Cows without horns and pigs without testicles could just be the start of what scientists could be permitted to create, should regulations concerning gene editing be relaxed following a Defra consultation currently underway. We unravel the science, the ideas coming from other parts of the world, and of course the ethical and moral implications.

Announced last month, the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has launched a two-part consultation on the regulation of genetic technologies, specifically ‘gene editing’ (GE) of animals and crops. The timing with the conclusion of Brexit is no coincidence, with an EU court having effectively ruled that GE should be subject to the same tight regulations as GMO despite some key differences in the technology.

As reported in the Guardian, George Eustice, the secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, said: “Gene editing has the ability to harness the genetic resources that mother nature has provided, in order to tackle the challenges of our age. This includes breeding crops that perform better, reducing costs to farmers and impacts on the environment, and helping us all adapt to the challenges of climate change.”

Eustice said also at the Oxford Farming Conference: “[Gene editing’s] potential was blocked by a European Court of Justice ruling in 2018, which is flawed and stifling to scientific progress. Now that we have left the EU, we are free to make coherent policy decisions based on science and evidence. That begins with this consultation.”

To be clear, GE is differentiated from genetically modified organisms (GMO). With GE, changes are limited to only those that could be accomplished through selective breeding, which as we know has given us broiler chickens who grow to such a size in such a short period that their legs can’t support their weight; hens who lay 20 times more eggs per year than their wild ancestors, and dairy cows whose udders are grossly oversized and overproductive. GMO, on the other hand, involves introducing genes from other organisms.

We can think of GE as a shortcut to all the horrors of selective breeding and more, the idea being that we would do them anyway given enough time and by selecting for the right traits. This may sound somewhat more measured than GMO, but a new disease-resistant crop strain is one thing - what George Eustice and Defra fail to mention is that depending on the outcome of part one of the public consultation, which ends on March 17, legislative changes could result in one to two years’ time that would allow for terrifying ‘adaptations’ to the genes of cows, pigs and other farmed animals.

Conceivably, cows and goats with smaller horns could be selectively bred over generations to create hornless offspring, thus removing a common cause of injury within herds and groups. The benefit to the farmer would be obvious, reducing the cost to ‘debud’ horns or treat injuries with antibiotics, thereby removing welfare concerns and paving the way for greater stocking densities.

GE using technology such as CRISPR - a cheap and commonplace method for targeting and switching individual genes on or off without affecting the overall genome - could go a lot further and into the realm of science fiction. Take for example male pigs, whose flesh takes on a distinct taste when they reach puberty thus the reason why castration of piglets is widespread in Europe, the US and other countries, usually performed at a week old and without anaesthesia because it is too costly - according to a report by Mother Jones, turning off a gene called KISSR would prevent their testicles from developing and descending. 

In the UK, where consumers apparently are less sensitive to ‘boar taint’, castration is not common as farmers instead choose to slaughter pigs at a younger age but lower weight. However, we speculate that if a piglet was to never mature sexually they could be kept alive for longer, presenting a strong financial incentive to UK pig farmers who could achieve the same slaughter weights as their counterparts in Europe while still avoiding castration altogether.

The strategy for subsequently breeding future generations of KISSR pigs who can’t pass on their own sperm is equally disturbing, involving another gene-edited type of male pig whose testicles and reproductive organs work fine, except they don’t produce their own sperm and so act as incubators for transplanted KISSR sperm.

Perhaps the most contentious outcome of GE is the removal of an animal’s capacity to feel pain and have a subjective experience that we would call suffering, or even have any experience of the outside world whatsoever with ideas surfacing of breeding animals devoid of basic sensory perception such as blindness and deafness. According to this article published in the scientific journal Animals, “it could soon become technically feasible to use gene editing to disenhance animals in ways that reduce their capacity to suffer from pain without also causing major side-effects.” The article discusses the defence of research in this area, utilising technologies such as CRISPR and whether the issue of suffering combined with moral and legal imperatives fall within European regulations. Their conclusion is that further research is justified, but not whether that necessarily means it should happen in a commercial sense.

Regarding the right or wrong of genetic manipulation, GE is considered by some scientists to be more ethical due to it being an extension of selective breeding, which happens anyway, and it is this pathway to morality that has partially enabled the Defra consultation. But within the sphere of animal rights and welfare organisations, grey areas abound.

From an abolitionist animal rights perspective, it is not a difficult one to judge when we maintain that all animal use is unjustifiable in all but the most extreme and often hypothetical situations. Why would it somehow be ok if an animal experienced no suffering when it is their exploitation and death we object to, not their experience of life.

Kelsey Piper, writing for Vox.com last month, also struck a salient point regarding public perception: 

“Genetically engineering animals not to suffer is, of course, an implicit statement that their normal conditions are so awful that even this partial solution is an improvement –– and no one wants to be reminded of factory farming when making purchasing decisions. Moreover, lots of consumers are opposed to all GMOs; that’s a big consumer base to potentially alienate. Instead, gene editing will likely be used for smaller, less controversial measures.”

It is conceivable that should GE technologies become a reality, welfare labelling could be developed to tell consumers that the flesh they are buying came from animals who could not experience suffering, a ‘Red Tractor Enhanced’ sticker perhaps. Whether that would put off people who are suspicious of GMO is a whole other story, but we know that non-GMO or words to that effect on products is somewhat of a selling point, and there is considerable pressure to ensure that labelling would reflect GE origins of food to protect informed consumer choice.

Ending things on a very real example for the UK, in 2018 a team of scientists from the University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute used GE to create pigs resistant to the virus that causes Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS), a deadly respiratory disease that affects young pigs. This may sound like something animal welfare groups would be all for, but Helen Browning of the Soil Association and pig farmer, speaking to the BBC, said that "if gene editing is being used for disease resistance and it is not encouraging companies to change the way they keep their pigs so they don't get disease in the first place, then it becomes a problem rather than a solution."

As history has shown us, no good for animals has ever resulted from selective breeding, and if GE is an acceleration of that then we foresee only more problems. GE research could unlock truly beneficial things concerning plants and bacteria especially within medical research, but for raising animals for food, any shortcut is just a way to perpetuate the current system. As Peter Stevenson, chief policy adviser at Compassion in World Farming, said in the Guardian: 

“This is pushing us down the industrial farming route. It is entrenching an antiquated system of farming that we would do better to abandon.”

GE could make the unsustainable, sustainable, and erase altogether the moral arguments against intensive farming. Gone would be the days when we could point to US-style mega-farms and large scale feedlots (CAFOs), or intensive dairy farms that are all too common here in the UK, and tell people that the animals are suffering. Without the shock factor, our job as animal rights campaigners would be to hone our messaging to get across the more difficult idea that we just shouldn’t be using animals at all, regardless of their pain and suffering or lack thereof.

But it is not too late to object. The current Defra public consultation ends on March 17, and you have until midnight on that day to write in and have your say. This is the consultation that could pave the way for legislative changes here in the UK, so now is the time to speak up. Tell ministers that if they truly care about sustainable food production and the treatment of animals, they wouldn’t play god and take shortcuts that do nothing but allow them to sleep easier at night and turn a blind eye to an abhorrent system.

Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager for Surge.

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