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Behind locked doors, past a shower, where humans are required to rinse, more than 25 pink pigs crowd into hay-covered pens at the University of Guelph.
They look like regular Yorkshire pigs: Their eyes gleam like black marbles, they snort, and they scarf dinner from a trough. "These pigs behave like pigs; they do everything a pig would do," says John Kelley of MarS Landing, a Canadian agricultural development program. Except for one thing.
These pigs have been modified to carry a gene from an innocuous strain of E. coli that has been spliced with a protein from a mouse. The added gene enables the animals to produce the enzyme phytase in their saliva. This enzyme, say Guelph researchers, could solve one of the major environmental problems associated with industrial pig farms.
Normal pigs can't break down phytate, a phosphorus-rich compound in their gut. When manure lagoons on hog factories overflow or breach into nearby rivers or seep into groundwater, the high phosphorus content creates algae blooms, killing fish and other marine life. Trademarked the Enviropig, these genetically modified pigs...