The small herd of pigs in a research barn in Guelph look like ordinary pigs.
They act like ordinary pigs, and presumably, they would even taste like ordinary pigs if anyone dared to break the law and sample one.
But these are Enviropigs. The transgenic creations of university researchers, they are the world's most controversial environmentally sensitive swine, and they're not legally fit to eat. At least, not yet.
Under development for more than a decade, the University of Guelph's 20 Enviropigs are close behind a Canadian-made supersized salmon in a race to become the first genetically modified animals allowed into the food system.
Starting with the discovery that an E.coli gene could produce a digestive enzyme that regular pigs lack, the Guelph scientists realized they could introduce genetic material from that bacterium into pigs to minimize the environmental impact of the animals' waste, reducing a major pollutant from large-scale production – and allowing pork producers to cut operation costs.
The market may soon need Enviropig. To feed the projected world population of nine billion in 2050, food production will have to increase by 70 per cent, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Genetically engineered organisms will have to be part of the equation, according to the globe-spanning community of experts concerned with meeting those looming targets.
“You cannot feed the world at affordable prices without using the modern arsenal of inputs,” said Marco Ferroni, head of the Syngenta Foundation, a Swiss-based non-profit established by its namesake seed company to pursue sustainable improvements in farm yields.
Among those “inputs” are controversial genetic modification techniques that enable faster and more environmentally friendly production of food, including intensive aquaculture and livestock, which are blamed for a significant amount of global greenhouse gas emissions. Critics say that genetic modification is a backward solution, one that papers over the problems of industrial food production.
But with mounting pressure to meet the world's food needs, the developers of the salmon and the Enviropig – both Canadian innovations – are taking their technology to countries where demand, commercial opportunities and the chances of regulatory approval are greatest. Although research in this country is responsible for both animals, the first country to commercialize them isn't likely to be Canada.
Scientists created the first Enviropig in 1999 by combining genetic material from E. coli bacteria and a snippet of mouse DNA. The gene alteration allows the pig to produce phytase, an enzyme regular pigs lack, which helps it digest naturally occurring plant phosphorous in its feed more efficiently. Pigs need phosphorous to grow. So as researchers see it, the benefits of Enviropig are twofold: Farmers would no longer need to supplement pigs' diets with mineral phosphate or commercially produced phytase, thus reducing feed costs, and they would decrease the amount of the nutrient that winds up in pigs' waste – making it less polluting.
The proverbial guinea pig to the Enviropig is the AquAdvantage salmon, owned by Massachusetts-based biotech firm AquaBounty and pioneered in Prince Edward Island. The genetically altered fish grows twice as fast as non-genetically modified salmon, and therefore requires fewer production inputs.
In September, the salmon was deemed safe to eat in a preliminary analysis conducted by the United States Food and Drug Administration. A committee of the agency is still considering whether more research is needed before the salmon can enter the final steps to market.
So far, the salmon has shouldered the brunt of public concern and regulators' scrutiny. AquaBounty's application to have the fish approved for human consumption has hopped more regulatory hurdles than the corresponding Canadian application for Enviropig.
“The FDA may not publicly state it, but it seems quite obvious to many people that they want to be the first to approve the latest and upcoming trends in technology,” said David Hobson, manager of technology transfer at the University of Guelph.
