Gene editing could worsen 'unethical breeding practices', report warns
Gene editing techniques could soon be allowed in breeding farmed animals in England to address some of the problems of animal agriculture, for example by making them more resistant to disease or lowering methane emissions from cattle.
In September, the UK government indicated it could relax rules around gene editing to allow it to be used on animals, in a departure from EU regulations on the technology. But ethicists have warned that using gene-editing techniques in breeding farmed animals could have negative welfare outcomes and have urged the UK government to develop stringent regulations before such techniques are applied commercially.
A new report by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics has warned that gene editing could exacerbate “some unethical breeding practices”. For example, animals bred to be more disease-resistant may not become ill by being kept in poor conditions, but that doesn’t mean they are not suffering as a consequence. The report warns that lowered risk of disease could be used “as a reason to pay less regard to the welfare of animals and their needs for appropriate conditions and care.”
Other uses of gene editing could be to breed animals without physical characteristics that are typically dealt with through mutilation, such as horns on cattle and tails on sheep and pigs which are commonly removed through painful procedures. Making animals more tolerant to weather extremes such as heat is another potential application of gene editing. The report warns that any of these could have negative impacts on the animals or simply treat symptoms rather than causes of certain behaviours. Regarding tail-biting in pigs, for instance, which leads farmers to dock their tails, the report notes: “Neither breeding a tailless pig nor removing, however painlessly, the tails of living pigs addresses the underlying problem of which tail biting behaviours are an expression.” In other words, being farmed intensively is the problem, not whether or not pigs have tails.
The report makes several recommendations to the government, animal breeders, major food retailers, research funders, and “others involved in shaping the food and farming industries”, including incentives for responsible breeding and a set of breeding standards to be adopted by all commercial breeders of farmed animals, with independent oversight, that “seek to ensure that animals are not bred to enhance traits merely so that they may better endure conditions of poor welfare, or in ways that reduce their capacity to live a good life.”
In identifying the ethical issues that arise from the prospect of gene editing animals, the report does important work in defending the interests of farmed animals. We can see from how the animal agriculture industry already operates that it is hard to change bad practices once they are the norm; see, for example, MPs recently bowing to pressure from pig farmers and dropping a plan to immediately ban farrowing crates. Raising awareness of how practices can harm animals before they become the norm is therefore crucial when any potential technology or change to farming is proposed.
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But even if the report’s recommendations were adopted in full by relevant parties, and even if gene editing could improve health and environmental outcomes of farmed animals without harming their welfare, a number of problems remain.
Environment
The report notes that gene editing will likely have a limited role to play in reducing the environmental impact of animal agriculture, particularly its greenhouse gas emissions, and points to feed supplements as “the most promising” type of biotechnology for achieving emissions reductions. But these “can have a greater impact on biodiversity” through increased deforestation and conversion of wildlife habitat to pastureland. “The most significant measures available to address environmental impacts,” the report states, “concern efficiency of livestock systems and the overall reduction of livestock in favour of plant-based foods, where possible.” Any emissions reductions that can be achieved in animal agriculture will still fall short of those that can be made through a broader shift away from it.
Autonomy of animals
Animals are sentient beings. The UK government has recognised this in law and has even recently accepted that crustaceans and octopuses are also capable of experiencing pain, harm and distress. Sentient beings have a good of their own, meaning they can have positive experiences and feelings, just like humans, and an interest in avoiding negative experiences, and many have autonomy, meaning they can make choices about what they want to do. By gene-editing animals to better fit the conditions of life on a farm - particularly an intensive farm that severely limits their ability to have good experiences, express natural behaviours, or make choices - the sentience and autonomy of animals are further undermined.
Animals in experiments
Using gene editing to develop certain traits means breeding animals as part of the process of trying to perfect those traits. The report features a case study of an experiment to create hornless cows through gene editing which started with the manipulation of bovine cells and resulted in five calves being born. “Three of these were judged to be ‘non-viable’ and humanely killed shortly after birth,” the report states, while the two remaining calves were used for further breeding before also being killed because “for regulatory reasons, neither they nor their descendants would be permitted to enter the food chain.”
A similar experiment in Germany resulted in two cows being made pregnant. One pregnancy “was terminated on day 90 after examination of the fetus” and the other resulted in a hornless live-born calf, who “died shortly after birth as a result of multiple organ malformations
resulting in cardiovascular failure.” These animals are brought into being to suffer and die in the service of ensuring millions of other animals can continue to be exploited for their flesh.
People who are pro-meat have recently been attacking veganism on the grounds that vegan food is “ultra-processed” pointing to the ingredients lists of products like Beyond Meat burgers to make their point (while failing to acknowledge that vegans, like everyone, also eat whole plant foods like vegetables and legumes). The purported “naturalness” of meat, already dubious, becomes even more suspect when considering the prospect of meat from gene-edited animals. With some of the meat-eating public already wary of processed food as well as of genetically modified foods (though these are different from gene-edited foods), some work would need to be done to persuade people that gene-edited meat is safe and healthy, as the report found.
Why waste time and resources on that rather than on making the case for cell-cultured meat, which would largely overcome the welfare, disease, and environmental problems associated with animal agriculture? When faced with these two ways of making meat more sustainable and reducing harm to animals, it’s clear which one is more worthy of the effort, funding and research. And of course, if the thought of “unnatural” meat worries you, there’s no shortage of plant-based alternatives to try instead.
Claire Hamlett is a freelance journalist, writer and regular contributor at Surge. Based in Oxford, UK, Claire tells stories that challenge systemic exploitation of and disregard for animals and the environment and that point to a better way of doing things.
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