New reports suggest that gene editing could bring us disease-resistant pork as soon as 2025. It’s been thirty years since the first genetically modified tomato hit store shelves. That first promise of revolutionized farming has only grown as genetic technologies have improved, though it has remained mostly unfulfilled.
Thankfully, that appears to be changing as US regulatory authorities are expected to approve a new pig that has been gene-edited to make it more resistant to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS). This idea of gene-edited super livestock isn’t a new one, either. In fact, we’ve seen quite a few attempts at it in the past.
Scientists previously created a “super stud,” a gene-edited cow, and several gene-edited pigs, which we reported on earlier this year. These latest reports of disease-resistant pork build off those earlier successes from Genus, the international breeding company behind the genetically modified pigs.
There are, of course, several benefits, the company behind the attempt says, to having gene-edited pork that is resistant to common diseases like PRRS, the biggest being the fact it could help cut down on the losses farmers often suffer due to the disease. However, others have cautioned that moving too fast in this space could lead farmers to simply overstock their livestock.
This would then possibly introduce even more diseases as the animal’s living conditions would continue to worsen. Livestock living conditions have been a huge point of contention for several decades, especially in the United States. But getting this new disease-resistant pork onto store shelves isn’t as simple as the U.S. stamping its approval on it.
It also needs approval in all the major markets that the U.S. exports to. While Genus is working on gene-editing meat, other researchers are also using gene-editing to combat a disease called TR4, which infects and kills most edible bananas.
Trials are underway for these different gene-edited foods. However, it is unclear exactly when they will be approved and we will be able to buy disease-resistance pork from the meat market counter.
