GM animals on the menu

January 2022

As we enter 2022, what happened to the GM edible animals that we've been promised over the years?

Super-fast growing GM salmon have been trying to emerge from the lab since 1989 [1,2,3].

Having gained regulatory approval in America in 2015, GM salmon are now legal to produce and sell there despite being declared unlawful in 2020 due to the absence of any environmental risk assessment.

Triple stacked GM maize causes leaky stomachs

September 2018
Because partially digested food can be held in the stomach for some hours, the stomach is the part of our body most exposed to the materials in our diet. Yet, tests able to reveal pathological changes and gastric dysfunction, such as measurements of stomach tissue structure or diagnostic staining of stomach cells, are never included in GM safety assessments.

An Australian team of scientists has made a start on filling this gap.

A succession of sick pigs?

May 2018

In a re-run of the GM wonder-crop revolution which promised weed-free fields growing pest-free crops, it looks like we're getting a GM wonder-pig revolution of disease-free herds (soon to be followed by flocks of GM wonder-hens and shoals of GM wonder-fish).

Scottish scientists have modified pig genes to "massively increase resistance and resilience to infection". The first targets are 'Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus' (PRRSV) which causes breathing problems and leads to still births and stunted offspring when sows are infected, and African Swine fever.

Environmentally-friendly, but dead

December 2017

In 1999, biotech boffins in Canada invented the 'Enviropig' genetically transformed to digest grain-based feedstuffs which pigs don't naturally eat, but which are now part-and-parcel of modern intensive pig-rearing [1].

This piggy-wonder was touted as being cheaper and greener to produce because, thanks to its novel digestive system, it wouldn't excrete huge amounts of polluting phosphates, and wouldn't smell. 'Environmentally-friendly' is always a good PR hand to play.

A hopeful herd of Enviropigs was maintained for 17 years, waiting for the market to want to eat them.

The pigs are all dead now. Total disaster. No customers. All cost and no return.

Fast fat animals

December 2014

A 2014 review of the "Prevalence and impacts of genetically engineered feedstuffs on livestock populations" seems to have come up with an animal version of the trillions of GM meals which 'prove' safety [1].

The stated purpose of the study is three fold.

GM feed 'prevalence' is described in a "summary of the suppliers of GE and non-GE feed in global trade".

Real-world data on Glyphosate

October 2014

A healthy pig. CC photo by thornypup on Flickr.

When new antiviral drugs came on the markets, many governments thought it prudent to stock-pile them in case of any major new viral epidemic.

Accordingly, the UK government forked out £500 million and the US government $1.3 billion largely on the Roche version of antiviral sold as 'Tamiflu'.

The Cochrane Foundation, a global not-for-profit organisation whose aim is “to produce accessible health information free from commercial sponsorship and other commercial interest”, conducted their own review of 46 pharmaceutical company-sponsored Randomised Control Trials* on the effectiveness of Tamiflu. Such Trials are carried out routinely as part of the drug's licensing procedure. Its conclusion was that the benefits of this class of drug had been exaggerated. In short, the money paid to pharmaceutical companies for such flu-treatments had been largely wasted and could have been much better spent on other health measures.

*Randomised Control Trials are considered the gold standard for assessing drug efficacy. They involve a random selection of subjects half of whom are given the test drug and half of whom are given a placebo. Neither the subjects nor the researchers know who has been given what until the data on the drug's effects have been collected.

Roche, governments, health-workers and scientists swiftly responded that Tamiflu is effective in alleviating symptoms and saving lives.

A counter-review was then produced by Roche: this wasn't based on scientific investigation, but on observational evidence from 78 studies of patients admitted to hospital. The Company claims that these “real-world” data are more relevant to judging the efficacy of a drug than Randomised Control Trials.

So, what happens if you apply Roche's emphasis on real-world data to GM?

First ever long-term GM feeding study on pigs

August 2013

“ ... more than 150 scientific studies have been done on animals fed biotech crops and to date, there is no scientific evidence of any detrimental impact” (biotech representative, CropLife International).

With a bit of cherry-picking of what constitutes appropriate scientific evidence this may be true. However, it's easy to see why no 'detrimental impact' has emerged. The 'scientific studies' has been largely based on animal models with little relevance to humans, on diets restricted to single GMOs, on very short time-scales, and on superficial data relevant only to commercial livestock production.

When a team of Australian and American scientists, led by Dr. Judy Carman, carried out an experiment which avoided the above short-comings, it raised concerns.

Danish pig farmer whistleblower

May 2012

Photo by Klaus Höpfner at de.wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)
or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], from Wikimedia Commons

The Danish pig industry is well-known for combining intensive production with outstanding productivity (almost 30 weaned piglets per sow per year), and exceptionally low antibiotic use (as much as a quarter of what some countries find they have to apply). In fact, antibiotic use in Denmark is strictly controlled by veterinarians and is recorded.

Danish pig farmers might be about to become well-known for something else: they may prove the world's whistle-blowers for problems arising in livestock given GM feed.

Pig feeding study not reassuring

February 2012

Amidst the dearth of animal feeding studies actually designed to assess the safety of GM food, a paper has at last been published which is like a breath of fresh air. The study is relevant to humans; it recognises and minimises confounding factors in the experimental materials; it examines specifically the organs which will be affected directly by toxic qualities in food; and it acknowledges its own limitations.

Pigs are a very good model for humans because their digestive system is very similar. During the first few weeks after weaning, piglets grow fast and so react quickly to dietary influences. A team of Irish scientists took advantage of these characteristics to carry out a study of the effects of consuming 'Bt' insecticidal maize, MON 810.

P-free pigs in the pipeline

January 2011

For over a decade, scientists have been trying to create an environmentally friendly pig, using genetic transformation.

The problem with pigs is that their manure contains high levels of phosphorus (P), some of which inevitably makes its way into waterways.  Once there, it causes rampant algal growth, or 'blooms', which use up all the oxygen, choke out all other life, and create lifeless 'dead' zones around them.   The phosphorous must also be cleaned out of our own water supply, at a price.  And, pigs excreting lots of P smell.

In other words, if you like equations:

PIGS = FOOD + PROFIT + P

but,

P = ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE + CLEAN-UP COSTS + SMELL

Tracking the problem back a stage, scientists pin-pointed the P problem as lying in the pigs' digestive system.

Ruminants, such as cows and sheep, eat grains and legumes.  The digestive system of these animals is designed to encourage the enzyme activity needed to break down these types of feed; in particular, the enzyme 'phytase' digests the abundance of phosphorous-rich substances there.  Pigs, on the other hand, root around and eat just about everything, except grains and legumes.  In doing this they are sensible because pigs can’t generate phytase, and can't digest them.

Our intensively-reared pigs are now fed on intensively-grown high-protein crops, such as GM maize and GM soya.  To digest such materials, the animals need phytase.

Although farmers often add a phytase supplement to pig-feed to make up for the natural lack, the strategy is of limited success.  What we end up with, therefore, are pigs which have an awful lot of undigested phosphorous-rich material in their manure, which leads us to environmental damage, plus clean-up costs, plus smell.

Genetic engineers have homed-in on solving this problem at its digestive source.  They have created a GM pig which produces its own phytase.  (Nothing like a cow.)  The phytase-generating gene is copied from an E.coli bacterium, and because bacterial genes don't work too well in pigs, they’ve been attached to mouse DNA to switch them on.

The prototype P-free pigs are now running around and grunting in Canadian laboratories, and are reported to be excreting less P.  According to their creators, the GM pigs look, sound, behave and taste (so presumably someone's been eating them) like a 'normal' pig.

Although it will be many years before the novel pigs are considered for approval to enter our food chain, the PR is already on the trot to prepare the ground: the pigs have been dubbed “Enviropigs” and are touted as being cheaper and greener to produce.

A win:win GM product?

Well, take a step back and look at the 'problem' again: pigs can't digest phosphorous-rich plant material.

Do pigs really have a deficient digestive system?  Have these poor inadequate beasts been polluting our planet with half-digested excreta for ever?

The answers, of course, are no and no.

Pigs have a traditional role in many cultures because their digestive systems thrive on human scraps.  One pig in the yard doesn't cause algal blooms, nor unpotable water, nor stench.  Non-traditional pig-rearing now feeds them a restricted diet of high-phosphorous commodity crops such as (GM) soya and maize, and packs the pigs together in a restricted space, in their thousands.

Enviropigs seem nothing more than a clever trick to redesign an animal to shore up an unsustainable, intensive farming system.

The GM pigs are also diverting decades of scientific attention and resources into a product with little more than finger-crossing that consumers will ever buy it.

OUR COMMENT
We seem to be clever enough to put genes into a pig to radically transform its gut physiology, purely so that we can feed it GM plants from the other side of the world.

At the same time, one-half of American and European food, most of it very acceptable to the porcine palate, goes to landfill, right beside all those pigs jammed in their styes.

How clever is that?

Also, bear in mind that E. coli. genes in our pork pose an unknown (but suspected) risk of promoting pathogen evolution in both pigs and human gut microbes, while mouse DNA in our children's chipolatas pose an unknown (but suspected) link between pig-, mouse- and human-pathogens.

Modern scientists are clever enough to provide a GM fix for a pile of problems we created in the first place.  Would this cleverness not be better directed at removing the problem?

This little P-free pig is a long way from market and may never get there, but a lot of time and money is being spent on it nevertheless.  NOW is the time to ask for sensible use of funding for food-based research.
SOURCES:

• David Derbyshire, Frankenswine, the less pungent pig, Daily Mail 5.01.11
• Phytase, Genetika Scientific Center of Russian Federation, January 2011
• Anne Minard, Move over bacon.  Here comes something greener, National Geographic News, 30.03.10
• Tristram Stuart, 2009, Waste – uncovering the global food scandal, ISBN 978-0-141-03634-2
• Knowlton et al., June 2005, Exogenous Phytase Plus Cellulase and Phosphorus Excretion in Lactating Dairy Cows,  Professional Animal Scients