FDA Approves Gene-Hacked CRISPR Pigs for Human Consumption

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a type of CRISPR gene-edited pig for human consumption.

As MIT Technology Review reports, only an extremely limited list of gene-modified animals are cleared by regulators to be eaten in the United States, including a transgenic salmon that has an extra gene to grow faster, and heat-tolerant beef cattle.

And now a type of illness-resistant pig could soon join their ranks. British company Genus used the popular gene-editing technique CRISPR to make pigs immune to a virus that causes an illness called porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).

It's the same technology that's been used to gene-hack human babies — experiments that have proven far more controversial — and develop medicine in the form of gene therapies.

The PRRS virus can easily spread in factory farms in the US and cause the inability to conceive, increase the number of stillborn pigs, and trigger respiratory complications, including pneumonia.

It's been called the "most economically important disease" affecting pig producers, since it can have a devastating effect on their bottom lines. According to MIT Tech, it causes losses of more than $300 million a year in the US alone.

Genus' gene-editing efforts have proven highly successful so far, with the pigs appearing immune to 99 percent of known versions of the virus.

Using CRISPR, the company knocked out a receptor that allowed the PRRS virus to enter cells, effectively barring it from infecting its host.

Beyond the respiratory illness, scientists are using gene-editing to make pigs less vulnerable or even immune to other infections, including swine fever.

But before we can eat a pork chop from a gene-edited pig, Genus says that it will have to lock down regulatory approval in Mexico, Canada, Japan, and China as well, the United States' biggest export markets for pork, as MIT Tech reports.

The company is hoping gene-edited pork could land in the US market as soon as next year.

But whether you'll actually know if you're eating meat from a pig that had a virus receptor turned off using a cutting-edge DNA modification technique is unclear.

"We aren't aware of any labelling requirement," Genus subsidiary Pig Improvement Company CEO Matt Culbertson told MIT Tech.

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