I’m the type of guy who will eat seal meat, as I did last week and thanks to my Scottish heritage, I have an adventurous palate, ready to consumer haggis or black pudding. Still, I have a tough time getting past the idea of eating “transgenic meat.”
What you say is transgenic meat? It is meat that got its start in a laboratory and has been genetically altered with the DNA or genes of another species being introduced into the new animal. Researchers at the University of Guelph have requested approval for the first transgenic animal developed in Canada, the Enviropig. I give the full story on the pig here, including comments from people concerned about this development, but here is the quick run down. The Enviropig is a Yorkshire pig with DNA from a mouse spliced into it to reduce the amount of phosphorous the pig emits in its manure. Why do that? In intensive livestock operations, or factory farms, too much phosphorous pollutes the local water supply.
Of course the researchers don’t want to just make a less polluting pig, they want you and I to eat them too. To that end the researchers have applied to Health Canada and the US Food and Drug Administration to get this meat approved for human consumption. Here is where this all gets interesting. Under Canada’s current system, there is no need to label this meat as being anything other than pork, no need to say it has mouse DNA inside it, no need to tell the person buying it that the meat is genetically modified.
The same goes for the rainbow trout unveiled last week at the University of Rhode Island. Researchers there took a chemical from Belgian blue cattle that helps them pack on extra muscle without extra feed and injected it into the fish DNA, the result a rainbow trout, the ugliest I’ve ever seen, with what boosters call six-pack abs. The goal here, more fish on your fillet with less feed in farmed rainbow trout.
Farmers may have spent thousands of years crossbreeding various types of wheat, apples, or carrots to come up with new varieties but this is something completely different. This is taking the genes of one species and injecting them into the genes of another in a laboratory.
Canadians, and Americans, already eat lots of genetically modified farm produce without knowing it. Corn, soybeans and other produce are GMO and we don’t know about it. There are no labels to tell us these products are GMO and it appears to do no harm, at least in the short term. What will happen when governments start approving genetically modified meat though? I predict something different will happen.
Either consumers will revolt and tell governments and farmers that they do not want this product on store shelves and at the butcher’s counter or they will demand to know what they are buying. In a day and age when we are told not only how much fat is in a product and what kinds of fat, don’t you think we should know if what we are buying is real pork, fish or corn or a genetically modified variation thereof.
Brian Lilley is the Ottawa Bureau Chief for radio stations Newstalk 1010 in Toronto and CJAD 800 in Montreal. Follow Brian on Twitter to get the latest as it happens.
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Comments
NO to GMOs in any form! We don't want or need it. But, of course, most people trust that there is a responsible government that will protect them. How wrong they are!
Just ONCE I would love to hear a science based explanation for the theory that modified foods are dangerous. Most of those opposed sound like fear born out of ignorance.
How is modifying genes in the lab unlike nature's eons-long process of doing the same?
DNA isn't species specific. It's doing a disservice to the science to convey to one's readership that any section of a gene is somehow uniquely "mouse" dna or "pig" dna by virtue of the source. Frankenfood is particularly reprehensible. You're better than this Brian!
DNA isn't species specific. It's doing a disservice to the science to convey to one's readership that any section of a gene is somehow uniquely "mouse" dna or "pig" dna by virtue of the source. Frankenfood is particularly reprehensible. You're better than this Brian!
So, for those of you who say this is safe, grant those of us with concern this much - let the stuff be labelled. If you want to eat mouse-pig, then go ahead but grant the rest of us the choice to say we want to buy something else.
You only have freedom to make choices if you know there is a choice to make. If GMO meat is not labelled, we will not know.
Brian, what is your definition of a factory farm? Have you ever been on a farm? Hog farmers, regardless of size, want to reduce the amount of phosphorus that they spread on their field. Properly fertilizing techniques, regulated by the Ministry of the Environment, do not result in leeching. Excess phosphorus has a large effect on crop growth, which is why many farmers are supportive of the EnviroPig.
If you had any background or knowledge of agriculture, you would know these things. Please take the time to educate yourself before you write about things that you don't know or understand - it makes you appear very ignorant.
It's all very simple...Just label the bloody stuff and let people decide what they want. I just want an answer from the GMO supporters here: Why are you against labelling? Nutritional labels are all over foods; why can't we have a simple GMO/Non GMO designation added to that label? That's all he's asking for.
Yeah the gummint does such a good job now - what was the last body count from contaminated meat from gummint inspected meat processors? Yeah trust us eh? I agree with the first poster label this Franken-meat and give me the option of buying non GMO.
S, I have to say you are courageous for putting your name out there. It may shock you but I do understand the issues you are dealing with and that farmers face. Ottawa, despite being a large city is very much a rural community. We have more than 5,000 beef farmers inside city limits and I have spent plenty of time on Ag and rural issues. If leeching is not a problem, then why bring in in Enviropig. Leeching is the stated reason they put forward for developing the pig.
I'll simply say this, develop the pig if you will, and I am sure the government will approve it, just label the thing and let consumers decide. Otherwise, why would we trust anything off your farms. And if there is nothing wrong with Enviropig, why not label it.
Hmmm....that's a question no one seems willing to answer.
I wonder if these people realize the public will quickly rename the Enviropig to Mousepig which will rapidly bring an end to any possibility of commercialization.
And of course the competitors of Mousepig Bacon can put shiny labels on their bacon stating 100% Mouse Free which will further hammer nails into Mousepig's coffin.
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