Should biotech piggy go to market?

Consumer advocates worry that the FDA is throwing open the barn door to genetically engineered animals too quickly.

By Rebecca Clarren

Read more: Environment, Politics, Science, Genetics, News, Animals, Biotechnology

March 4, 2008 | Behind locked doors, past a shower, where humans are required to rinse, more than 25 pink pigs crowd into hay-covered pens at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. They look like regular Yorkshire pigs: Their eyes gleam like black marbles, they snort, and they scarf dinner from a trough. "These pigs behave like pigs; they do everything a pig would do," says John Kelley of Mars Landing, a Canadian agricultural development program. Except for one thing.

These pigs have been modified to carry a gene from an innocuous strain of E. coli that has been spliced with a protein from a mouse. This doesn't give the pigs a newfound affinity for cheese. Rather, the added gene enables the animals to produce the enzyme phytase in their saliva. This enzyme, say Guelph researchers, could solve one of the major environmental problems associated with industrial pig farms.

Normal pigs can't break down phytate, a phosphorus-rich compound in their gut. When manure lagoons on hog factories overflow or breach into nearby rivers or seep into groundwater, the high phosphorus content creates algae blooms, killing fish and other marine life. Trademarked the Enviropig, these genetically modified pigs produce 60 percent less phosphorus in their manure than their conventional cousins.

Although they've been raised at Guelph for seven years, the miracle pigs haven't made it out of the lab. They have been hogtied by American and Canadian regulatory agencies, which have not written regulations for genetically engineered animals' entrance into the marketplace. But thanks to a landmark law recently passed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, these little piggies may soon be headed to market.

In January, when the FDA declared that cloned animals and their progeny are safe to eat, it opened the door to genetic engineering, a prospect that hasn't been widely reported, but one that has plenty of consumer advocates concerned. "In my opinion, the FDA approved animal cloning only to open the door to genetic engineering of animals," says Jaydee Hanson of the Center for Food Safety, a Washington, D.C., group.

The U.S. agency reached the decision after reviewing hundreds of scientific studies that found no significant nutritional or toxicological differences in the composition of the meat or milk of cloned cows, pigs and goats from those of their more traditional brethren. In the short term, that means that breeders of cows, pigs and goats can now genetically copy their most prized animals as a way to take the guesswork out of breeding. Within an undisclosed period of time, food from clones and their descendants can be sold at grocery stores and restaurants without any special labels. In the long term, the decision is the first step to the regulation and commercialization of genetically engineered animals.

For livestock professionals like Kelley, the FDA's decision, and a meeting the U.S. Department of Agriculture held in late November to seek guidance on how to work with transgenic animals, signal that the U.S. is primed to consider the public's appetite for G.E. animals. They say it is a sign that the agency is beginning to take more seriously the job of creating regulations for G.E. animals. And that's a necessary assurance for potential investors, says Barb Glenn of Biotechnology Industry Organization, an international trade organization. "This is huge," says Glenn. "Without cloning, we wouldn't be able to advance genetic engineering research. It allows us to better study G.E. animals and really helps us get the benefits from G.E. research. This contributes to the long stewardship we have in the agricultural industry to improve the animal."

To clone an animal, a cell nucleus is taken from an "elite" animal, implanted into an egg whose nucleus has been removed, cultivated into an embryo in a lab, and then implanted in the womb of a surrogate "mother" of the same species. To genetically engineer an animal, scientists splice foreign genes, generally from some other type of animal, into a nucleus, and then implant the modified embryo into a host mother.

Creating a transgenic animal is incredibly difficult and expensive, prone to mistakes that can cause the premature death of animals. "Genetic engineering doesn't work all that well," says Hanson. He points out that once genetic farmers produce the perfect animal through trial and error, they will save a tremendous amount of money by cloning its genotype -- which is why they welcome the FDA ruling. "When they find it works in an animal, they want to copy it with cloning," Hanson says. "Cloning is how you Xerox your success."

Hanson and other watchdog groups, including the Union of Concerned Scientists and Consumers Union, have been critical of the FDA's research review that led to its approval of cloning, claiming that the agency dismissed studies that raised questions about safety. "It was a pathetic risk assessment," says Michael Hansen of Consumers Union. "There were small sample sizes and the studies weren't designed properly. For controls, they used cows in other fields, not raised under the same husbandry conditions."

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