They are large, they are muscly
and the pride and joy of their breeders.
We are squeezing as much as we can
out of our livestock.
The world is getting hungrier and
hungrier for more meat and milk.
But by pushing animals to their limits...
We're doing the same to our planet.
But if we can turn animals
into food-production machines,
couldn't we also breed them to be
more environmentally-friendly?
Sheep that emit less methane?
Salmon that need less food?
Or pigs that excrete fewer toxins?
"There's hardly any ecological niche
where genetics or genomics
can't come up with a solution."
Scientists are working on designing
more sustainable animals by
selective breeding or even by
artificially changing their genetic code.
Are these great ways to make food
production more sustainable?
Or crazy interventions into nature?
Let's check out how scientists are
working to design the perfect animal.
And just a quick trigger warning, this
video contains some images showing
animal cruelty.
Even before humans settled,
we have been modifying plants and
animals - meaning for more
than 10,000 years.
To an astonishing extent.
We've optimized maize and rice harvests,
and engineered zucchinis to be non-toxic,
sheep to be stronger and wolves to be
more obedient.
"We've been doing this very successfully."
This is Professor John Dupré.
He deals with ethical aspects of
animal welfare and animal breeding.
"I mean, if you compare the growth rates
to the sizes of animals just over the last
few decades, I mean, there's been
enormous increases in productivity."
The hunger for more and cheaper meat
and milk has led to chickens that appear
fully-grown at 20 days old,
double-muscled cattle and pigs born with
four more ribs than usual.
"There's not much more room probably in
increasing yields."
In 1961, a single cow in the U.S. produced
nine liters of milk per day.
Today's cows produce an average of
28 liters.
That means that through breeding,
the carbon footprint of one glass of milk
is a third of what it was many decades ago.
Cows still burp and fart
greenhouse gases, but for it, they also
produce much more milk.
But as the world is drinking more and
more milk overall, these savings in
emissions are dwindling.
Not to mention, this way of producing
food has a brutal flipside:
animals living in horrific conditions or
suffering as they grow faster or bigger
than their body can actually support.
And one factor is driving this to ever
greater extremes.
"Meat!"
"The best meat..."
"The best cut of meat you can get!"
"Red meat!"
Meat consumption around the world
is exploding.
While the global population has roughly
tripled in the past 60 years, meat
production has increased fivefold - with
richer countries eating most of it.
Livestock farming requires enormous
quantities of water and agricultural land
for animal feed and contributes to more
than 14 percent of all manmade
greenhouse gas emissions.
No matter how productive our animals
are, the way we produce food is horrible
for the planet.
But if we can breed cows to produce more
milk and chickens to grow faster,
could you also breed them to burp less
methane or excrete fewer chemicals?
Some scientists and companies
are trying to do exactly that.
Either by "good old" selective breeding or
by artificially changing
the animals' genes.
For example, there are people working on
enabling cows to cope with higher
temperatures as the planet is heating up.
Others are trying to make animals
resistant to severe diseases, arguing this
would also improve animal welfare.
There are lots of projects like this
underway but one achieved
special notoriety.
Meet the Enviropig.
In the 2000s, a Canadian research
project, funded by the pork industry,
implanted genes from mice as well as
the bacterium E.Coli into a pig.
The effect: the animals digested
significantly more phosphorus than usual,
so their manure contained up to
60 percent less phosphorus.
Why did they do this?
Well, the scientists wanted to address
a fundamental agricultural problem
these cuties cause: overfertilization.
Excrement from pigs, full of phosphorus,
is usually put on fields as fertilizer as
it is an important nutrient for blossoming
and fruiting plants.
But: Only half of the phosphorus applied
to the fields worldwide can be absorbed
by the plants.
The result: the nutrient turns into poison
in soils and water and depletes
oxygen levels, killing loads of fish and
other marine life.
But, to say the least, not everybody
thought the Enviropig was a great idea.
Pork farmers were concerned that
skeptical consumers would stop eating pork.
And environmental groups said tampering
with pigs' DNA was unnecessary as other
solutions to reduce phosphorus in
manure were already available.
"We saw it as kind of continuous with a
very long history of constructing,
creating animals for our needs,
which obviously to some people is,
intrinsically morally unacceptable."
Enviropig never made it beyond research stage.
With no interest from the industry as well
as lots of question marks concerning
regulation, investors withdrew in 2012.
But that doesn't mean others stopped
trying to genetically optimize animals.
"The atlantic salmon bred by AquaBounty
is a safe, secure and sustainable
alternative for anyone looking for fresh
salmon that is good for them
and good for the planet."
The company AquaBounty promises
their genetically modified salmon is
more sustainable than traditionally
produced salmon.
They introduced genes from other wild
fish to create what they call
AquAdvantage Salmon.
These super salmon are supposed to grow
twice as fast as usual salmon and require
up to 25 percent less feed.
And the more efficiently we can produce
fish, the better for the planet, right?
"This is not about sustainability.
This is not about producing
better animals.
This is about producing a genetically
engineered product for
the profit of the company."
This is Dana Perls, advocating against
this practice at NGO Friends of the Earth
"And we can't see the data.
There's a lot of data that is protected as
confidential business information."
We asked the company for a statement
and to share their scientific data
but didn't receive any answer until
the making of this video.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration
approved the fish as safe to eat in 2015.
But civil rights and environmental groups
were not happy with that decision
and sued.
"There is scientific evidence highlighting
the risks that if genetically engineered
salmon breed with wild salmon
that within a couple of generations wild
salmon could go extinct."
Recently, scientists found that some
genetically modified ornamental fish,
brand-named GloFish,
had escaped in Brazil.
Experts have warned of
the disruptive potential
for local biodiversity.
And not only ecosystems are at risk.
The potential benefits of artificial genetic
engineering can come at a price:
undesirable mutations and side effects.
Recently, the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration discovered,
that during genetic experiments
with cows, genes from
an antibiotic-resistant bacterium
made it into their DNA.
A report found that such "errors" in gene
editing "often go under reported
or are overlooked." Considering all this,
in 2020, a U.S. court ruled the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration
had failed to consider and study
the environmental consequences of approving
genetically engineered salmon.
Nevertheless, one major retailer is starting
to distribute the fish to restaurants in the
U.S. and Canada.
But what about less invasive selective breeding?
Meaning, animals with the desired features
are cross-bred with each other to boost or
disable certain traits.
Genes are not directly modified.
This sheep has won an award.
Or to put it another way, its creators were
honored for their contribution to
mitigating climate change.
And where else could this sheep be bred
than in New Zealand where sheep
outnumber humans 6:1.
Making the meat and wool industry
more sustainable is key for the country's
own net zero target.
"We've basically discovered that
we can breed for less methane."
This is Dr Suzanne Rowe,
for years she's looked at how sheep could
burp out fewer climate-damaging gases.
"We can change the bugs that are in the
stomach that break down the feed.
And we can change the amount
of methane that's emitted."
Every generation of sheep bred here emits
a little bit less methane than the previous
one - an effect that accumulates over time.
"So, our lowest-emitting sheep and the
highest-emitting sheep are around 25 to
30% different."
Dr Rowe says that apart from burping and
farting less methane, the sheep are as
healthy and productive as their high-
emitting companions and even meet
the criteria for organic farming.
To selectively breed the low-methane
sheep, the scientists first had to
find the less gassy ones.
So, they put the sheep into a special
high-tech chamber and let them get as
windy as they liked.
It wasn't possible to select the animals in
such a cheap and effective way before.
But the sheep here are only used for
research purposes and not sold.
The Institute is going across the country
and measuring sheep for their methane
levels, no matter the breed, so farms can
select the more sustainable animals themselves.
The so-called fart chamber could
potentially also be applicable to other
grazing animals like cattle.
But let's talk about the sheep...
excuse me, elephant in the room.
Just because we can engineer animals
that are more environmentally friendly...
should we?
"So, if it's introduced, it should be
contributing to important social goals
such as sustainability
and we should be improving,
not worsening, the welfare of the animals
that we're dealing with."
"We need to hit the pause button, we need
to work with what we have, which are
tools for a truly sustainable food system,
and we need to not be falling into this
snake oil and trap of genetic engineering
companies that are seeking profit."
Currently, the only genetically engineered
animals approved for consumption are
found in the U.S. and Canada.
But this might change.
The EU is still far off such a step, but
NGOs are looking skeptically at leaders
seemingly becoming more open
to such ideas.
In the UK the government is already
thinking of proposing regulations to allow
the commercial development of gene-
edited livestock.
"It seems to me likely that these could
be on some of our plates in the
next few years,
let's say, within the next five years."
Questions about unwanted or as yet
undiscovered side effects in animals, and
environmental risks remain.
Selective breeding could be a safer and
more viable alternative but will take more
effort and time to have an effect.
The problems that come with milk and
meat production won't be solved by
simply changing the animals.
There are many other ways
to minimize the sector's footprint.
Whether by some organic farming,
eating chicken rather than red meat,
or most effectively,
eating less meat in general.
"So, what do you think?
Can you imagine eating
a genetically-modified fish?
Or a low-methane sheep?
Or none of them?
Tell us in the comments.
And follow us, we have a new story
for you every Friday."