Oranges and tangerines. Alligators and crocodiles. Concrete and cement. Identical twins, even. There are a lot of things in this world that appear the same but are, indeed, different. And that’s the underlying principle behind the recent regulatory approval of the gene-edited, PRRS-resistant pig in Canada – in a nutshell, at least.
Look deeper and you’ll see a robust approval process that puts consumer, environmental and animal safety at the forefront of an exhaustive examination of the scientific data on the use of gene-edited pigs as food. The approval by Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) formally recognizes that pork from PIC’s PRRS-resistant pigs is as safe and nutritious to eat as pork from non-gene-edited pigs on the market. So, the same but different. But how and why?
Stuart Smyth has some thoughts about that. A professor at the University of Saskatchewan, Smyth’s areas of research include agricultural biotechnology and its intersection with regulatory processes, both here and abroad, and he’s very pleased to see Canada approve the PRRS-resistant pig. He advocated hard for it.
“Gene editing is the next wave for all agricultural innovation,” he says. “We’re seeing it in a wide variety of crops and it’s good to see the same scientific process applied in this case.”
As with any agricultural innovation, gene editing can be misrepresented or misunderstood. Context, says Smyth, is everything. Knowing why this gene-edited pig was developed, what problems it solves and, as important, what problems it does not create is key for consumer acceptance, not only of the technology, but of the process that approved it.
What goes into the regulatory decision
Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is a devastating virus that has major economic and emotional problems for hog farmers around the world. PRRS infections can cause breathing problems in pigs, fevers, appetite suppression, stillborn piglets and death. There are no effective treatments and while there are PRRS vaccines, they’re only partially effective.
PIC used CRISPR gene editing technology to remove a tiny portion of DNA where the virus enters and infects the pig. Without that snippet, the virus has no way to enter the animal, making it effectively resistant to PRRS.
It’s worth taking a moment to look at what Health Canada and the CFIA considered when approving PIC’s gene-edited pig. As Smyth points out it’s not the first time Canadian regulatory agencies have reviewed and approved agricultural innovations made using this technology. But until now, only gene-edited crops have gone through the process. The PRRS-resistant pig was the first gene-edited livestock up for approval, and the question for him was: would an animal be treated differently than a plant?
Smyth didn’t think it should. He made a submission to the regulatory agencies advocating that the scientific process used to assess gene-edited plants should apply to animals, too. “As long as a plant had no foreign DNA in it, it was approved,” he says. “I argued on the merits that the same scientific system should also apply here. There is no difference.”
To be clear, Health Canada and the CFIA look at much more than whether foreign DNA is present in the gene-edited organism, although that is a key difference between traditional genetically modified (GM) organisms and gene-edited ones (the former typically involves DNA introduced from other species, while the latter typically involves highly targeted changes within an organism’s own DNA).
In the case of the PRRS-resistant pig, regulators looked at how the pig was developed (using CRISPR technology), the composition and nutritional quality of the meat compared to non-edited pigs, the potential for these pigs to cause allergic reactions and the health status of the pigs themselves.
It is, says Smyth, a thorough process that looks for chinks in the armour before saying yes. “They would have done research to look at what had been changed from a genomic perspective,” he says. “They’d have done some research into the actual edit, which gene was involved and how much was it changed. They’d have looked for unintended risks.”
Why it matters for Canadians
Canadian approval of the PRRS-resistant pig comes in the wake of approvals in Brazil, Columbia, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and the United States. Smyth says this is good news for hog farmers here in terms of competing on the world market. “It will cost us more to produce pork without this technology,” he says.
Indeed, economic modeling conducted by Jayson Lusk at Oklahoma State University shows increased productivity and lower production costs for those countries that adopt the PRRS-resistant pig. That’s important for the Canadian industry, a net exporter of pork that needs to stay competitive to be viable. On a farm level, he says the impact is no less important as it will save farmers the high costs of vaccinations, biosecurity measures, constant monitoring, and the truly devastating need to euthanize sick animals.
Smyth acknowledges that Canadian approval of the PRRS-resistant pig is a step change in agricultural technology in this country, but one consumers can have confidence in. Gene editing has been used to successfully to treat sickle cell disease in humans for years. A teenager in B.C. was recently cured of chronic granulomatous disease, a rare immunity condition, using CRISPR gene editing technology – the same technology used to make pigs resistant to PRRS.
Smyth says that kind of context is important to keep in mind when thinking about Canada’s recent approval of gene-edited pigs. It means less animal suffering and reduced antibiotic use without sacrificing food safety, nutrition or taste.
For more information visit https://www.prrsresistantpig.com/
