The Pros And Cons Of Genetically Modified Animals

Something I have always been interested in is the production of genetically modified (GM) animals. I think GM animals will be an ongoing trend and something that, evidentially, we will not be able to live without due to the fact of the rapidly increasing birth rate vs. death rate in the world. People are always skeptical when they hear anything relating to GMO anything but the advances in technology are very crucial to our future. GM animals could impact the livestock and pharmaceutical industries.

Currently, food products that are made from GM animals have not quite made it too the dinner table yet but I would almost consider implants as a modification. Although they are testing this as we speak. The objective of this paper is to inform of

As an advocate for agriculture, it is very important that we understand the acceptance that GM animals will have and how it may affect animal welfare, producers acceptance, and what kind of impact this may have on smaller livestock producers and family run operations in what kind of risk it will put the livestock pharmaceuticals at.

The production of genetically modified livestock could greatly change how we handle disease and production from an operational standpoint. We could use fewer animals, more clones, fewer antibiotics, and more resistance. The majority of GM animals have already been brought up in labs across universities in America and overseas, one of the more popular animals being rodents, but here recently, pigs have been used a great amount of medical research, which is a whole new can of worms.

“Other applications, such as EnviropigTM, were created to reduce the environmental impact of farming Finally, genetic engineering can be used for bio-medical and human health applications, like GM livestock (cows, goats, sheep, pigs, chickens or rabbits) developed for producing pharmaceutical proteins from milk, egg white or other fluids (e.g., blood), human antibodies, animal tissue or organs for use in human transplants, or xenotransplantation (Houdebine, 2009; Laible, 2009; Murray et al., 2010; Vàzquez-Salatet al.,

Europe has had a heavy hand in the development of cloned and GM animals throughout the ‘90s. Dolly, the sheep that was the first animal created by cloning through the transfer of a cell nucleus from a differentiated cell to an egg cell at the Roslin Institute in Scotland, which was the peak of my curiosity as a student in animal science back in high school. Another European example was Herman the bull, which was developed by the Dutch biotechnology company Gene Pharming Europe. Genetic modification was applied so that subsequent generations of female offspring would produce the protein lactoferrin through their milk, which can be used for food, nutraceutical, and pharmaceutical purposes.