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The US has approved CRISPR pigs for food
- andsoitis 1y agoI can already see CRISPR Bacon™ in our future.
- janice1999 1y agoI 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 1y agoWhat’s the idea behind it? Just anti consumer or is there a reasonable angle?
- conception 1y agoEats into profits and increases accountability.
- justin66 1y agoI believe they prefer the term “pro-business.”
- estebank 1y agoIf 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 1y agoI 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 1y ago> 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 1y agolike gluten free on corn chips
- ThunderSizzle 1y ago> 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.
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- tbrownaw 1y agoThe 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 1y agoThe 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 1y agoAre you declaring first use?
- theGeatZhopa 1y agoThe new job at McDonald's: CRISPRer - your one job is to take the bacon and grill it crispy.
- charliebwrites 1y agoI’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 1y agoIf this becomes common it will be illegal to label food as gmo free
- aaronbaugher 1y agoThat's possible. I don't know the current status of it, but in the 90s the FDA had ruled that dairy farms which didn't inject their cows with supplemental bovine growth hormone (BST) couldn't put that on the label. Their argument was that putting "BST-free" on a label suggested that BST might make the milk less healthy in some way, and the FDA had ruled that it didn't, so you weren't allowed to market your milk in a way that could give that impression. Kind of bizarre, considering that food advertising routinely suggests all sorts of good or bad things about products, like the idea that if you drink a certain brand of beer or drive a certain model of car you will be surrounded by hot models. But there's long been a revolving door between Big Ag and departments like the FDA and USDA, so not exactly surprising that the FDA would go to bat for a Big Ag Pharma product.
- Aloisius 1y agoSure. 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 1y agoFarms 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 1y ago>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 1y agoWhat 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 1y agoThis 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 1y agoBecause 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.
- Natsu 1y agoBiology is always messy, but most impacts of off-target changes would be for the pig. When I look at references like this, it's hard to see what there is going to somehow affect humans: https://molecularsciences.org/content/the-challenges-of-crispr-risks-off-target-effects-and-regulation/ https://molecularsciences.org/content/the-challenges-of-cris... I've yet to see anyone give anything but unknowns as their answer for why it's bad, or what might happen. Nobody seems to have any specific pathway for bad things to happen in mind.
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- comrade1234 1y agoThis is just so that they can pack even more pigs into a factory farm.
- onlyrealcuzzo 1y agoHow is that possible? Are the pigs going to grow vertical or something?
- cenamus 1y agoI, they already stack the floors vertically, putting them in matrix style boxes wouldn't be that surprising
- aaronbaugher 1y agoSquare pigs. The movie Space Truckers was prophetic.
- stefantalpalaru 1y ago[dead]
- AzzyHN 1y agoThis 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 1y ago> 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.
- Voultapher 1y agoThere 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 1y agoDegrees of harm and justification are pointless.
- 486sx33 1y agoOh man, this is bad. How many studies do we have some the consumption of CRISPR anything by humans ?
- emorning3 1y ago[flagged]
- emorning3 1y agoYou know its true
- DesaiAshu 1y agoWe could also just stop breeding genetically modified sentient animals for protein and directly synthesize protein...
- barbazoo 1y agoOr just eat vegetables.
- shutupnerd0000 1y ago[flagged]
- barbazoo 1y agoSource?
- ThunderSizzle 1y ago[flagged]
- barbazoo 1y agoStraw man response > Vegetables are alive too and scream when cut.
- Larrikin 1y ago[dead]
- TylerLives 1y agohttps://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/983739 https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/983739
- barbazoo 1y ago
- SoftTalker 1y ago> 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 1y agoYes
- biophysboy 1y agoEvading 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 1y agoHowever, 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 1y agoCould 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sVfTPaxRwk
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- onlyrealcuzzo 1y agoThe majority of consumers aren't willing to spend a penny on that.
- herbst 1y agoIn Switzerland where you can tell on every piece of supermarket meat what kind of farming/standard it is trough a easy to follow colour code and some kinda Trustable labels, you very well see customer pick the more expensive ones. Same thing in Austria, clear labelling, good availability, people are buying it. Nobody in Spain does because none of their supermarkets has any concept for labelling the meat standard So it's easy to say nobody would if they didn't really try
- chneu 1y agoMost 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.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- unfitted2545 1y agogood day to be a vegan.
- nerdjon 1y agoI 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 1y agoSo 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 1y agoNo… 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 1y ago>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 1y agoThat 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.
- lazystar 1y agodoes this mean they can create a kosher pig? huge business opportunity there.
- BuyMyBitcoins 1y agoYou’d have to CRISPR parts of the Torah to accomplish that.
- looofooo0 1y agoLol, achieving the neccesary characteristics (cloven hooves and rumination), i am not sure that thing would be called a pig anymore.
- ajma 1y agoMmmm CRISPR bacon
- sinuhe69 1y ago>>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 1y agoI think it’s fine. I’m ready for heavily genetically modified humans given they volunteer for it.
- lantry 1y agoI think your two statements are contradictory. Babies can't volunteer for anything
- BuyMyBitcoins 1y ago[flagged]
- anonym29 1y ago[flagged]
- timewizard 1y ago> subjecting newborn boys It's an elective procedure. No one has made it mandatory. > by giving some disease prevention excuse that is minimally effective at best and bogus at worst. A reported 10x reduction in UTIs does not seem "minimal." > if it’s ethical to dock a dog’s tail or clip its ears because you think it looks better Usually it's done for working dogs to reduce their chance of injury. Even in countries where the practice is fully illegal exceptions are made for working dogs. > But for a newborn? Well, that’s just how we do things. We tend to respect peoples religions. Judaism, Islam and some branches of Christianity require it for males. We accept the practice for newborns under the logic that it will be less traumatic and less risky than doing it when they come of age later in life.
- walterbell 1y ago> 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 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 1y agoThis 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 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/10.3389/fgeed.2024.1322012/full 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 1y agow/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/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14636691/
- jbverschoor 1y agoAnd you find it strange the EU doesn’t buy it “food”
- decimalenough 1y ago[flagged]
- littlestymaar 1y ago> 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 1y agoOne step closer to making cystypigs from the game the outer worlds https://theouterworlds.fandom.com/wiki/Cystypig https://theouterworlds.fandom.com/wiki/Cystypig
- snthpy 1y agoWill this make the bacon crispier?