Team:Shanghai City United/Human Practices

Shanghai_City_United

Integrated Human Practices

Overview

Xylan contained in grain feeds causes digestion problems for polutry, including indigestion, and change of morphology and physiological state of the poultry digestive tract. Our project aims at researching into production of a probiotic functional in degrading xylan by genetic engineering.
To acquire opinions from a broad set of stakeholders of our project, which may be integrated to optimize our project, we conduct a series of interviews and surveys.

Experts’ Opinions on Poultry Breeding and Feed Industry
Interview with Prof. Xin Wang, Henan University of Technology (Ph.D, Chinese Academy of Sciences),

Prof. Wang obtained his Ph.D degree from the Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and now works as a professor in Henan University of Technology. (Research Expertise:optimization of agricultural production technology, and Engineered Bacteria)

We contacted Prof.Wang as the first interviewee during our early phase. We wish to obtain an overview about the poultry breeding industry and poultry feed production in China. Prof.Wang believes that the most severe issue of Chinese poultry is that China lacks a long-term breeding industry plan, especially fowls. Furthermore, the scale of current Chinese poultry farms is relatively medium or small, which plays an indispensable role in poultry farming though the country should focus on forage. However, from data nowadays, the ratios of feed and its homologous output are unbalanced. For example, Chinese white weather chicken, a breed improved from white Plymouth rock originated in America, can merely produce 0.5 kilograms of eggs while consuming 1.2-1.25 kilograms of feed.

On the other hand, poultry feed cannot currently satisfy the market's need, although it takes up half of the feed's total amount. With the development of fruitful and economical new breeds of poultry, the demand for resources, maizes in the majority, blooms simultaneously. However, maizes are served as feed and consumed by people, and stored in a national warehouse. Therefore, due to the limited case of maize, it is necessary to decrease their proporation of poultry feed by improving feed.

Expanding sources and improving quality is the future of improving grain feed, emphasizing on producing more feed out of less material. Through making specific feed innovation based on species, yield, and age of poultry, the quality of feed may be enhanced the poultyr’s health could be improved.

Through this interview, we learned about the rapid and insufficient development of national animal husbandry, so we are more convinced of the importance of our research. Our project, to develop feed additives specifically for single-stomach animals through improving xylan absorption in animals to reduce feed intake, can greatly help relieve the pressure of animal husbandry in China and even the world.

Preparation of an iGEM questionnaire on poultry.

Is GMO Technique Safe in Our Project?

Expert Interview, Dr. Jinzhong Tian, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Since the regulations of GMO techniques in food and drugs are quite strict in China and in the world, will the strict regulations be obstacles for our project?

With this question in mind, we interviewed Dr. Jinzhong Tian, a synthetic biology expert at Chinese Academy of Sciences.

According to Dr. Tian, GMO techniques are quite safe, as long as we follow the related GMO products development procedures and regulations. In fact, most food are GMO products, even though wheat, the most popular food in the world, is produced by GMO. In reality, quite a lot of food in the market are produced by GMO, for instance, over 30% of corns are produced by GMO. Thereafter, it is a safe choice to choose GMO from the perspective of practice and science.

Meanwhile, Dr. Tian also affirmed the research direction of our project, making probiotic containing xylanase and producing poultry feed additives. Also, as we discussed the final product form, Dr. Tian also agreed to make poultry beverage on the basis of our poultry feed additives. Whereas, Dr. Tian reminded us that xylanase may be inactivated in vivo, thus he proposed that in the future we may consider about using Sodium alginate to make a cover of our probiotic.

After the interview with Dr. Tian, we had a better understanding of GMO, especially the safety issues. Meanwhile, we also got to know the possible problems of our final products. We may continue to work as per his encouragement and suggestions.

Experts’ Other Concerns about our Project

Interview with Mr. Xiaoben Fan, Postgraduate Candidate in Veterinary Medicine at Sichuan Agricultural University
Since the planned products of our project will be used in polutry, will it be a safe choice for animals? With this question in mind, we interviewed Mr. Xiaoben Fan, who is a postgraduate in Veterinary Medicine at Sichuan Agricultural University. Mr. Fan firstly confirmed that digstion injuries caused by inappropriate feed exist in poultry, furthermore, Mr. Fan also confirmed that accumulation of xylan may cause digestion injuries. Thereafter, Mr. Fan spoke highly of our project.
However, Mr. Fan also reminded us of the possible xylanase inactivity issue in vivo.

Public Concerns on our Project-Application of GMO Probiotic in Poultry Feed Survey & Media posts:

Our team came up with a questionnaire containing 11 questions related to our project. We made the survey accessible for online and offline channels to obtain a wide range of responses and ensure reliable results.

Volunteers' responses were collected both online and offline in the local area. Members of our team forwarded the survey through our WeChat tweet and QR code. We received 455 responses online and conducted data analysis. 12 people from the local area were interviewed, which made up the total sample size of 467 of all ages.

Figure 1

According to Figure 1, 43.08% of our samples were collected from people between 30 and 50 years old, and over 20% of the samples were collected from people between 18 and 30 years old. Among these samples, 42.64% had experienced with poultry breeding. However, incorporating the in-depth understanding of responses from street interviewers, we found that people understand the question differently. Most people have only had the experience of feeding poultry instead of long-term farming experience.

Figure 2

Figure 3

According to Figure 2 and Figure 3, most of the respondents (62.86%) supported the new method. Base on the result, we further asked why they support the new method collected from respondents: most supporters believe that using our product will make its “drinker” healthier with lower gastrointestinal morbidity. At the same time, this product allows people to eat safer, healthier, and sanitary poultry products.

Respondents who supported traditional methods consider more from the perspectives of cost and farming scale. This shows that the public is more concerned about food safety than cost and other reasons.

Figure 5

Figure 6

Figure 7

It can be seen from Figure 5 that about 67.91% of the respondents still have certain security concerns about the methods of our project. However, the information in Figure 6 shows that if this project enters the market, 82.42% of respondents will still choose to purchase meat products related to this project. This contrast data shows that when facing a project that has not been used in a market, most people will be more conservative and pay particular attention to safety issues; however, when facing a product that has already been put in the market, most people will choose to accept and buy it. This shows that the public has a certain degree of trust and dependence on the market. After the product has been reviewed and approved by the relevant market departments, some people no longer make cognitive efforts to consider security issues.

In addition, it can be inferred from Figure 7 that for the poultry raised by the traditional method and the project method, the public’s willingness to buy between the two differs by 2%. This is consistent with the information obtained from the data in Figure 6. The attitude is actually not that different, which suggested that we need to focus on how to gain the approval of farmers rather than the favor of consumers of poultry meat products when implementing the project.

To sum up, through our questionnaire survey, we found that the public does not have a deep understanding of this kind of project because it is irrelevant to most people’s daily life. Due to the limitation of participant’s prior knowledge to this field, everyone will have safety concerns, but for products that have entered the market, everyone’s attitudes towards new and traditional methods do not various in a large scale. We need to start from the downstream which is the supply chain-farmers. Only considering the direct benefits of our product can fully dig our commercial value.

On August 22nd, we carried out our first street interview in Shanghai. The primary purpose was to investigate public perceptions of gm and whether people would purchase xylanase added fodder. It turns out that most people have a smattering knowledge of GMO products, and some believe that they might cause harm to the ecosystem.

Considering the ones interested in our project and who wanted to follow our daily progress, we also created an official team account on WeChat, where we would go into detail and further explain our research subject, for example, an additional page of background. Each day, there will be photos of our wet team working in the lab and reports of their progress written by the dry team. To fully engage with the public, we also inserted the QR code for our survey. By filling out the questions, we will raise public awareness and help us understand the current market perception of fodder optimization.

Recently, we accomplished a short promotional clip on the benefits that our project will bring to the development of agriculture. We decided to use hand puppets to represent the characters(animals and the landowner). By personifying the livestock, we entertained the readers and made the purpose of our project easy to understand.