[HN Gopher] The US has approved CRISPR pigs for food
___________________________________________________________________
The US has approved CRISPR pigs for food
Author : DocFeind
Score : 122 points
Date : 2025-05-03 14:32 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.technologyreview.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.technologyreview.com)
| andsoitis wrote:
| I can already see CRISPR Bacon(tm) in our future.
| janice1999 wrote:
| I get it's a joke, but this won't be advertised to consumers.
| The current US administration (and previous ones to a lesser
| extent) oppose food labeling regulations. It's one of the main
| "non-tariff trade barriers" they complain about to the EU.
| barbazoo wrote:
| What's the idea behind it? Just anti consumer or is there a
| reasonable angle?
| conception wrote:
| Eats into profits and increases accountability.
| justin66 wrote:
| I believe they prefer the term "pro-business."
| estebank wrote:
| If someone doesn't care one way or another, the label is
| useless. If someone has a positive opinion, the label helps
| the consumer seek it out. If someone has a negative
| opinion, the label helps the consumer avoid the product. If
| they fight against labeling it is because they consider
| that the third group is or can become bigger than the
| second.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I mean, that's so vague that it can be said about
| anything: Some people think X is positive and will buy
| the product and some people think X is negative and won't
| buy the product. Pretty obvious.
|
| The purpose of food labels is to increase safety,
| transparency and honesty around the contents of food.
| Companies who oppose safety, transparency or honesty
| and/or produce products with questionable contents will
| oppose labels and companies who support safety,
| transparency and honesty will support them. I don't know
| many end-consumers who oppose labels themselves. But they
| will oppose products that contain questionable
| ingredients, so transparency is bad for companies that
| produce those products.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _and companies who support safety, transparency and
| honesty will support them._
|
| Not quite.
|
| Companies who can use the official labels to back up
| their own advertising campaigns will support them. (I
| know people who think that having a label for something
| is evidence of that thing being good or bad. No, it's
| evidence that someone thought that expending the effort
| to convince the government to have that label would have
| a positive return.)
|
| Companies with more ability to amortize regulatory
| overhead (relative to their competitors) will support
| them, because for then that overhead is itself a
| competitive advantage.
| johnny22 wrote:
| like gluten free on corn chips
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| > The purpose of food labels is to increase safety,
| transparency and honesty around the contents of food.
|
| USDA Organic label is rampant with fraud, and just having
| thr USDA label on it isn't a guarantee of trust.
| Similarly, the AHA endorsing oils blatantly bad for the
| heart is also similar example how labeling doesn't
| promote trust necessarily. Labels can and do lie, quite
| often even.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I just want the label to tell me what's in the product. I
| can then make my own decision as to whether I think
| that's healthy or not.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| > just want the label to tell me what's in the product
|
| You will never, ever get that. It's simply impossible.
| Label games are the biggest legal tug-of-war between
| consumers, regulators, vendors, and the industries.
|
| When I began reading about labeling and its regulation,
| and all the bullshit tricks that are played to "stay
| compliant" but also lie out their asses to the consumer,
| and hide everything from us, I concluded that there is no
| way to truly read a label properly.
|
| It basically comes down to a question of whether you
| trust this vendor or provider to give you a quality
| product. If you do not trust, then do not purchase. If
| they play games and lose trust, then do not purchase.
| Once you have a decent-sized blacklist, then there is no
| reason not to patronize those survivors.
| encrypted_bird wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious to learn more. Do you have any
| good, reputable sources that you can recommend reading?
| (No videos please.)
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| That's the double edged sword. Requiring labeling doesn't
| prevent label fraud, and pretending label fraud is rare
| is either naive or obtuse.
|
| Oversight is then called for (eg USDA organic) which
| itself can still be frauded around, especially when
| dealing with sources outside of the US.
|
| I'm reminded of a tiktok that had raw chicken labeled
| with a particular weight at Walmart. When they weighed it
| on a checkout scale, it didn't match the weight the label
| had. On multiple packages.
| watwut wrote:
| So basically, vague "it is impossible to make
| inspections"?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The median label is transparent and honest but that's not
| a guarantee, especially when marketing gets involved.
| Plenty of companies will make statements that are true
| but opaque, dishonest, and unrelated to safety. And
| they'll support any labeling standard that helps them
| along those lines.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| The generic arguments against that sort of thing are
| distortion when the category boundaries are a bit off from
| where they should be, and overhead where any time you do
| anything there's extra compliance paperwork and delays.
|
| Overhead in particular can be rather stifling. For example
| environmental reviews for large projects have reached a
| "the process is the punishment" level of overhead.
| jfengel wrote:
| The EU already refuses to import American chicken (over
| sanitary practices) and has limitations on beef (over
| hormones).
|
| They'll ban American pork entirely if we can't guarantee that
| the GMO pork are excluded.
| johnohara wrote:
| Are you declaring first use?
| theGeatZhopa wrote:
| The new job at McDonald's: CRISPRer - your one job is to take
| the bacon and grill it crispy.
| charliebwrites wrote:
| I'd flip it:
|
| If I ran a bacon company and I didn't have CRISPR pigs I'd
| advertise in large red print
|
| "CRISPR Free"
|
| Or
|
| "Non-genetically modified"
|
| People are afraid of lab grown meat already, they'll be
| terrified of CRISPR meat
|
| My competition won't be able to advertise the same
| nothercastle wrote:
| If this becomes common it will be illegal to label food as
| gmo free
| Aloisius wrote:
| Sure. And I'd advertise in large print, "PRRS Virus Free"
|
| Considering the prevalence of PRRSV, it would be difficult
| for farms with non-CRISPRed pigs to say the same.
|
| Scare tactics can work both ways here.
| smallnix wrote:
| Farms without immune pigs can still claim it. Do some
| sampling tests, culling etc and call the product "virus
| free". But calling modified pigs not modified is tougher, I
| think.
| ksec wrote:
| >Regulations have eased since then, especially around gene
| editing, which tinkers with an animal's own DNA rather than
| adding to it from another species, as is the case with the salmon
| and many GMO crops.
|
| And people wonder why EU ( and UK ) doesn't allow much US
| agriculture import.
| maxerickson wrote:
| What sort of regulation do you think should apply to germ line
| editing to inactivate a particular gene?
|
| Like is a blanket ban the only reasonable approach?
| Natsu wrote:
| This seems to be a small edit to a single receptor to keep
| pigs from getting a particular disease by not allowing the
| virus to enter their cells. It's hard to see how helping pigs
| stay healthy could have a negative impact on human health,
| but a lot of people are against eating things that are
| 'unnatural' in any sense.
| 486sx33 wrote:
| Because CRISPR isn't nearly that precise or exact, it
| always has unforeseen random fall off effects. Also, who
| says that particular receptor ONLY prevents entry of a
| specific virus? It surely has other purposes that aren't
| understood.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Are the pigs healthy? I think the sibling comment got to
| the heart of this a lot more directly.
|
| There's an economic reward for keeping the pigs _healthy
| enough_ to be harvested while spending the least amount of
| money on their environment. If this lowers the threshold
| for "healthy enough", or allows them to survive in an even
| worse, cheaper to maintain environment, that could
| introduce or exacerbate human health risks even if this
| change itself cannot.
|
| There is also the animal welfare element, that has
| resonance to a lot of people. I am by no means a
| vegetarian, do not in principle object to killing animals
| for food. But the sheer scale of animal suffering in our
| food system gives me pause. I am reluctant to accept
| innovations that would allow us to increase the degree of
| suffering in exchange for an increase in output or decrease
| in price.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Healthy animals and industrial meat production are at two
| opposing ends of the same spectrum. You can have one but
| not both.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| You absolutely can have both. The threshold to pass for
| at least "decently healthy" isn't _that_ high and prices
| aren 't that much higher than "normal" industrial
| farming.
| emorning3 wrote:
| >> It's hard to see how helping pigs stay healthy could
| have a negative impact on human health, <<
|
| Really? You don't see a logical flaw in your reasoning
| there?
| barbazoo wrote:
| None of those pigs are "healthy". If we didn't pump them
| full of antibiotics they would never see the
| slaughterhouse.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > It's hard to see how helping pigs stay healthy could have
| a negative impact on human health
|
| I think that view underscores the differences in approach
| and beliefs in the US and Europe (not that both views
| aren't represented on both sides of the Atlantic, just
| distributed differently). The Europeans frequently have the
| view: Prove to us that this is not dangerous. Otherwise we
| prefer not taking the chance that you might be wrong. The
| US version in our eyes is frequently: "You can't prove it's
| not safe".
|
| In this case you could risk introducing even worse
| diseases, who have previous been kept in check by the
| competition from the viruses you're now eliminating.
| WhatIsDukkha wrote:
| European consumers seem to not want factory farms that
| produce such low quality food that it needs to be CRISPRed
| (as is the case with this story) just to be kept alive long
| enough.
|
| I also am in that camp, I don't want to eat pork raised in
| unsanitary conditions and then sold to me at top dollar
| (because lying/obscuring about sourcing).
| thayne wrote:
| Then you should want regulations about how the pigs are
| raised, not banning the use of CRISPR.
| WhatIsDukkha wrote:
| As an EATER of food what is the benefit of CRISPR/GMO?
|
| There answer after a good 40 minutes of searching is...
| nothing.
|
| It's a technology 100% in service of being
| lazier/sloppier for industrial scale food production and
| in service of IP restricting the food supply in favor of
| shareholder X or Y.
|
| "but we can make tasteless US tomatoes on even more
| inappropriate cropland!"
|
| ...
|
| Great for my stock portfolio to screw over developing
| countries but useless for me as a first world eater of
| food.
|
| No proof of existence of a benefit.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Uh. Healthier animals.
|
| This specific approval is for a gene therapy to prevent
| PRRSV infection - a major porcine virus and one that
| regularly infects pigs in the EU.
|
| It has nothing to do with mistreatment of animals or
| factory farming.
| blibble wrote:
| poor husbandry is the primary objection to US food
| products
|
| the chicken has to be chlorinated because it has
| literally been produced covered in faeces
|
| this would seem to be enable it to become even worse
| Aloisius wrote:
| So don't import US food products if it scares you. That's
| a separate issue from whether to allow CIRPRed livestock.
|
| Again, this disease _regularly_ affects pigs in Europe
| and causes immense animal suffering.
| blibble wrote:
| > So don't import US food products if it scares you.
|
| this is exactly the position of the EU, UK governments
|
| and is one of the few policies that is universally
| supported by their populations
| Aloisius wrote:
| The EU and UK both import food from the US.
|
| Some US food products are banned for concerns about
| safety, but they're hardly unique - the US also bans some
| food products from the EU and UK that are considered
| unsafe in the US.
|
| None of that has to do with whether or not countries
| should allow CRIPRed livestock to be raised domestically.
| blibble wrote:
| no GM crops, no milk with growth hormone (nearly all of
| it), no beef with growth hormone (nearly all of it), no
| chlorinated chicken (nearly all of it), no washed eggs
| (nearly all of them)
|
| and now pork will end up on that list too
|
| > None of that has to do with whether or not countries
| should allow CRIPRed livestock to be raised domestically.
|
| I couldn't care less if US'ians want to eat shit (here,
| literally)
| blitzar wrote:
| > Then you should want regulations about how the pigs are
| raised
|
| We have those. EU animals have "five freedoms".
| paganel wrote:
| > Like is a blanket ban the only reasonable approach?
|
| From my pov as a fellow EU citizen a blanket ban for this
| kind of creepy stuff is the only viable option. Let the
| Americans become Frankesteins for all I care, it's their
| choice, all in the name of "science".
| barbazoo wrote:
| In the name of keeping up unsustainable lifestyles because
| one could not fathom to eat anything but abused animals.
| It's part of the culture.
| trallnag wrote:
| Banning something because you find it creepy? Unhinged
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| > And people wonder why EU ( and UK ) doesn't allow much US
| agriculture import.
|
| I mean, this is completely false. 8% of all EU agriculture
| imports is from USA and has grown year over year for decades.
|
| > U.S. agricultural exports to the European Union reached a
| record $12.8 billion in 2024, a 1-percent increase from 2023
|
| https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...
| theGeatZhopa wrote:
| While this 8% are limited to "sorts of" and may not include
| "CRISPRed" or "chlorine-bleached".
|
| Just a thought from me, as European, in case someone asks for
| the thinking behind strict import EU rules:
|
| We just don't want to eat things that we believe may cause
| (abstract) harm, and, sorts of liability of the state and
| society to care for you and (God beware) your kids if some
| adverse effects are pinpointed to food/imports or
| misregulation. I think it's ok like that.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Was just commenting on the blanket claim that EU "doesn't
| allow" much ag import from the US, which is plainly wrong.
| theGeatZhopa wrote:
| It isn't plainly wrong as if they would allow much, then
| the share would be higher, as it is the case now for
| example Brazil (~9pc) or UK (>20pc).
|
| If one think further, the share of export/import to/from
| non-eu countries is (rounded) 9pc of total EU's
| agriculture expenses. So, EU do not import much from US
| and others because they do not want certain techniques
| and methods and have their inner market and production
| anyway. Like it's the case with chlorine chickens and
| washed eggs. So, they don't allow such things to be sold
| to customers, which is infact not allowing import.
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
| explained/index.php...
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| I guess you can claim that the 3rd-largest agriculture
| import source is "not much" if it is making you feel
| better about something. But I think that even the EU
| bureaucrats themselves would recognize that it is a very
| significant amount and continues to grow.
| theGeatZhopa wrote:
| Third largest is not much, if it accounts 8pc of 8pc
| imported, and 92pc are produced within EU itself. Do you
| say it's much?
| lupusreal wrote:
| Much of that is reasonable concern, but at least some of it is
| silly superstition. For instance, Germany doesn't permit the
| irradiation of most foods except dried herbs and spices.
| Irradiation is a perfectly safe way of increasing the safety
| and shelf life of food. Despite this, regulations on which
| foods if any this is permitted for vary greatly from country to
| country, influenced by how weirded out the uneducated public
| feels about it.
| 486sx33 wrote:
| I wish more people understood how much of what they consume
| is radiated at some point...
| WhatIsDukkha wrote:
| The alternative to radiation is mixing less poop into your
| meat etc.?
|
| You understand that the majority of "food science" is
| designed to allow increasingly lazier and sloppier food
| handling and allowing it to still be palatable/not kill too
| many people right?
|
| Don't fall into the "lower cost" idea either, being lazier
| and sloppier means higher corporate profits and not lower
| consumer prices (for worse food).
|
| Compare the grass fed/ranged (produced on farms 1/10th the
| size of the US equivalent) BigMac in Germany versus the one
| you get anywhere in the US, which do you think is healthier
| and tastier? They are basically the same price to the
| consumer mysteriously...
| lupusreal wrote:
| This is the ignorance I was talking about. There are many
| reasons to irradiate food besides substandard handling. For
| instance, potatoes can be irradiated to inhibit sprouting,
| increasing how long you can store them. And imported fruits
| can be irradiated to prevent the spread of insects and
| other pests (without needing to use far riskier
| pesticides.)
| WhatIsDukkha wrote:
| You proved my point actually.
|
| Neither of those things is actually useful as an eater of
| food?
|
| You want less fresh food and from sketchier sources yet
| you think those are virtues?
| lupusreal wrote:
| They are useful to people who buy food (who hasn't had
| some potatoes sprout in a cabinet?), and to society
| generally. Insects are a fact of fruit, to call that
| "sketchy" is just ignorant.
| WhatIsDukkha wrote:
| Sprouted potatoes is a sing its time to get some new
| ones... you want to eat horded 6 month old potatoes glhf
|
| I don't eat fumigated strawberries so replacing fumigated
| strawberries with irradiated strawberries is... not
| useful?
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| This is a case where the science evolved to justify a
| pre-decided narrative. This was absolutely necessary for
| an unsustainable food industry in an overly financialised
| nation(guess which). Don't waste your breath arguing
| logically. Just try your level best to ensure it doesn't
| occur in your local food economy, for the near future.
| Eventually, the GMO folks will reap.
| lupusreal wrote:
| If the potatoes last longer without going bad, then
| there's no reason to replace them prematurely. You have a
| predicted narrative that any preservation method you
| aren't comfortable is intrinsically bad because it lowers
| food quality, but I can guarantee you there are countless
| other forms of food preservation you have no problem
| with.
|
| It comes down to superstition.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _influenced by how weirded out the uneducated public feels
| about it._
|
| So it's one of those "my ignorance is just as good as your
| knowledge" things?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| To the extent they don't import, it's much more about
| protecting their own farm economy. Denmark for example has a
| lot of large pig farms, they don't want US pork competing with
| that.
| comrade1234 wrote:
| This is just so that they can pack even more pigs into a factory
| farm.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| How is that possible?
|
| Are the pigs going to grow vertical or something?
| cenamus wrote:
| I, they already stack the floors vertically, putting them in
| matrix style boxes wouldn't be that surprising
| 486sx33 wrote:
| Oh man, this is bad. How many studies do we have some the
| consumption of CRISPR anything by humans ?
| DesaiAshu wrote:
| We could also just stop breeding genetically modified sentient
| animals for protein and directly synthesize protein...
| barbazoo wrote:
| Or just eat vegetables.
| tengbretson wrote:
| Or crispr yourself to photosynthesize.
| undersuit wrote:
| You lack the surface area to do much more than
| photosynthesize a snack's worth of calories.
| guidopallemans wrote:
| Then crispr yourself some leaves as well
| AzzyHN wrote:
| This has the potential to be really cool, and really beneficial
| to society.
|
| It's a shame the people who want to do this the most are the
| people who want to treat the pigs the worst, and who care the
| least about potential side effects in humans.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _shame the people who want to do this the most are the people
| who want to treat the pigs the worst_
|
| When there is almost-perfect (and unnecessary) union between
| animal rights interests and the anti-GMO community, this is
| almost a necessity.
|
| > _and who care the least about potential side effects in
| humans_
|
| I see no evidence of this.
| padjo wrote:
| Well they're not making pigs immune to disease because they
| like pigs are they...
| jalk wrote:
| Swineflu is one of the arguments for keeping pigs locked
| away indoors in SPF farms
| Voultapher wrote:
| There is no ethical way to use mammals .
|
| It might sound a little extreme at first, but if you think it
| through I think it's the conclusion one has to reach when
| extrapolating from ones own experience to similar animals. Sure
| a cricket and I have not too much in common, but a orangutan
| and I, a dog, a pig?
| chneu wrote:
| Degrees of harm and justification are pointless.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > the pigs appear entirely immune to more than 99% of the known
| versions of the PRRS virus, although there is one rare subtype
| that may break through the protection.
|
| Doesn't this just set the table for that rare subtype to become
| dominant?
| nothercastle wrote:
| Yes
| biophysboy wrote:
| Evading immunity doesn't always mean you become dominant. It
| might not be as transmissible, worse at replicating, or not as
| compatible with the host. Basically, there may be reasons why
| it was the rare subtype that remain true even in the new
| environment
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| However, with a selective pressure that removes its rival
| subtypes, it's likely to become less rare, at least in areas
| such as pig farms.
| stavros wrote:
| Could we not just... not confine the pigs in spaces about as big
| as their bodies?
|
| Kurzgesagt had a very interesting video[0] about the fact that it
| wasn't really that much more expensive to make sure we ate
| torture-free meat.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sVfTPaxRwk
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| The majority of consumers aren't willing to spend a penny on
| that.
| chneu wrote:
| Most consumers don't care where their meat comes from.
|
| Meat is a status symbol food. Most consumers want it as cheap
| as possible so they can consume as much of it as possible.
| Because it's a status symbol food. Eating meat every night is
| seen as a status symbol.
| unfitted2545 wrote:
| good day to be a vegan.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I really really hate that the science behind GMO's gets clouded
| by the business practices of some of these companies.
|
| You can separate the 2. Being anti gmo is being anti science.
| Decrying all GMO as bad, unhealthy, or whatever is as illogical
| as trying to make any blanket statement about any food. It just
| so happens that this one gets headlines.
|
| We should be concerned about the businesses like Monsanto. But
| that is completely different.
|
| Personally I have been trying to avoid any product that goes out
| of its way to claim "non gmo" because it just signals to me that
| they don't care about sustainability and science.
|
| It's almost as bad (and sometimes worse) than the "organic" crap.
| hollerith wrote:
| So in other words there is nothing wrong with the GMO as an
| abstract principle, it is merely the actual GMOs on the market
| today that are bad in almost every instance.
| nerdjon wrote:
| No... that is not what I said at all.
|
| I have yet to see a single instance of any actual health
| concerns raised from eating GMO food.
|
| It has turned into marketing bullshit.
|
| Again there has to be a clear separation between the science
| behind GMO and the business practices. They are very
| different discussions that need to happen but instead we are
| painting all of it with a negative light.
| hollerith wrote:
| >I have yet to see a single instance
|
| OK, here is a single instance: lots of people are concerned
| about glyphosate residues in food, and GMO technology is
| the only thing that allows those food plants to even
| survive the amount of glyphosate being sprayed on them.
| nerdjon wrote:
| That is not a problem with the act of making GMO's in the
| first place, which again is the point that I am trying to
| make here.
|
| If the product that had these modifications is perfectly
| safe without being sprayed with it, the science behind
| the creation of that GMO is still sound. The problem is
| what is being done to it after the fact.
|
| Meaning, it being GMO itself is irrelevant and goes back
| to the business practices. Grouping that into an "Anti
| GMO" crusade just continues to further an anti-science
| narrative.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| We should be genetically modifying the pest species, not
| the crops. We should stick to going after the species
| that specialize in eating domesticated plants, like the
| corn borer or the Colorado potato beetle. Keep a small
| population "safe" on some remote island or a lab
| somewhere if they ever need to be reintroduced for some
| reason, but use knockout drive to eliminate them
| elsewhere.
| xeonmc wrote:
| I, for one, welcome our new mutant prionic insectoid
| overlords.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| > Again there has to be a clear separation between the
| science behind GMO and the business practices.
|
| Discussing the science is worthless until you can solve the
| business practices.
| nerdjon wrote:
| Then why require GMO labeling on food?
|
| We don't require labeling for basically any other
| concerns about business practices and yet everyone seems
| to care about this one. When I buy chicken it doesn't
| have a sticker on it sayin "this chicken was probably
| kicked a few times". or slave labor was used on this
| chocolate. There are other voluntarily done labeling
| against both of those, but not a requirement to say it.
|
| The problem is, the narrative is grouping them together.
| The general narrate is "concern over what it going into
| our bodies" which has nothing to do with business
| practices.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| > We don't require labeling for basically any other
| concerns about business practices
|
| Maybe we should. Then again, pretty sure both of those
| are completely illegal anyway. (Not that that stops it
| entirely, but somehow I'm not convinced _lying about it_
| would be the thing to stop those actors.)
| nerdjon wrote:
| Right I mean the chocolate one is illegal. The chicken
| one, honestly not fully sure since Purdue keeps getting
| exposed but idk if they actually have had legal issues?
| But my point with both of those is, as bad as those would
| be they don't have an impact on your health eating the
| product.
|
| Regardless, I don't disagree that we should have some
| labeling on business practices behind the food that we
| eat as long as it is actually communicating what needs to
| be communicated instead of just fear mongering.
|
| "GMO Free" (or requiring it to say it has GMO) tells the
| consumer absolutely nothing. Its meaningless. All it does
| is try to sow fear about a thing that its existence
| itself is not the problem.
|
| "Forbids farmers from using last years seeds", "Uses
| increased herbicide" like the example the other person
| mentioned, or whatever that actually communicates what
| the business concern is to the consumer would be great.
|
| But that is not what we are doing here with labeling GMO.
| lukan wrote:
| "But my point with both of those is, as bad as those
| would be they don't have an impact on your health eating
| the product"
|
| Depends. Stressed animals produce food with stress
| hormons included.
| goodpoint wrote:
| And yet there are plenty of reputable papers showing clear
| health benefits of organic food.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| "Being anti gmo is being anti science"
|
| No, it isn't. As scientists we know how little we know of
| complex biological systems. This is bio-engineering based on
| rickety models.
|
| Especially in times where the US is all about 'trade balances'
| , would it not suite them to take onboard some of the
| precautionary principles adopted in other parts of the world
| when it comes to health and safety?
| DocTomoe wrote:
| From the other side of the pond, when your chieftain wonders
| aloud again why the Europeans don't buy your beef, or your
| chicken, or now your pork: This here, is the reason.
|
| We like our beef clean, our chickens unchlorinated, and our
| pigs without heavily experimental GMO modification, thank you
| very much.
|
| Not because we are anti-science. Because the US has a
| horrible track record when it comes to how far you can go
| with _caveat emptor_.
| lazystar wrote:
| does this mean they can create a kosher pig? huge business
| opportunity there.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| You'd have to CRISPR parts of the Torah to accomplish that.
| looofooo0 wrote:
| Lol, achieving the neccesary characteristics (cloven hooves and
| rumination), i am not sure that thing would be called a pig
| anymore.
| ajma wrote:
| Mmmm CRISPR bacon
| sinuhe69 wrote:
| >>That experiment [Chinese Crisper babies] on humans was widely
| decried as misguided.
|
| Misguided? No, it's criminal! It was widely criticized as deeply
| unethical, unprofessional and irresponsible. The guy was
| considered a rogue scientist and he was put in jail for many
| years.
|
| So clearly it was not just 'misguided'.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I think it's fine. I'm ready for heavily genetically modified
| humans given they volunteer for it.
| lantry wrote:
| I think your two statements are contradictory. Babies can't
| volunteer for anything
| voidfunc wrote:
| Parents can volunteer the baby. And babies are easily
| renewable.
| imtringued wrote:
| Engineer them to consent retroactively.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| We will have total gene replacement at some point. Or
| atleast the vast majority of it.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> Culbertson says gene-edited pork could appear in the US market
| sometime next year. He says the company does not think pork chops
| or other meat will need to carry any label identifying it as
| bioengineered... Genus edited pig embryos to remove the receptor
| that the PRRS virus uses to enter cells._
|
| What would be required to test retail pork product for the
| presence of this receptor?
|
| Along the lines of https://www.plasticlist.org/report
| We launched.. [a] project: to test 100 everyday foods for the
| presence of plastic chemicals.. We formed a team of four people,
| learned how this kind of chemical testing is performed, called
| more than 100 labs to find one that had the experience, quality
| standards, and turnaround time that we needed, collected hundreds
| of samples, shipped them, had them tested, painstakingly
| validated the results, and prepared them to share with you. Over
| time our effort expanded to nearly 300 food products. It took
| half a year and cost about $500,000.
|
| Restaurants and grocery stores can advertise corporate policy to
| use non-GMO meat suppliers.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| This resembles the Chinese HIV CRISPR study because the deleted
| receptor was CCR5, an immune receptor. This was controversial
| because we don't know the long term effects of of deleting CCR5.
|
| Viruses often use immune or other surface proteins as receptors
| presumably because they are important (can't be down-regulated
| too much).
|
| For the pigs, it looks like they deleted just the SRCR5 domain of
| the CD163 protein. CD163 is used by macrophages to scavenge the
| hemoglobin-haptoglobin complex.
|
| A 2017 article (of 6 pigs?) suggests that the engineered pigs are
| resistant to the virus "while maintaining biological function"
| although I don't see any experiments comparing hemoglobin-
| haptoglobin scavenging ability of engineered vs unedited pigs.
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5322883
|
| This 2024 study (of 40 pigs) found 'no significant difference' in
| a panel of health measures and meat quality, except that the
| engineered pigs had statistically significantly more greater
| backfat depth than the edited animals.
| https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genome-editing/articles...
|
| Interestingly, the mean weight of live pigs is slightly higher
| for edited pigs but lower for dead pigs. Total fat slightly
| higher for the edited pigs. These numbers are not statistically
| significant (but only a small number of pigs were tested).
|
| The pigs were assessed at approximately 205 days in age. Pigs can
| live up to 20 years. Would be good to test the long term effects
| and the effects over multiple generations.
|
| This paragraph is striking:
|
| > Under the conditions of these studies, neither homozygous nor
| heterozygous or null pigs inoculated with PRRSV showed the acute
| clinical signs typically observed in commercial pigs and had
| overall low depression and respiratory scores (1). This may be
| explained by the fact that these pigs were sourced from a high-
| health farm and managed with minimal stress, which differs from
| disease expression under commercial conditions.
|
| Sounds like the genetic editing is not necessary as long as the
| farm conditions are good..
| arrosenberg wrote:
| w/r/t the HIV thing - there are HIV immune populations in
| Scandinavia who have a natural mutation affecting CCR5, so
| there is at least some reason to believe it's safe to edit or
| knock out.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14636691/
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| That is interesting.
|
| Do Scandinavians have compensatory mutations on other
| proteins, which allows them to have a mutant CCR5?
|
| Presumably CCR5 exists for reason other than attracting HIV.
| philipov wrote:
| It's dangerous to assume that everything in biology exists
| because it's useful in some way. Some things are just
| spandrels* that came along for the ride, vestigial, or
| otherwise neutral features. Not everything exists because
| it provides an evolutionary advantage.
|
| *: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology)
| jl6 wrote:
| If you're going to assume something, assuming neutrality
| seems the more dangerous assumption. Chesterton's gene.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| If a receptor is used as an entry point by a common virus
| and disabling it prevents infection but evolution has
| kept it around (cells spend energy actively expressing
| it, not having it encoded in the genome) then you can
| assume that there is a function provided by the receptor.
|
| Turns out, CD163 already has a known function.
|
| A spandrel not only has to have obvious function but
| removing it has to not be detrimental. I'm questioning
| the bar that is being used to say that it's not
| detrimental.
|
| Unless humanity was on the brink of starvation and this
| was the only known way to increase food production then
| no it's not dangerous to be cautious.
|
| On the other hand, I think it's dangerous to assume that
| a protein only has one function
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_moonlighting
| arrosenberg wrote:
| I don't believe so. I looked into it a bit more, and it
| looks like homozygous variant carriers are more susceptible
| to other types of infection (West Nile is specifically
| cited), but I don't see anything showing the variant causes
| issues with CCR5s other critical functions. I do think a
| knockout is probably a bad idea based on further reading,
| but modification seems like a promising path.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| I meant a compensatory mutation on another receptor or
| protein besides CD163. I kinda meant it rhetorically.
| It's not an easy thing to answer.
| repiret wrote:
| > The pigs were assessed at approximately 205 days in age. Pigs
| can live up to 20 years. Would be good to test the long term
| effects and the effects over multiple generations.
|
| It would be good to test for those things if the concern was
| for the long-term health of the pigs. The concern is whether or
| not they produce safe meat. Somewhere between most and all of
| the pork I've eaten in my life came from pigs less than a year
| old.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| I understand that. But maybe at 205 days you won't detect a
| change which would more easily detectable later. Maybe we
| don't know exactly what to look for, but if something breaks
| over the long term that would give a clue.
|
| They also only looked at the health of one generation, along
| with the number of offsprings from that first generation.
| What happens after 10 generations? 100? Could there be
| cumulative epigenetic effects from deleting this gene?
| testing22321 wrote:
| > _Sounds like the genetic editing is not necessary as long as
| the farm conditions are good.._
|
| And remember if you document or report on bad farm conditions
| in many US states, you'll go to jail for telling the truth
| while the people running the farm do not.
| marviel wrote:
| source?
| scratcheee wrote:
| I assume they're referring to ag-gag laws,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag Gives a reasonable
| background by the looks.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| Parent poster may be referring to laws on the books that
| forbid the sale of videos depicting where animals are
| subject to harm or treated cruelly. I suspect that these
| laws were passed in response to animal snuff videos a few
| years ago, but the law could be used to prosecute an
| activist, I guess - although it might also demonstrate the
| point the activist was making in order for a prosecution to
| pass.
|
| https://www.animallaw.info/article/detailed-discussion-
| legal...
| jbverschoor wrote:
| And you find it strange the EU doesn't buy it "food"
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > the pigs appear entirely immune to more than 99% of the known
| versions of the PRRS virus, although there is one rare subtype
| that may break through the protection.
|
| If there's already a variant of the virus that can overcome the
| edit, then without additional measures it will simply go from 1%
| of the case to 100% and the disease is going to be as prevalent
| as before and the benefit of the tech will be null after just a
| few years.
|
| (Except that it will draw negative light on CRISPR-based gene
| editing , slowing down actual progress. That's the curse of GMO:
| companies making them for bad reasons and reducing collective
| trust in what is a very promising and important technology for
| long term food security)
| pgryko wrote:
| One step closer to making cystypigs from the game the outer
| worlds
|
| https://theouterworlds.fandom.com/wiki/Cystypig
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