“It’s exceptional!” exclaimed Grant Willis, the company’s CEO, dabbing at his chin with a napkin. “We have finally achieved the Big Three. We have enjoyed phenomenal success with Pure Chicken and Ecopig, and now we are ushering in the era of Well Beef.” Willis gestured toward the room, where guests eddied about the tables surveying and sampling Tyson’s array of genetically engineered foods. The chefs had transformed the Well Beef into carpaccio woven into the shape of roses. Interspersed were silver trays of Ecopig sliders and Pure Chicken pâté nestled among garlands of fruit and salad greens.
Unlike these pea vines, whose differences are largely cosmetic, what makes Well Beef distinct from traditional meat goes beyond appearances. By using CRISPR and other gene editing technology, companies like Tyson can make targeted modifications to the genome in order to delete or insert new genes. While those who selected favorable variants in the past were doing so in ways that were molecularly indiscriminate, today’s food engineers have gone from merely interpreting the gene to manipulating it. (...)
Tyson’s Pure Chicken was the first GE animal engineered not to perceive pain. Using CRISPR and other proprietary technologies, bioengineers were able to manipulate the chickens so they had brain function sufficient for maintaining growth but not for supporting mental states or psychological experiences. These chickens, which lacked beaks, eyes and feathers, also had ablations to their anterior cingulate that disrupted the affective dimensions of pain. Their secondary somatosensory cortex was left intact, rendering them able to eat and drink, and even to react instinctually to stimuli. But when exposed to adverse stimuli, rather than exhibiting nociceptive behavior, they remained serene. They resembled something between an animal and a fruit, an observation that is encapsulated by the product’s official slogan: “They may as well grow on trees.”
Although the product had its critics, its immediate commercial success left no doubt about the industry’s trajectory. Within months of its debut in 2048, Pure Chicken became the industry standard. Non-genetically engineered chicken simply could not compete with Pure Chicken for taste or efficiency. And whereas traditionally bred chickens are prone to pecking one another’s eyes out when too tightly confined, Pure Chickens are equanimous and placid. From temperament to taste, cruelty-free chicken outmatched non-GE poultry.
In the ebullience that followed the commercial success of Pure Chicken, companies like Tyson and Cal-Maine Foods turned their attention to bioengineering a larger array of more complex livestock animals. The methods that researchers used were similar, focusing on disrupting the neural pathways so that they could alleviate pain while not stunting growth. Three years ago, in the spring of 2050, a team of animal science researchers from California Polytechnic State University discovered that folic acid deficiency during embryogenesis could lead to a neural tube defect that disrupts pain signaling in the brain. They first implemented this strategy in pigs, which led to a spate of GE pork products, including Ecopig, before turning their attention to modifying cattle.
Well Beef is thus the tour de force of GE livestock. The welfare-enhanced cows from which Well Beef is manufactured are a genetic hybrid of Holstein and Angus cattle. Large and muscle-bound, their architectonic bodies ripple with prime cuts. The most pronounced distinction between these beef cows and their forebears is their heads, which develop with a concave brain but retain a partial skull, including the face.
According to Tyson, these cattle eat, grow, live and die without a vestige of pain. Even the most skeptical evaluators confirmed this appraisal. Upon visiting Tyson’s headquarters last month, Maxwell Harder, an investigator with the Factory Farming Awareness Coalition, marveled that he had “plausibly borne witness to the largest reduction of suffering ever undertaken.”
by Xander Balwit, Asterisk | Read more:
Image: Natalya Balnova
Tyson’s Pure Chicken was the first GE animal engineered not to perceive pain. Using CRISPR and other proprietary technologies, bioengineers were able to manipulate the chickens so they had brain function sufficient for maintaining growth but not for supporting mental states or psychological experiences. These chickens, which lacked beaks, eyes and feathers, also had ablations to their anterior cingulate that disrupted the affective dimensions of pain. Their secondary somatosensory cortex was left intact, rendering them able to eat and drink, and even to react instinctually to stimuli. But when exposed to adverse stimuli, rather than exhibiting nociceptive behavior, they remained serene. They resembled something between an animal and a fruit, an observation that is encapsulated by the product’s official slogan: “They may as well grow on trees.”
Although the product had its critics, its immediate commercial success left no doubt about the industry’s trajectory. Within months of its debut in 2048, Pure Chicken became the industry standard. Non-genetically engineered chicken simply could not compete with Pure Chicken for taste or efficiency. And whereas traditionally bred chickens are prone to pecking one another’s eyes out when too tightly confined, Pure Chickens are equanimous and placid. From temperament to taste, cruelty-free chicken outmatched non-GE poultry.
In the ebullience that followed the commercial success of Pure Chicken, companies like Tyson and Cal-Maine Foods turned their attention to bioengineering a larger array of more complex livestock animals. The methods that researchers used were similar, focusing on disrupting the neural pathways so that they could alleviate pain while not stunting growth. Three years ago, in the spring of 2050, a team of animal science researchers from California Polytechnic State University discovered that folic acid deficiency during embryogenesis could lead to a neural tube defect that disrupts pain signaling in the brain. They first implemented this strategy in pigs, which led to a spate of GE pork products, including Ecopig, before turning their attention to modifying cattle.
Well Beef is thus the tour de force of GE livestock. The welfare-enhanced cows from which Well Beef is manufactured are a genetic hybrid of Holstein and Angus cattle. Large and muscle-bound, their architectonic bodies ripple with prime cuts. The most pronounced distinction between these beef cows and their forebears is their heads, which develop with a concave brain but retain a partial skull, including the face.
According to Tyson, these cattle eat, grow, live and die without a vestige of pain. Even the most skeptical evaluators confirmed this appraisal. Upon visiting Tyson’s headquarters last month, Maxwell Harder, an investigator with the Factory Farming Awareness Coalition, marveled that he had “plausibly borne witness to the largest reduction of suffering ever undertaken.”
by Xander Balwit, Asterisk | Read more:
Image: Natalya Balnova
