Selective breeding and genetic modification are hot topics in the world of vivisection, and, just as in other areas of animal research, farmed animals are common victims . . . and, it’s all about the money.

Animal researchers are selectively breeding and genetically modifying farmed animals to make their rearing, confinement, “production”, and butchering more profitable. 

The concept of modifying farmed animals for human gain is a very, very old one. Indeed, the agribusiness industry has for many centuries – and long before an understanding of genes led to modern “science” – sought to breed animals “to produce certain traits, such as faster growth rates or resistance to disease, that would yield more meat at a lower cost.” But, over the more recent decades, this old concept has been joined with advances in scientific understanding and technological acuity, garnering ever increasing agribusiness investment. 

Today’s agribusiness industry funds a tremendous amount of research aimed at genetically altering farmed animals to make them ever more profitable victims of human exploitation and consumption. For example, the industry has funded gene-edited cows to “grow shorter hair to better tolerate heat, which makes them more efficient for meat producers in hotter climates” and genetically engineered salmon to “grow twice as fast [“as conventional salmon”] and year-round.” (The industry has also invested in genetic modification intended to increase consumer demand for animal flesh – to wit, “the GalSafe pig”, whose flesh “can be eaten by people who are allergic to a molecule called alpha-gal found in unmodified pigs.”)

Recent efforts have seen researchers working to change both animals’ physical and emotional natures to make them “better” (i.e., more lucrative and less costly) victims.

Though (horrifying) examples abound, two recent industry “highlights” help paint the picture for us: 

Animal researchers are working to increase profits by forcing Holstein cows (those commonly exploited for milk) to breed with “beef breed” bulls to create larger babies. 

The industry wants “dairy cows [to] carry[] larger offspring” because the economic value of farmed animals’ lives is often measured by the (literal) pound – so, bigger bodies mean bigger dollar signs and “more profitable herds for farmers”.

True to form, industry wants the public to believe that these commodified and experimental – yet fully sentient – beings are not negatively impacted by their treatment as commodities and experimental subjects. No joke – the industry actually reported that this experiment “does not negatively affect dairy cow health” even though it involves confining and enslaving cows and bulls, forcefully collecting semen from the bulls and forcibly inseminating the cows with this semen, and making the cows carry and birth unnatural babies who will be killed. That’s because, in the perverse world of animal agribusiness, emotional, psychological, sexual, and physical abuse do not constitute harms unless they affect the animals’ economic values – and, here, researchers proudly reported that the “cows [who] carried beef-sired calves did not differ in milk, milk fat or milk protein yield when compared to those [who] carried Holstein-sired calves.”

Animal researchers are also trying to reduce costs by breeding pigs to be more “resilient” to (or, in the more transparent words of the study itself, “‘minimally affected by’”) the incarcerative, deprived, agonizing factory farm environment. 

Researchers admit that their desire to improve pigs’ resilience stems from greed – i.e.,  because it would “reduce costs” – and they callously refer to their experimental subjects as “finishing pigs” (defined by the industry as pigs in the “phase” of “production” where they are “fed to reach market weight” – i.e., where they are literally being “finished” by producers before being executed). In the face of unyielding overcrowding and unimaginable physical and psychological stress, these pigs have been known to bite each other’s tails, develop lameness, or die (before their kill date) – and each of these outcomes comes with a price tag for industry.

Further, because alternating their abusive practices and distressful environments would come with a higher financial cost, modern “farmers” continue calling upon their vivisector compadres to change the affected living beings themselves. They continue doing this even while conceding that their practices and environments are responsible for “automatically creating” the problems they’re seeking to avoid. 

Here we find an active harbinger of a long-held fear: “that gene editing could lead to the creation of animals [who] can tolerate poor husbandry and care, rather than improving conditions and practices.” 

And so it is: rather than changing egregious and torturous practices, industry is seeking to create sentient beings less affected by these very practices; and, rather than considering the implicated ethics, the industry distracts with the invalid suggestion that there’s a more “right” way to commit a blatant wrong.

Any nods to welfare (much less ethics) are hollow and intended only to deceive and distract. In fact, the former CEO of the company that created the “heat-tolerant cattle” (and which is working on a hornless calf”) admitted publicly that agribusiness is interested in selectively breeding for and genetically modifying traits “that increase ‘productivity’”, not welfare – though, the same CEO conceded, the industry sometimes ‘focuse[s] on easing animal suffering because ‘it’s a better story to tell’”:

‘I definitely am extremely worried about the idea that the initial genetic modifications that are approved are ones that are either welfare neutral or welfare positive, but they’re going to open up the floodgates for a lot of gene interventions that have very negative impacts on animal welfare.’

Exploitation is exploitation – and, no matter the kind, serves only to reduce the “welfare” of its victims. 

Indeed, it has been recognized even by those in the field (such as the afore-cited, former CEO) that “‘a lot of gene interventions’” will “‘have very negative impacts on animal welfare’” – and that, at best, genetic modification brings “a risk of unpredicted, potentially harmful changes to the animal.” 

Writes an astute observer:

There’s good reason to worry gene editing could result in further harm to animals just as much as it could be used to ease some of the pain that comes from being a cog in the industrial agriculture system. The first genetically engineered animal to be approved by the FDA for human consumption, the AquAdvantage salmon . . . are prone to a number of welfare issues, like jaw deformities, lesions, and higher mortality rates.

Moreover, these types of harrowing consequences are common among genetically engineered or modified animals of all species, many of whom “‘do not express the inserted gene properly, often resulting in anatomical, physiologic, or behavioral abnormalities’” and “considerable suffering in these abnormal, sick, and short-lived animals.” 

Only by ending(!) the human exploitation of animals on farms and in labs will “animal welfare” be meaningfully improved and ethics restored. 

Selective breeding and genetic modification cannot expunge from animal exploitation the inherent cruelty, much less the patently unethical and harmful core. To recognize this, one need go no further than considering that, right now, farmed animals are being subjected to (“scientific”) brutalities in the name of rendering other brutalities reaped upon them more efficient.

A victim is a victim. Exploitation is exploitation. And not even modern “science” can change this, not one tiny bit.

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