to tweak a chicken gene that is responsible for producing the protein ANP32A

The authors identified two other related proteins, ANP32B and ANP32E, that they think would prevent virus replication

Yeah you cannot just keep taking out Phosphoprotein 32 from an animal. It’s literally used widely by the body (human and chicken) to prevent tumors from growing.

For broiler chickens, which live only eight to 12 weeks before they are slaughtered, the health effects of gene editing may not have time to manifest

This is like that modern problems require modern solutions meme. Chickens developing cancer too quickly? Just kill them off faster. I mean, I guess that’ll technically work, I leave the ethical discussion to the vegans out there. But yeah, hauling out ANP32’s various families, you’re going to get chickens that have a lot of knotty meat.

But laying chickens are kept commercially for two to three years

CHUCKLES Oh yeah, you absolutely could not do this for them. LOL. That would be an unspeakable horror.

This disease is so prevalent and so important that any strategies that we can bring together to help protect the health of the birds is, in my view, very good

And she’s not wrong. Avian flu isn’t some shit we need to be playing around with. It’s something we should be taking an active role on. I’d vote perhaps better facilities for housing the chickens and better care compared to the conditions most chicken live in today, the vegans might indicate dropping chicken altogether, and these folks have a “creative” to say the least, way of tackling it. There might be some middle ground somewhere in there, but the more important thing is we really need to get on top of this avian flu bullshit and I, for one, am open to ideas that aim for that goal reasonably.