6 promising genetically engineered animals stuck in regulatory purgatory

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Image credit: (Left-to-right) Flickr / Korona Lacasse; Flickr / Pimthida

You’ve probably heard the news that genetically engineered (GE) Atlantic salmon is on the way.

Here are six other genetically engineered animals that never made it as far downstream as the AquAdvantage salmon:

Mastitis-resistant livestock

The very first genetically modified cow bred for human food was named Annie. She was born in March of 2000….

At the time, scientists were trying to breed a cow that would be genetically resistant to mastitis, a staph infection that develops in milk ducts during breastfeeding.

“It’s not very often that you get to say you cured a disease,” Kevin Wells, an ARS geneticist, and one of the project’s lead scientists, later told Harvest Public Media. “But because of the fear of public perception, those animals, no one’s even attempted to take them to market.”

Enviropig

In 1999, the first pig genetically modified for food was created by scientists at the University of Guelph, outside Toronto. The enviropiglet had genetic material, attached to mouse DNA, which produced an enzyme that worked on digesting phosphorus and secreting less of it in his poop. If this little mouse-pig had gone to market, it would’ve been tremendously attractive to hog farmers trying to minimize pollution, like toxic algal blooms, caused by their runoff.

Editor’s note: Click the link below to view the full list

Read full, original post: Hornless Holsteins and Enviropigs: the genetically engineered animals we never knew

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