Fast-growing salmon. Pork containing heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. These are two examples of products you might see in your local supermarket soon -- animals developed not through conventional breeding but through genetic engineering.
On Jan. 15, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration decided how it will regulate genetically engineered animals, for the first time paving the way for such animals or their products to be sold as food and medicine. The agency has decided to categorize genetically engineered farm animals, also called transgenic animals, as an "animal drug." They will be held to the same requirements already existing for conventionally bred animals treated with hormones or antibiotics. (In the case of transgenic animals, the "drug" is a snippet of DNA.) Products derived from them or containing them as an ingredient will not necessarily require labeling.
A wide range of interested parties, including companies developing genetically engineered animals and consumer protection groups, are generally comfortable with the FDA decision. And yet, consumer acceptance of transgenic animals, particularly as food products, is still an unknown.
American consumers have been eating food from genetically engineered crops, such as corn, soybeans and canola, for a decade. However, transgenic animals have not been sold, pending the FDA deliberations on how to regulate them.
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Why would someone want to genetically engineer animals?
Genetic engineering is a high-tech way to "breed" desirable traits into livestock. The benefits might be for the producer, such as a disease-resistant cow or an easy-to-raise salmon. It might be for the environment -- pigs that produce milder manure, for example -- or for the consumer, say, more nutritious meat.
The old-fashioned way of breeding farmed animals requires selecting offspring with desired traits over successive generations. Ron Stotish, chief executive of Aqua Bounty Technologies in Waltham, Mass., says the power of genetic engineering is that the same end is achieved in "one fell swoop." Transgenic animals also can be fitted with traits they probably would never develop naturally, as in the case of omega-3-producing pigs.
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How is an animal genetically engineered?
