| Hey readers, It's hard to take my eyes off of the situation in DC. But the mission of Future Perfect has always been to look at big developments that don't make the headlines, so I'm going to take a step back from the US Capitol riot –– and the pandemic –– and write about something completely off the radar this week: gene-editing of livestock animals. Gene-editing is common in plants; we modify them to be immune to the pesticides we want to use, to be more resistant to bugs and diseases, to add nutrients, and to grow bigger. There's an established regulatory framework for new GMO plants, and there is, for many crops, good evidence on safety at this point. There's nothing like that for gene-editing farm animals –– yet. Currently, the FDA oversees gene-editing in livestock and has been fairly conservative, but last month the USDA announced its intent to take over primary oversight, which the FDA refused to sign off on. While the agencies work out their differences, some in the meat industry are aggressively lobbying for USDA oversight so they can use gene-editing sooner, mostly for reducing the spread of disease in livestock and otherwise making them cheaper to raise for food. All this may seem unnatural, but the animals we eat today are very, very different from the ones our ancestors ate. Over the last six or so decades, ag companies have selectively bred farm animals to develop particular traits, making them much easier to industrially farm, like making them grow to full size faster and weigh more so that we can get more meat from them. But selective breeding has its limits. For example, factory farms cut the horns off dairy cows to make them easier to handle, but it'd be hard to selectively breed a hornless animal. Gene editing, however, now makes that a possibility. Even more ambitious possibilities exist, too. Gene-editing animals can serve many purposes, but the ones that have fascinated me are the ones that might affect animal welfare. One gruesome idea, for instance, is to design animals that are blind or deaf –– so they would be less bothered with their crowded conditions. Another speculative idea I've heard raised by ethicists: What if we designed animals with congenital insensitivity to pain? As someone who thinks a lot about the future of factory farming, I have mixed feelings about genetically modifying farmed animals to feel less suffering. First, on a pragmatic note: right now, we are torturing animals by the billions every year. If we could genetically engineer them to not feel pain, or to experience less anxiety and stress in the loud and crowded environments they spend their short lives in, that would be a big improvement, unnatural and creepy though it may sound. This speculation is nearly certain to remain speculation: I think the overwhelming majority of American consumers would feel less comfortable buying meat from an animal genetically engineered not to suffer than buying meat from an animal that suffered greatly. Genetically engineering animals not to suffer is, of course, an implicit statement that their normal conditions are so awful that even this partial solution is an improvement –– and no one wants to be reminded of factory farming when making purchasing decisions. Moreover, lots of consumers are opposed to all GMOs; that's a big consumer base to potentially alienate. Instead, gene editing will likely be used for smaller, less controversial measures. "This will help our producers be able to use less antibiotics, treat fewer sick animals, and be able to eliminate traits like horns that cause animal stress in the production cycle," USDA undersecretary Greg Ibach said when the USDA announced its intent to oversee gene-editing. "Animal stress in the production cycle" is a euphemism for cutting out the animal's horns, an agonizing procedure that'll be good to avoid by engineering horn-free animals. So there might be real animal welfare gains from such modifications. On the other hand, there might actually be ways for animal welfare to get worse –– say, if animals are modified to reach their "market weight" even faster, which could cause even worse musculoskeletal problems than farm animals already endure. My final takeaway here is that I think most people don't think much about how unnatural our factory farms already are. Consumers may be nervous to eat meat from gene-edited animals, but nearly all chicken comes from birds raised in ammonia-soaked industrial warehouses, bred to reach full size so quickly their legs can't support their weight. Starting from such terrible animal welfare standards, gene-editing can't hurt much and might help. But most people still think animal farming takes place in idyllic rural pastures (cow farming, to be fair, sometimes does). Gene-editing could force the public to grapple with the unnaturalness, exploitation, and ugliness of our natural practices –– and maybe give us the tools to do better. —Kelsey Piper, @kelseytuoc | 
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