Posted on 12/05/2018 7:57:18 AM PST by Red Badger
AN AMBITIOUS pig farmer raising muscle-bound mutant porkers for the bacon market is selling their sperm on Facebook.
The Cambodian-based breeder is flogging the semen - along with insemination kits - to others looking to move into the 'Frankenswine' market.
Mutant ...one of the giant pigs greedily gobbles up his massive dinner at a farm in Cambodia
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Scientists in South Korea have been credited with originally genetically-engineering double-muscle hogs to avert a future pork shortage crisis.
They carefully altered pig genes to create super-sized swines capable of producing more meat than usual breeds.
Farmyard footage shows similar porky 'monsters' that look like they’ve been gorging on steroids or even pumping iron in the gym.
The shocking images have been condemned by animal lovers who say the burly pigs are the "stuff of nightmares."
The Facebook page offers to sell sperm and artificial insemination kits for others to breed the pigs
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The pigs turned their food into muscle at a faster rate than normal
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Bacon butties ...the impressive muscle tone of a new breed of super-sized pig
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Giant hogs were first developed at Seoul National University, in South Korea, by microbiologists on a mission to create more meat.
Jin-Soo Kim, who led the work, said: “We could do this through breeding. But then it would take decades.”
Years of cross-breeding has already created the enormous Belgian Blue cattle as featured by the Sun Online on Saturday.
But Kim’s team have by-passed this method and created the bulked-up pigs by tinkering with a “myostatin gene”.
Pork life ...the pigs have been created to yield more meat
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The muscle tone also produces more delicious but less fatty pork
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Animals lovers reacted with fury after seeing pictures of the 'grotesque' pigs
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This gene usually keeps the growth of muscle cells in check, but when it is altered this does not happen and the pig grows to more than twice its normal size.
The genetic editing also produces a higher muscle mass which means more meat is yielded and it also a lot less fatty.
Kim and his colleagues originally produced more than 30 piglets.
However, new images from a the farm in Banteay Meanchey, Cambodia shows the giant pig business is booming with pens packed full of porkers.
The farmer raising the pigs is even offering to sell the sperm to others looking to breed the giants.
Facebook pictures show a pig pen full of giant porkers
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He also shared video footage of the muscle-bound animals squealing as they fight over food.
Scientists insist the mutation is safe because rather than transplanting genetic information from one species to another they have simply edited genes.
However, at the moment no country allows its people to eat the genetically modified products.
The EU bans any importing of genetically modified food into member states amid fears for the safety and quality of the meat.
The UK Food Standards Agency said all genetically modified (GM) food has to undergo a rigorous safety assessment before it is permitted to be placed on the EU market.
Animal-lovers reacted with a mixture of horror and fury after viewing the images online.
One wrote: “This is grotesque! Obviously bred like this. Are there no laws to stop this sort of thing. Ugh!”
Another called the images “unbelievably disgusting”.
And a third commented: “What the f*** is this nightmare!!!!???”
Animal rights organisation Peta also blasted the “disturbing” images of the “double-muscled” animals.
PETA's Mimi Bekhechi told Sun Online: “Hulk-like pigs are the stuff of nightmares, not meals, and those who are genetically engineered are also likely to be born with painful health issues.
“When South Korean and Chinese scientists created 32 double-muscled piglets in 2015, only one was considered even marginally healthy.
“We urge anyone disturbed by the thought of eating manipulated and mutilated pig flesh to bypass the bacon.”
That first guy who saw that little, red, pea-sized fruit of a toxic nightshade and asked, “I wonder if that tastes good?”
I want to shake his hand.
I wonder if the same procedure could be used for those with muscular distrophy? Place the edited genes in a virus, inject it, let the virus do its thing, and spread the altered genes throughout the body.
That sounds oxymoronic.
That was MY first thought.
Talk about tough, less tasty meat.
“...the fruits and vegetables we eat today to what we ate a few hundred years ago. It was amazing. Many of them were mere shadows of what we now enjoy, some barely edible.”
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In the span of few years, the former sweet *mini-peppers* have grown from the size/shape of most hot varieties to actual small variants of the larger 5-lobed sweet peppers. The ones I bought a few days ago are only about 1/3 the size of normal full-sized sweet, colored peppers and are shaped like the large, traditional ones.
Same with Campari *cocktail* tomatoes. They used to be about 2x the size of a large cherry tomato. Some in my last box were actually closer in size to a small 4th-of-July tomato.
The difference between laboratory engineering and engineering via other methods is that in the lab, a degree of precision is possible that cannot be achieved by any other method.
I can literally change one single base pair of DNA and leave the entire rest of the genome untouched when using lab methods of genetic engineering. On the other hand, if I try to breed animals or plants for a trait, I may or may not get the trait... the trait could be linked to another trait that I do not want at all... there are unpredictable changes to the rest of the genome that can affect the organism's growth, appearance, health, flavor, etc.
The difference between older methods of genetic engineering and laboratory methods is analogous to the method of painting a wall in your house by throwing random cans of paint at it and hoping for the right color and complete coverage, vs. getting a can of paint of the desired color and applying to the wall exactly where you want it with brushes and rollers.
I think that’s why people are afraid of it. It gives geneticists the ability to create things that, possibly, could never naturally occur. This, at least theoretically, exposes us to the risk of creating something that wipes out all life.
And I could theoretically win the lotto if I ever bought a ticket.
The issue, as I see it, is more that people do not understand the biology of DNA.
Every time an organism reproduces, the process of reproduction introduces new mutations all over the genome. In humans, there are about 120 new mutations for every conception. A mutation can be lethal, in which case the organism fails to grow, usually early in development. (Not counting abortion, only ~15% of fertilized human ova develop into babies that survive to delivery.) Fluid, changing genomes are a characteristic of existence—so the fear that by selectively changing one base-pair or even an entire gene we will accidently do something dire that nature has not already done is not supported by the facts.
As for the risk that we would accidentally make a change that would wipe out all life—well, your chances of winning the lottery are pretty high in comparison. The task of creating something through genetic engineering that could wipe out all life is daunting, to say the least; it may even be impossible. And it would be a deliberate act, not accidental.
I actually have quite a bit of hands-on experience with genetic engineering. It’s common in the research world.
Wow, he’s even looking like a doublemuscled liberal. I didn’t know that liberal whiskered look was contagious.
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