Should biotech piggy go to market?

04.mar.08
Salon.com
Rebecca Clarren
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/03/04/animal_cloning/index.html

Behind locked doors, past a shower, where humans are required to rinse, more than 25 pink pigs crowd, according to this story, into hay-covered pens at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. They look like regular Yorkshire pigs: Their eyes gleam like black marbles, they snort, and they scarf dinner from a trough.

"These pigs behave like pigs; they do everything a pig would do," John Kelly of Mars Landing, a Canadian agricultural development program was quoted as saying. Except for one thing.These pigs have been modified to carry a gene from an innocuous strain of E. coli that has been spliced with a protein from a mouse. This doesn't give the pigs a newfound affinity for cheese. Rather, the added gene enables the animals to produce the enzyme phytase in their saliva. This enzyme, say Guelph researchers, could solve one of the major environmental problems associated with industrial pig farms.

Normal pigs can't break down phytate, a phosphorus-rich compound in their gut. When manure lagoons on hog factories overflow or breach into nearby rivers or seep into groundwater, the high phosphorus content creates algae blooms, killing fish and other marine life. Trademarked the Enviropig, these genetically modified pigs produce 60 percent less phosphorus in their manure than their conventional cousins.

The story goes on to say that although they've been raised at Guelph for seven years, the miracle pigs haven't made it out of the lab. They have been hogtied by American and Canadian regulatory agencies, which have not written regulations for genetically engineered animals' entrance into the marketplace. But thanks to a landmark law recently passed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, these little piggies may soon be headed to market.

In January, when the FDA declared that cloned animals and their progeny are safe to eat, it opened the door to genetic engineering, a prospect that hasn't been widely reported, but one that has plenty of consumer advocates concerned. "In my opinion, the FDA approved animal cloning only to open the door to genetic engineering of animals," Jaydee Hanson of the Center for Food Safety, a Washington, D.C., group was quoted as saying.

For livestock professionals like Kelly, the FDA's decision, and a meeting the U.S. Department of Agriculture held in late November to seek guidance on how to work with transgenic animals, signal that the U.S. is primed to consider the public's appetite for G.E. animals. They say it is a sign that the agency is beginning to take more seriously the job of creating regulations for G.E. animals. And that's a necessary assurance for potential investors, says Barb Glenn of Biotechnology Industry Organization, an international trade organization. "This is huge," Glenn was quoted as saying, adding, "Without cloning, we wouldn't be able to advance genetic engineering research. It allows us to better study G.E. animals and really helps us get the benefits from G.E. research. This contributes to the long stewardship we have in the agricultural industry to improve the animal."

The story goes on to say that despite criticism, labs throughout North America are betting that genetic engineering will be the norm in the future. They include Revivicor in Blacksburg, Va., working on animal tissue transplants for humans. Remember the 1993 movie "Untamed Heart"? As you recall, human biology prevents the acceptance of animal organs and tissue. (Quick reminder: Christian Slater dies because his body rejects his transplanted monkey heart.) At Revivicor, researchers have deleted the gene in pigs that causes the placement of this sugar on pig tissues. In tests, they are transplanting these genetically engineered pig hearts, kidneys, livers and pancreas cells (to treat diabetes) into non-human primates, mostly baboons. Within three years, the company plans to begin human trials. Aside from bridging the gap between human demand for transplants and available organs, Revivicor chief executive officer Dave Ayares says such G.E. pig organs and cells would also be safer than human organ transplants, since they would be free of HIV or hepatitis.

Near the golden cornfields of Sioux Falls, S.D., another experiment in genetic modification is abloom. Hematech, a decade-old biotechnology company, has genetically manipulated cows that produce disease-fighting human antibodies in the plasma of their blood. The clones of these transgenic cows, born with human antibodies in their systems, Enviropigs aren't the only transgenic animals being developed as a way to eliminate the problems associated with large-scale industrial farms. Scientists at Virginia Tech are trying to clone cattle that would be genetically incapable of developing mad cow disease, a deadly brain-wasting illness spread by feeding cows, normally herbivores, the meat and bone meal of infected cattle. Researchers in Virginia would protect cattle from the fatal disease by producing animals that lack prions, a naturally occurring protein that appears to be the main conductor of the pathogens.

The story goes on to say that the FDA has almost no experience regulating environmental impacts that could be associated with transgenic animals. That includes the ecological impact of a transgenic animal getting loose in the environment and breeding with native or conventional populations."The FDA's in a tough spot on cloning and transgenic animals," Michael Taylor, a former FDA and USDA official, who now teaches public health at George Washington University was quoted as saying, adding, "All the heat is on FDA but it's not empowered to deal with all the questions being raised. The FDA is put in a position of making a decision, but it's not empowered to address the broader societal issues."

The FDA issued a boilerplate response that it's "working closely with producers of genetically engineered animals to ensure that they do not enter the food supply unless they have been shown to be safe."

In reality, even the three locked doors of the Enviropig research facility haven't always succeeded in preventing the pigs from getting to market. In early 2002, the carcasses of 11 stillborn Enviropiglets were accidentally taken from a freezer where they were waiting to be incinerated, as is required by law, and shipped to a rendering plant. While there, they were turned into palletized food and fed to chickens and turkeys on Ontario farms. The government didn't destroy any of the eggs or birds because it believed there were no human health concerns.

The week after the FDA decision in January, the Guelph researchers who developed the Enviropig flew to meet with regulators in Washington. There's no timeline at this point for when their green pigs might arrive on our dinner plates as pork chops.