The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved new gene-edited pigs for human consumption.

Researchers engineered the GM pigs to resist Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS), a viral disease that costs the U.S. pork industry US$1.2 billion annually from 2016 to 2020, according to Iowa State University researchers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) calls PRRS “the most economically important viral disease of pigs worldwide.”

To combat PRRS, United Kingdom-based animal genetics company Genus partnered with researchers at the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute. Using the gene-editing tool CRISPR, the team removed a gene that enables the PRRS virus to infect pigs.

“When we’re looking at these edits that are knockouts, like this pig, it is no different from what happens in conventional breeding programs,” Alison Van Eenennaam, an Animal Geneticist and Biotechnology Specialist at the University of California, Davis, tells Food Tank, regarding the FDA's approval of gene-edited pigs. “Nature is basically gene editing all the time.”

Van Eenennaam says the advancement has the potential to increase animal welfare, cost savings, and environmental benefits. “They’re more sustainable pigs, and I think they’ll have a legitimate sustainability argument…if 8 percent of your pigs die and now, they don’t, that’s going to have a better carbon footprint.”

PRRS weakens pigs’ immune systems, making them vulnerable to secondary infections, according to Christine Tait-Burkard, Group Lead at the Roslin Institute. These illnesses often require antibiotics, linking the virus to increased antimicrobial use on farms, showing the upside to gene-edited pigs.

Tait-Burkard tells Food Tank that gene editing is not a cure, but a powerful tool for prevention. “Preventing viral disease, whether through vaccination or genetic resistance, will always have beneficial effects on decreasing antimicrobial interventions,” she says.

But some bioethics experts caution that gene editing can create unintended consequences for animals. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics warns that lifting the current ban on the commercial development of gene-edited animals could actually worsen livestock welfare.

In a recent briefing to the UK Parliament’s Westminster Hall debate on gene editing, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics says that genetic interventions designed to prevent disease could enable animals to endure poorer living conditions, increasing the risk of overcrowding. “Care must therefore be taken to ensure that genome editing does not contribute to an acceleration of unethical or unsustainable practices,” the Council states.

Read the full article about the FDA's approval of gene-edited pigs by Molly Benjamin at Food Tank.