Les envirocochons bientôt sur les tables canadiennes

[Animal 0]

'Enviropigs' clear hurdle on way to dinner table

By Sarah Schmidt, Canwest News Service
February 19, 2010

Genetically engineered pigs are one step closer to being meat on Canadian kitchen tables with the federal government poised to declare that they do not harm the environment.

Canwest News Service has learned Environment Canada has determined that
Yorkshire pigs developed at the University of Guelph are not toxic to the
environment under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. The official
declaration will be made tomorrow.

This is the first regulatory hurdle to get the pigs to market, which will be
a first in Canada if Health Canada approves the university's application,
submitted last year, seeking a government declaration that its transgenic
pig is fit for human consumption.

The so-called "Enviropigs," the world's first transgenic animal created to
solve an environmental problem, were created in 1999 with a snippet of mouse
DNA introduced into their chromosomes.

The pigs produce low-phosphorus feces.

The scientists were able to reduce phosphorus pollution by creating a
composite gene that enables digestion of a normally unavailable form of
phosphorus. This allows the pigs to produce manure that is 30 to 65 per cent
lower in phosphorus than found in the manure of regular pigs -- blamed for
polluting surface and groundwater when raised in intensive livestock
operations.

"The university has successfully satisfied the requirements to allow the
line of transgenic pigs to be produced and farmed using appropriate
containment procedures. So that's the step we're at right now," said Steven
Liss of at the University of Guelph.

Liss declined to speculate how long it will take Health Canada and the Food
and Drug Administration in the United States to consider the university's
submissions seeking approval for human food consumption and subsequent
commercialization.

Patricia Howard, a biotechnology and public policy expert at Simon Fraser
University, doesn't think Health Canada is up to the job -- nor does she
think the Canadian public is ready to embrace transgenic pork on their
dinner plates anytime soon.

"If you were to start talking about genetically modified pigs entering the
food supply, I think eyebrows would go up. A lot of people would have a lot
of questions," she said.

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