Professor Sang's colleagues at Roslin College developed a breed of pigs resistant to PRRS six years ago.
Although not yet available commercially to UK pig farmers, Jenners, the UK company that commercialised the PRRS-resistant pigs, has received regulatory approval for use in Colombia.
The company has also applied for approval to bring the pigs to the U.S. market, which could happen as early as next spring. Genus also plans to seek approval for commercial use of its gene-edited pigs in Canada, Mexico and Japan.
Despite strong opinions on both sides, there appears to be room for agreement on some applications for the technology.
CIWF's Stevenson, for example, believes that gene editing can at least be applied in an ethical way.
To do so, he says, three criteria must be met: first, the resulting change must not be likely to raise animal welfare concerns; second, the goal must not be achieved by less intensive methods; and third, it must not have the effect of entrenching industrialized livestock production.
According to Mr. Stevenson, PRRS-resistant pigs could meet all three criteria in certain situations, as could efforts by the egg industry to use gene editing to produce only female chicks, which would eliminate the killing of billions of day-old male chicks each year.
Likewise, Professor Mijek Chagunda, director of the Roslin Institute’s Center for Tropical Genetics and Health, believes in the positive potential of gene editing, but argues that it must be carefully monitored.
He says the technology could improve the lives of the world's poorest farmers. “Seventy to eighty percent of farmers are small farmers with two or three animals,” he says. Devastating diseases can leave farmers and their families with nothing.
“So giving them animals that have been prepared with these techniques will help protect them from this huge risk to their livelihood,” said Professor Chagunda.
But Professor Chagunda warned that good, strong regulation is needed for this technology to be accepted by the public.
“Some changes may be too experimental, and we shouldn't implement them,” he said.
“Scientists must work with regulators to get the good products that farmers and consumers want. We must do science that is ethical while also helping humanity.”
Roslin’s gene-editing effort is being led by Professor Bruce Whitelaw, who was a scientist at the institute when Dolly the Sheep was cloned. He has gone through the process of explaining the potential benefits of this incredible technological advancement in the past, and believes there is an urgent need to do so again now.
“We are a world leader in technology, and we sit at the top of the list in terms of developing it,” he says. “If we don’t have laws that allow us to do that, our ability to sit there slowly erodes, and we lose investment, scientific talent, and the vitality of our economy to other countries.”
