Protecting Animal Health Biotechnology can enhance or protect animal health in a number of ways. Carefully timed feeding of special diets or feed supplements improves disease resistance. Improved tests detect a wider range of viruses, bacteria and parasites. New drugs provide better disease treatment. Genetic selection of hornless cattle could greatly reduce the need for de-horning.
New vaccines protect animals from a wider range of diseases.
They can also reduce the risk of contamination by bacteria, like E. coli, that cause illness in humans. Another group of biotech vaccines can alter animals body functions to safely and effectively improve productivity. Of all these biotech developments, new vaccines offer some of the most exciting potential for protecting and improving animal health. Vaccines stimulate an animal s immune system. They introduce disease-signaling proteins called antigens into the animal, so that its immune system produces antibodies.