The Dolly the sheep laboratory has produced a pig they are calling "genetically edited" but it’s still engineered and set to mislead.
Pig 26 has been engineered by researchers at the Roslin Institute who claim it will be resistant “to infections such as African swine fever virus”. But they think it’s important for other reasons.
In fact, there has never been an outbreak of African swine fever in the UK and the incidence is very low in the rest of Europe, although there have been outbreaks in Russia and in Africa.
What “excites” the researchers, corporate interests and regulators is that the technique used can be presented as “clean”.
"We can do it without any marker or trace. Unless you do an audit trail there is no way that you would know how that mutation happened.”
Side stepping regulations and fixing the public
According to Roslin researcher Prof. Bruce Whitelaw, “this is what is making commercial companies so excited and it's also going through the minds of the regulators at the minute to find a way of classifying it".
A number of genetically engineering techniques are emerging which researchers, and the industry, are hoping will side step current regulations and safety assessments – inadequate as they are – through being classified by regulators as falling outside of the existing legal definition.
Persuading the public that these techniques are “clean genetic engineering” and are safer and “more precise”, or are not really genetic engineering at all would, they believe, overcome consumer objections and open up huge commercial opportunities especially if they can avoid any labelling requirements
Roslin owns up: GM is not precise or efficient
In promoting their “genetic editing” approach the Roslin researchers have already exposed one the biggest and long standing myths about the technology; namely that it is “precise” and “efficient”.
Professor Whitelaw has highlighted that, “the new technique produces GM animals with between 10 and 15 per cent efficiency compared with an efficiency of less than 1 per cent for the standard method of genetic engineering.”
It is good of him to highlight this GM industry deceit but is he engaged in any?
We have to wait and see if Pig 26 turns out to be another folly like Dolly - short-lived, over-hyped and ultimately stuffed.
After all Dolly was the first live birth out of 277 attempts at cloning, developed arthritis at the age of four, and died at half her natural age. She ended being stuffed and placed in a museum where she is a reminder that genetic engineering is no substitute for good husbandry and a balanced, agro-ecological approach to farming and food production.
Unfortunately the conceit that surrounded Dolly, that genetic engineering is the answer to dealing with disease and feeding the world still seems to thrive at the Roslin Institute.
16.04.13
Sources:
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/article3740233.ece
http://www.infogm.org/IMG/pdf/emergence_new_techniques_biotechnology.pdf
Originally published on http://www.gmeducation.org/latest-news/p211421-pig-26:-another-geanother-deceitanother-folly-(like-dolly).html
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