Who’s up for some CRISPR-y bacon? This week, the Food and Drug Administration approved gene-edited pigs developed by PIC, a biotechnology company specializing in livestock genetics, for human consumption.
The FDA granted the approval Wednesday, allowing a specific gene edit to be used in commercially bred pigs. With the help of CRISPR—a powerful gene editing tool—the UK-based company has created pigs resistant to one of the most common viral infections affecting swine worldwide. It will take a while longer for this GE pork to end up on our dinner plates, however.
“We have spent years conducting extensive research, validating our findings and working with the FDA to gain approval,” said Matt Culbertson, chief operating officer at PIC (short for Pig Improvement Company), in a statement released Thursday by the National Pig Association in the UK.
PIC’s edit is intended to tackle the virus behind porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS). It knocks out a receptor on pig cells that is commonly hijacked by the virus to cause infection. The modified pigs should be resistant to nearly all strains of the PRRS virus circulating today (some rare subtypes may still cause infection).
Though PRRS may have existed in the wild previously, it only emerged as a major concern among pig livestock several decades ago. It’s now widely spread and deeply destructive to the industry, since it can kill off young pigs and cause reproductive failure in breeding pigs. According to the World Organization for Animal Health, PRRS is estimated to cause the U.S. alone to lose $560 million annually.
The edit is introduced into early embryos, which are implanted into gilts (female pigs that have reached maturity but have yet to give birth). This means that the mutation can then be inherited by future generations of bred pigs. These pigs aren’t considered to be different in any other way—including taste and safety—from unmodified pigs.
PIC’s gene-edited pigs aren’t the first to be approved as food in the U.S. In 2020, the FDA approved Revivicor’s Galsafe pigs for use in both medicine and food. Galsafe pigs have been edited to no longer carry the sugar alpha-gal in their muscles, which can trigger allergy in certain people and also makes pigs incompatible for organ transplantation.
The FDA has also previously approved other genetically modified animals to be safe for human consumption, such as salmon. But companies have historically struggled to clear the regulatory hurdles for approval or to gain a foothold in the commercial market once approved. That said, the relatively simple nature of PIC’s method (removing, not adding a gene) and the large-scale benefits it can provide could make these pigs the first GE livestock to be widely bred and consumed by people. And its success could very well herald the arrival of other meat products genetically engineered to be safer or more disease-resistant.
It will still take PIC (and its parent company Genus) some more time and resources to get its project fully off the ground. Because the pig industry is so globalized, the company is seeking to secure approval in other major markets where pork is widely produced or imported, including Mexico, Canada, and China. And it doesn’t expect its pigs to be available for purchase in the U.S. until 2026 at the earliest.