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We need to double food production, with less land and less water, and prevent further environmental degradation. One of the most promising approaches is genetically modified (GM) animals to produce more food with less, and improve animal health and welfare.
The first genetically modified animal has at last been approved by the FDA for the marketplace. The GM AquAdvantage salmon . . . grows much faster and more efficiently and therefore can feed more people for the same resource inputs.
There are several other animal strains already developed that grow faster and more efficiently, produce less waste, are resistant to disease or produce novel products of benefit to humans. These include breeds engineered to solve specific problems in developing countries.
For instance, there . . . goats that produce milk containing an enzyme that could prevent deadly diarrhoea in a million children per year in developing countries.
Some of these strains have been ready to go for more than 10 years but they are still not being used to alleviate problems of malnutrition and disease. Much of this is due to opposition to GM foods.
Related on the SLP
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The worldwide regulatory dysfunction around the breeding of GM animals to produce food for human consumption has effectively limited advancement in this field. Expensive delays and uncertainties have stopped work and limited capacity building in virtually all the developed countries that were first to develop this technology . . .
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GM technology and gene editing have the potential to produce a historic advance in food availability. In the absence of serious safety or welfare concerns, we must question the ethics of comfortable, affluent Westerners imposing their lifestyle choices on millions of undernourished people.
Read full, original post: Opposition to genetically modified animals could leave millions hungry
