Scientists Genetically Engineer Pigs Immune To Costly Disease (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The trial, led by the University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute, showed that the pigs were completely immune to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS), a disease that is endemic across the globe and costs the European pig industry nearly $2 billion in pig deaths and decreased productivity each year.

Pigs infected with PRRS are safe to eat but the virus causes the animals breathing problems, causes deaths in piglets and can cause pregnant sows to lose their litter. There is no effective cure or vaccine, and despite extensive biosecurity measures about 30% of pigs in England are thought to be infected at any given time. After deleting a small section of DNA that leaves pigs vulnerable to the disease, the animals showed no symptoms or trace of infection when intentionally exposed to the virus and when housed for an extended period with infected siblings. The study has been published in the Journal of Virology.

Comments

Re:But will the pigs get cancers?

[mikael]

This article describes the purpose of CD163:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

It is a receptor for hemoglobin, and is involved in hemoglobin clearance after intracerebral hemorrhage. It is elevated for anyone with myelo-monocytic leukaemia and infection.

http://jvi.asm.org/content/91/...

This is huge if it ever reaches the market.

[crmarvin42]

This disease is HUGE in swine production. Producers have Faustian bargain to make.

Option 1: stay PRRS Free

Animals are healthier, perform better, and require less medical intervention. Great! However, biosecurity measures are prodigious, can be super expensive, and if they fail it will cost you a lot of animals and money.

A small University run operation I worked on sold ~500 nursery piglets every 2 weeks. When they broke with PRRS the number of viable pigs was cut in half in the first group. Bottomed our at 5 pigs surviving to weaning before it started to recover. All told we lost some where in the order of 2,000 piglets over about 2 months. We also lost about 10% of the sows over the same period. Mostly the younger ones.

Option 2. Manage a PRRS positive herd.

Animals are always a little sick, a little less productive, and require a little more TLC, but you mostly avoid the dramatic >90% losses of an accure outbreak. Flair ups top out closer to 25-50%.

Genetically immune pigs would save literally millions of pigsâ(TM) lives, improve their welfare at the same time, and improve the environmental impact of swine production by reducing waste (feed, medications, etc spent on pigs that die due to the disease). Will we forgo all of those advantages because GMO makes some people scared? I sure as hell hope not, but wonâ(TM)t be holding my breath.