. Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health’s, Key Laboratory of Regenerative Biology researcher, Liangxue Lai said regarding the gene edited Beagle, “More muscles and are expected to have stronger running ability, which is good for hunting, police (military) applications.”

Not only are dogs being created for work purposes, the researchers will also be creating dogs with DNA mutations that will allow the dogs to mimic human disease including Parkinson’s and muscular dystrophy. Lai said, “The goal of the research is to explore an approach to the generation of new disease dog models for biomedical research. Dogs are very close to humans in terms of metabolic, physiological, and anatomical characteristics.” Dogs are not the first animals in China to undergo gene editing. Prior to dogs, this technique has been used on goats, rabbits, rats, monkeys, and human embryos.

Deletion of the myostatin gene is not a novel event. Rarely, humans are born without myostatin. Belgian Blue cattle lack myostatin The mutation also occurs in Whippets and creates dogs called “bully whippets”.

Eva Engvall, retired scientist and Whippet breeder said, “The point of this work was not to re-create myostatin knockouts. The point was to use the CRISPR technology in dogs. And in this project, the authors overcame some obstacles, in that dogs are a bit tricky when it comes to manipulating embryos.” Regarding myostatin deletion in Beagles, scientist Eliane Ostrander said, “The number of dogs is still small. It will be interesting to see what types of variation come up as more dogs undergo the process.”

Out of Lai’s experiment, so far two Beagles posses myostatin deletion. The deletion is complete in a female and incomplete in a male. Since the gene alteration was done when the dogs were still embryonic the editing can affect every cell in the dog’s body. The male (with partial deletion) produces sperm that contain the full myostatin mutation. Lai said, “The favorable traits that result from gene editing can pass generation by generation… which can be commercialized.”

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Beagle wins 2015 Best in Show

Photo Credit

"Miss P", a four-year-old Beagle was awarded the 2015 Westminster Best In Show classification at the 139th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Feb. 17. 

Name: Ch Tashtins Lookin For Trouble (a.k.a. "Miss P") 
Sex: Female 
Date of Birth: January 09, 2011 
Breeder: Lori D Crandlemire
Dam: Tashtin I Do De Claire
Owner: Eddie Dziuk, Lori Crandlemire, Kaitlyn Crandlemire