at a time. Together they can suck more than a litre of blood in one day. The female ticks then drop to the ground to reproduce producing another cycle of ticks to infest cattle. Control for diseases caused by these ticks has to be continually kept under control. Right now, farmers immerse their cattle in toxic chemicals to get rid of the ticks. However, this raises the issue of having these toxic chemicals remain in the beef, and having toxic waste in the environment. More alarming, cattle ticks have an amazing history of becomingresistant to the chemicals used to kill them. It is only a matter of time before the ticks become resistant tothe chemicals being used today. Due to this, a new vaccine called TickGARD (which isbased on the BM86 protein from the ticks' gut) is beingintroduced. When the tick tries to feed off the cow by'sucking its blood' the inside of the tick becomes confusedwhen the blood from the cow is recognised as blood froma tick due to the use of TickGARD for the cow. The wallsretract and the blood is released into the rest of the tickincluding the arms and the legs. This method cuts downtheir survival rate and most importantly makes it less likelyfor the tick to reproduce. It does not eradicate the ticks butthey do become severely impaired and have a muchshortened and more difficult life span due to this. Peter Willadsen has said 'We estimate an overallreduction of up to 70% in tick fertility using TickGARD. In an integrated control program it should cut theneed for chemical treatments by between two and three applications per season.' Genetic engineering isrequired for the vaccine b...
