Researcher Cecil Forsberg created the first Enviropigs in 1999. Their meat may soon be available at American supermarkets. (Photo by Julie Grant)
At factory farms, cows and
pigs produce a lot of manure, and
that sometimes causes a lot of
pollution. Julie Grant reports that
one scientist says he’s got a solution:
genetically modify pigs so they produce
less pollution. But to be successful,
people have to be willing to eat
genetically modified meat:
Transcript
At factory farms, cows and
pigs produce a lot of manure, and
that sometimes causes a lot of
pollution. Julie Grant reports that
one scientist says he’s got a solution:
genetically modify pigs so they produce
less pollution. But to be successful,
people have to be willing to eat
genetically modified meat:
Murray Borrello says pig and cow poop is killing everything
in some of the water he studies. He’s a geologist and has
been researching water pollution with chemists and
biologists at Alma College in Michigan. Borrello says there’s
no fish in parts of the river – because of all the animal feces
running off of nearby farms.
“It’s very obvious. It’s this kind of brown, mucky,
murky looking substance.”
That poop is full of phosphorous, nitrogen, and other things
that cause pollution problems. It creates algae that clogs up
waterways and sucks out all the oxygen.
Borrello says some of the farms house more than
10,000 hogs. Farmers sometimes hold 20 million gallons of
pig manure in lagoons. They liquefy it and spray it on the
fields for fertilizer. But Borrello says it’s too much manure,
so it runs off the land and into the waterways.
In some places, it’s the same water is used for drinking
water. And the same rivers drain into the Great Lakes.
On the northern side of the Lakes, a Canadian scientist says
he’s found a possible solution to this pig pollution problem.
(sound of a pig barn)
It’s called the Enviropig.
Cecil Forsberg has genetically modified pigs so they produce
less pollution in their waste.
I met him at his research barn at the University of Guelph in
Ontario.
There are no windows – just a ventilation system. And,
wow, it’s hard to concentrate – the smell of pig waste is so
strong.
He introduces me to a group of Enviropigs, they’re about a year and
a half old. He says they have no detectable difference from
regular pigs.
“They have four legs, two ears, a snout, and they like to dig
in the shavings.”
But while most pigs poop out a lot of polluting phosphorous,
Forsberg has made the Enviropig into a much better
machine for digesting phosphorous.
He’s no Dr. Frankenstein. But to do it, he did use DNA from
a mouse. He says it’s considered a safe technique, but he
knows it makes people cringe.
“There’s no mouse in these pigs, except for a little fragment
of DNA.”
The mouse DNA allowed Forsberg to add a bacterial gene to
the pigs. It’s that bacteria that triggers the pig’s salivary
glands to start the digestion of phosphorous.
Forsberg says the waste from these pigs does a lot less
damage to the environment than most pigs.
“There’s a reduction in the phosphorous in the manure by up
to 60%. And that’s important because phosphorous is the
component in manure that is the first one that’s problematic.”
And it’s part of what chokes the oxygen out of the waterways –
killing fish and other aquatic species. Forsberg wants to see
Enviropigs bred on the global scale to reduce pollution from
the growing number of large scale hog farms.
Back in Michigan, water specialist Murray Borrello
says reducing phosphorous pollution from giant hog farms
will benefit water quality, but he does not think a genetically
modified pig is the answer.
“The problem is that does not address the issue of all the
other stuff that is very concentrated going into surface water
and ground water.”
Stuff, such as nitrogen and ammonia.
Borrello says a better solution is to reduce the size of hog
farms, so there aren’t so many pigs concentrated in such
small spaces.
But the Enviropig is starting to get some traction.
When Forsberg and his colleagues created the first
generation of Enviropigs, nearly 10 years ago, the question
was: could they do it?
Today, seven generations of pigs later, the question is: will
people eat it?
Until recently, the US government hadn’t allowed the sale
of genetically modified meat. But, the Food and Drug
Administration recently published guidelines for it. And
some industry analysts say you could be eating pork from
animals like the Enviropig as soon as 2011.
For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.