A Thinking Reed

The new and improved pig

Written by

Lee M.

in

For reasons that are hard to articulate I find this pretty disturbing:

If a new kind of pork makes it to the dinner table, healthy eaters worried about fat and heart disease might finally be free to, well, pig out.

Scientists using genetic engineering techniques have produced pigs rich in omega-3 fatty acids – a kind of healthy fat abundant in fish but not naturally found in meat.

The omega-3 fatty acids are believed to offer some protection against heart attacks, and federal nutrition guidelines recommend that adults include them in their daily diets.

[…]

The team of scientists from Harvard, the University of Missouri and the University of Pittsburgh used a gene from an earthworm, which naturally produces omega-3 fatty acids, to genetically modify their pigs.

The researchers began by harvesting more than 1,600 eggs from female pigs. They removed the genetic material from the eggs and replaced it with new DNA that had the earthworm gene inserted.

The manipulated embryos were then implanted into 14 surrogate mothers. A total of 10 male piglets were born.

DNA analysis of the piglets showed that six had the earthworm gene, according to the study published online yesterday in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

Kang said the cloned pigs produced one-fifth the amount of omega-3 fatty acids found in salmon, considered the best source of the healthy fat. But he said successive generations bred the old-fashioned way would likely produce higher amounts of omega-3.

I realize that there is no eternal piggy nature that can’t be modified by human intervention. After all, the domesticated pig as we know it is lagely a product of selective breeding.

Still, there’s something about genetically splicing a pig and an earthworm that gives me the heebie jeebies. Maybe it’s that it seems to be another manifestation of our completely utilitarian attitude toward animals; of not treating them as beings with their own kind of integrity, but simply as commodities that can be modified and used by us at will.

If nothing else, couldn’t the research money be better used for other purposes? Eat some fish, people!

Comments

14 responses to “The new and improved pig”

  1. Joshie

    yeah it is creepy I agree. There are also new maipulated tomatoes that have fish genes in them. Its all very strange. I don’t object to selective breeding or hybrids in the same or similar species in plants or animals, but the whole worm-pig, fish-tomato thing is weird.

    On a related note there was a new study suggesting that omega-3 fatty acids really aren’t as healthy as they were thought to be!

    Reply
  2. Maurice Frontz

    Maybe it’s that it seems to be another manifestation of our completely utilitarian attitude towards animals…

    I dunno, Lee, you seemed to have articulated that pretty well.

    Reply
  3. jack perry

    Where exactly should one draw the line? Besides breeding, we’ve been cross-pollinating and grafting for some time. We’ve been deliberately inserting bacteria and viruses into our bodies for medical benefits. Heck, we’ve been ingesting known carcinogens for decades simply because they make our food look or taste good, and we consider the risks to be acceptable.

    Here, the “synthetic” component is very precisely targeted. Genetically speaking, an earthworm is not that far apart from the pig anyway, or even from a man. The only gene spliced was one that produces more of a very specific substance.

    Don’t get me wrong; I’m uncomfortable with it, too. I just can’t figure out where we draw the line: random and unscientific breeding campaigns that led to (for example) the genetic defects we see in many dog breeds; or careful and scientific genetic manipulation?

    In any case, I prefer this to the “proof of concept” glow-in-the-dark bunny from a few years back.

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  4. Lee

    Yeah, I don’t know where you draw the line on stuff like this. One thing that we may want to ask is this: do we regard animals as in any way ends-in-themselves, or are their interests entirely subordinate to ours? For example, one of my beefs (if you’ll pardon the expression) with the practice of factory farming is that, in addition to inflicting massive suffering on animals (pigs in particular, as it happens), it denies that they have any non-instrumental value by denying them the ability to live lives befitting their nature. I see this kind of engineering as part and parcel of the same kind of attitude – it’s not a question of taking a non-interventionist approach to nature so much as recognizing that other living creatures have their own integrity and dignity (however humble) that isn’t determined exclusively by human need or desire.

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  5. Kevin Jones

    “it’s not a question of taking a non-interventionist approach to nature so much as recognizing that other living creatures have their own integrity and dignity (however humble) that isn’t determined exclusively by human need or desire.”

    The last lines of the canticle in Daniel 3 came to mind: All you beasts, bless the Lord… etc.

    There is a kind of aesthetic revulsion towards some common agrobusiness practices, and by “aesthetic” I don’t mean merely superficial. Notice some of the same arguments used against good art are also used against those who wish for cows fatted by the arts of husbandry rather than hormonal science: opponents are anti-poor, uneconomical, and so forth.

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  6. jack perry

    [Factory farming] denies that they have any non-instrumental value by denying them the ability to live lives befitting their nature.

    Merely for the sake of argument, what exactly would be a life befitting a pig’s nature? They’re doomed for the slaughterhouse, after all. I’m not sure that pigs kept in a muddy pen on a farm, exposed to the elements, and fed slops, are really any closer to nature than those kept on a factory farm. Indeed, the ones kept on a factory farm have less risk of disease. Attachment to the former strikes me as based on romantic nostalgia; the revulsion to the latter strikes me as simply suspicion and/or fear of the unknown. One could say the same about the origin of beef.

    I’m still uncomfortable with genetic manipulation and family farming; I actually buy “Eggland’s Best” just to soothe my conscience. I just having trouble coming up with a reason that will convince me it’s wrong.

    And, whereas I won’t smear my enemies as hating the poor, it does remain the fact that modern agrobusiness has benefited the poor.

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  7. Lee

    I’m not sure it’s true that pigs kept in a factory farm are at less risk of disease. In any event, they’re frequently kept in pens so tiny that they’re unable to turn around or lay down comfortably, often resulting in infections and broken legs. They don’t have the opportunity to root in the dirt or build nests or socialize. Very often they don’t even see daylight until the day they’re being shipped to the slaughterhouse. Pigs are no less intelligent than dogs and I suspect most of us would shy away from treating dogs like that.

    As for whether industrial-type agriculture has benefitted the poor, that’s also unclear if you factor in all the externalized costs – pollution, government subsidies, etc. that aren’t accounted for in the price of meat.

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  8. Camassia

    I think there’s a subtle, but important, distinction between a life lived in totally natural conditions, and a life suited to one’s nature. If you think about human beings, we haven’t lived in a state of nature for about 10,000 years. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no moral difference between housing me where I am now and housing me in Folsom Prison, though both environments are highly unnatural. There’s enough of the nomadic hunter-gatherer in us that we hate being locked into cramped places, even if we’d rather sleep in a bed than on the ground. I would think the same goes for animals.

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  9. jack perry

    Lee: I was thinking more in terms of the fact that famine is nonexistent today except in those places where agriculture remains at a pre-agrobusiness level. I’m reasonably sure that it isn’t the rich who suffer the most in times of famine.

    Personally, I do believe that pigs kept in factories are less likely to disease (isn’t a complaint of the anti-factory crowd that these animals are stuffed with antibiotics? I’m thinking mostly of chickens here I think, and what’s been said about eggs). But, I have absolutely no real evidence one way or the other. I have read just now that piglet mortality is much higher in outdoor farming than in factory farms, because the cages of factory farms are designed to prevent the sow from crushing her children: http://www.ipic.iastate.edu/reports/99swinereports/asl-1680.pdf Another website suggests that some of the abuses you cite are actually illegal in many countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_pig#Factory_Farmed_Pigs In the end, the question appears to be one of proper regulation and enforcement, and not the nature of a pen in a factory vs. an outdoor farm. Of course, these are more or less utilitarian arguments we’re making.

    Camassia: Your argument is appealing, but if the difference is between the small, muddy pens I’ve seen some pigs kept in, and the tiny, clean cages of a factory, I’m still not sure the pen is any better. I would assume that a life according to the nature of the pig would give it a wide open space to roam; the trouble with that is that pigs are not at all the nice, gently creatures often portrayed; they are mean, nasty creatures that try to eat anything that comes near them. This was told to me by someone who owned a pig, and who lost several chickens to the pig after it repeatedly burrowed its way out of its pen.

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  10. Camassia

    I never made a claim about the current state of pig farming, or about whether pigs are nice. (Humans can be pretty nasty creatures too, I hear.) I was addressing your philosophical question: where do we draw the line? It sounded to me like you were saying that since we’re already messing with animals’ natural environment, there are no definable moral limits to what we do to them. Maybe that wasn’t what you were saying, but either way, I don’t think it’s true.

    I don’t know much about pig nature, but I have read that animal domestication was probably not a matter simply of humans imposing their will on animals — it was kind of a mutual adaptation by animals who had personality traits that suited them to living with people. (Yes, they get eaten, but it helps the survival of the species.) Housecats, for instance, spend their lives within well-defined territories, and eat little critters that most people don’t want around, so they’ve lived for people for ages without being penned in or leashed. But still, there are benevolent ways and there are cruel ways to keep a cat. There isn’t a bright line that you can draw between the cat’s interests and yours, but if you hang out with cats you develop a certain intuition for it.

    To use another example, consider all the biblical metaphors with God as the shepherd and people as the sheep. Does that mean that God looks at us for purely utilitarian ends — to be slaughtered and eaten? Clearly even in those pre-PETA days the Israelis had a relationship with their livestock that went beyond the purely exploitative. It may not be possible with pigs (hey, maybe that’s why they didn’t eat them!), but it does indicate a moral space between “let them all roam free” and “treat them as meat on legs.”

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  11. Lee

    Jack, shouldn’t we distinguish between industrial farming per se and industrial farming techniques as applied to animals? Is the latter necessary to feed the populations of the world?

    Also, fair point about the mortality rate in factory farms, but I don’t know that it addresses the main point that the very idea of the factory farm is to basically eliminate the “animal-ness” of the animals and reduce them to inert, utterly controllable objects with no interests of their own. As long as that model is the dominant one, it seems to me that inhumane treatment is going to be inevitable.

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  12. jack perry

    Jack, shouldn’t we distinguish between industrial farming per se and industrial farming techniques as applied to animals? Is the latter necessary to feed the populations of the world?

    Yes, we should. I’m not sure what distinctions are being made, though. Up until now, I thought the negative comments were about industrial farming per se — I’m the only one to say anything positive about it, and I’m doing so mostly as a point of argument, not because I actually admire it. Specific techniques were brought up as examples of the problem. I think we got off-target in any case, since our discussion struck me as utilitarian, but maybe I’m wrong.

    Camassia: I never made a claim about the current state of pig farming, or about whether pigs are nice.

    If you mean my remark about pigpens, I’m not sure what you’re getting at. We’re talking about factory farms vs. pigpens, aren’t we? Or did you have something else in mind?

    As to whether pigs are nice: I didn’t mean to imply you claimed that; I was simply pointing out that there are serious problems with giving pigs lots of room to roam.

    Reply
  13. Camassia

    Well, I thought we were talking about the philosophy of approaching animals from a purely utilitarian standpoint, with pigpens merely as an example. I guess I’m a level of abstraction above where this discussion wound up.

    Reply
  14. robin friedlander

    all god’s creations are holy and within their own right to live according to their own nature.
    If ‘man’ wants to ‘impruve’ his meat- he may ‘add’ spices or frut and veg’ to his meal.

    Leave the changing of the species- to God, OK?

    Reply

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