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Federal regulators have approved genetically modified pigs for food and medical uses in the United States, marking just the second time they have signed off on a biologically modified animal for a consumer purpose. The Food and Drug Administration gave approval this week to pigs that have been engineered to cut out "alpha-gal" sugar in their cells that can cause severe allergic reactions in humans if eaten. The sugar is also found in red meat like beef and lamb. The FDA determined that the domestic line of "GalSafe" pigs are safe to eat and said the absence of alpha-gal sugar...

A strain of coronavirus that has been infecting pigs in China since 2016 — causing them severe diarrhoea and vomiting — could spread to humans, a study has warned. The strain — 'swine acute diarrhoea syndrome coronavirus', or SADS-CoV — is thought to have come from bats, and has been concerning the livestock industry. It is most dangerous to piglets. A wider outbreak of SADS-CoV could cause severe economic damage in those countries that rely on pork production and sales.

The United States is on the cusp of a huge pig 'time bomb' with the number feral hogs increasing in huge numbers. Research scientist Dr. Jack Mayer, a zoologist who has been researching wild pigs for 40 years, has warned that the population could keep on growing unless there is a sudden swine flu epidemic. 'It's a crazy situation with everything that's happened in what I call the Pig Bomb, which has exploded in North America,' Jack Mayer told The Daily Beast about the wild population of six million and two million in Texas alone. Florida, Georgia, and California also...

Musk demoed the company’s brain-computer interface technology on Friday in live pigs. He described it as “like a Fitbit in your skull.” Musk said the Neuralink can help fight blindness, memory loss, insomnia, and other medical conditions. lon Musk’s brain-machine interface company, Neuralink, conducted a live demo of its technology on Friday, showing a coin-sized device without wires. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO brought along three pigs, who had varying levels of interest in cooperating. Eventually, the audience was shown real-time neural signals from one of the pigs, which Musk named Gertrude. According to Musk, Gertrude has had the implant...

Some liberals keep ruining the idea that public radio is an oasis of civility and nonpartisanship. Take Bob Collins, a longtime political editor at Minnesota Public Radio. Anthony Gockowski of the Minnesota Sun site pointed out some Twitter savagery from Collins (account name @MyLittleBloggie). Many of his recent tweets are just the usual Democrat hack stuff -- Trump should resign, his supporters are rats. But on Friday, Collins erupted in hate, suggesting Republicans should commit suicide by shooting themselves in the chest.

With Smithfield Foods' Sioux Falls pork plant closed by a COVID-19 outbreak, Minnesota hog farmer Greg Boerboom may face a grim choice. The South Dakota plant had been scheduled this week to slaughter about 1,400 of Boerboom's pigs. Smithfield directed 25% of that shipment to another Smithfield plant in Illinois — with Boerboom paying the extra $1,500 in freight costs. The remaining 850 hogs are in limbo. Boerboom is seeking a destination for them before they grow too big for market and thus face euthanization. Over 3,000 healthy pigs were put down in Minnesota this week, and 200,000 more could...

The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty on Thursday filed a federal lawsuit against the Marquette County sheriff and a patrol sergeant after they reportedly threatened to arrest an Oxford, Wis. teen for posting on Instagram that she had the coronavirus. WILL is suing Marquette County Sheriff Joseph Konrath and Sergeant Cameron Klump, alleging they violated Amyiah Cohoon’s First Amendment rights. The Milwaukee-based public interest law firm is representing the girl and her parents, Rick and Angela Cohoon. As Empower Wisconsin reported, on March 27 Klump threatened to cite or jail Amyiah or her parents if she did not remove...

For years, there has been a lack of awareness of the true horrors within the sex industry. For the first time in a long time, people are beginning to see that everything isn’t exactly as it seems. One of those realizations is that pornography performers aren’t always participating by choice. Rather, some are forced, coerced, manipulated, and even unwillingly thrown into this dark industry. This truth is often hard to combat in our current cultural climate. Many actors, singers, and Hollywood elitists glamorize sex work, making it appear to be a “well-paying job.” In reality, it is a devastating lifestyle...

he has also cleaned up in Portland, Oregon, but it was his trip to San Francisco that put a new spotlight on the blight in one of America’s once shining cities. “You saw some horrible things in San Francisco,” Breitbart News asked Pressler. “Can you share what you saw, because it wasn’t just coke bottles and water bottles.” “I can just tell you I have been to some of America’s most dirtiest and dangerous cities — I’ve been to Austin, Baltimore, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco — San Francisco was the only city where you had to watch...

Jan. 6 (UPI) -- A trio of escaped pigs wandered into a supermarket in Russia and were caught on camera raiding the liquor aisle. A video taken at the store in Tyumen, Siberia, shows the three pigs perusing the liquor aisle and knocking over bottles of cognac, which they then proceeded to lap up off the floor. Witnesses said the three pigs were found to have escaped from a nearby home. The pigs were returned to their owner unharmed. VIDEO AT LINK................

Karma Forget the billions spent on China’s massive military build-up, the ongoing attempt to make the Chinese Communist Party the most powerful and feared force on the planet. The yellow peril is being decimated by tiny foes, one of them microscopic. All the chest-thumping and saber-rattling, and it finally comes down to a stand-off with a lowly bug that happens to hate communists. Boy, they didn’t see that coming! African Swine Fever (ASF) With a mortality rate near 100%, ASF has swept through China’s hog industry, decimating their primary source of protein. Best estimates put losses at 30-35% of China’s...

An epidemic of African Swine Fever is sweeping through China's hog farms, and the effects are rippling across the globe, because China is a superpower of pork. Half of the world's pigs live in China — or at least they did before the epidemic began a year ago. "Every day, we hear of more outbreaks," says Christine McCracken, a senior analyst at RaboResearch, which is affiliated with the global financial firm Rabobank. McCracken and her colleagues now estimate that by the end of 2019, China's production of pork could be cut in half. "That's roughly 300 million to 350 million...

<p>SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP) — Watermelons are set to replace piglets in an annual event celebrating agriculture at a California fair.</p> <p>The Press Democrat reported Saturday that the Sonoma County Fair has eliminated the pig scramble from Farmers Day due to rising public concern and protests over animal welfare.</p>

Staten Island repo man Jose Rodriguez checks up on his tow truck several times a day. It's been sitting idle on Richmond Terrace for nearly two weeks, immobilized after cops put an orange boot on it when he tried to repossess an NYPD detective's car. Not having the truck, Rodriguez says, has cost him thousands of dollars in earnings. "I gotta get the truck out there. I have to get these cars for the banks," he says. The NYPD could not explain to NY1 why Rodriguez has not been allowed to reclaim his vehicle.The repo man says it's another example...

Governor Abbott has just signed another pro-liberty bill,  this one about pig hunting. Texas has a problem with feral pigs. From smithsonianmag.com: Wild hogs are among the most destructive invasive species in the United States today. Two million to six million of the animals are wreaking havoc in at least 39 states and four Canadian provinces; half are in Texas, where they do some $400 million in damages annually. They tear up recreational areas, occasionally even terrorizing tourists in state and national parks, and squeeze out other wildlife.Texas allows hunters to kill wild hogs year-round without limits or capture...

* China is grappling with a widespread African swine flu (ASF) epidemic, a disease fatal to pigs but harmless to humans. * ASF's effects on pigs are gruesome. Symptoms include diarrhea, depression, and miscarriages. * The government is urging farmers to cull infected pigs to prevent the spread of the disease, which is in turn dramatically decreasing the country's pork production. * Dutch bank Rabobank estimates that the country will kill 150 million to 200 million pigs — or one third of the country's supply — this year. * China is the world's largest pork producer and consumer. The steep...

Scientists blasted pigs with explosives, infected monkeys with biological weapons and poisoned guinea pigs with nerve gas at the government’s top secret Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down in Wiltshire.

The brains of dead pigs have been somewhat revived by scientists hours after the animals were killed in a slaughterhouse. The Yale University research team is careful to say that none of the brains regained the kind of organized electrical activity associated with consciousness or awareness. Still, the experiment described Wednesday in the journal Nature showed that a surprising amount of cellular function was either preserved or restored. The implications of this study have staggered ethicists, as they contemplate how this research should move forward and how it fits into the current understanding of what separates the living from the...

Yale scientists say experiment opens new frontier in brain research 35 minutes ago Re-vitalised brains of dead pigs said to be ‘cellularly active’. Photograph: Damien Meyer/AFP/Getty Re-vitalised brains of dead pigs said to be ‘cellularly active’. Photograph: Damien Meyer/AFP/Getty An experiment has breathed life into the brains of pigs four hours after death. Scientists in the US restored circulation and cellular activity in 32 pig brains obtained from a meat-packing plant. While there was no evidence of re-awakening awareness or consciousness, the re-vitalised brains were said to be “cellularly active”. The study has implications that challenge long-held assumptions about the...

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials seized 1 million pounds of pork products at the Newark, New Jersey maritime point of entry Friday. The meat is believed to have been smuggled from China, where there is currently an outbreak of the African swine fever (ASF). During a Friday news conference, officials announced the seizure of over 50 shipping containers containing pork products. "Agriculture specialists made a critical interception of these prohibited animal products, and stopped them from entering the US before they could potentially cause grave damage," Troy Miller, director of CBP field operations for the cities of New...