News

For some European animal breeding industries, new genetic modification techniques can contribute to a sustainable food system. But, they say, their use must be done with great care, so as not to jeopardise food safety and animal health and welfare. This precaution is coupled with a call for « a legal framework on imports to ensure […]

In 2019, in France, 1,865,403 animals were used for experimental purposes [1]. This number of animals was fairly stable between 2015 (414,164 of which 89,708 with a damaging phenotype) and 2017 (428,606 of which 53,076 with a damaging phenotype), but a peak was observed in 2018 : 484,463 animals of which 56,412 with a damaging phenotype ; of […]

For several decades we have been witnessing a drastic reduction in the autonomy of farmers, who have become mere labourers. Farmers may soon have to deal with the arrival of GMO animals, which will certainly reinforce this phenomenon. The stranglehold of a few companies on the animal production chain has become the norm, at least […]

Precision agriculture, the new avatar of agribusiness, invests in robotics, digital technology and genetics [1]. This technological overkill is presented as a solution to many of the failures of industrial agriculture. In the livestock sector, will it allow, as it is often put forward, to improve the living conditions of animals ? hors note that the effectiveness […]

  The rampant industrialisation of our environment over the past century has led to the disappearance of many living species. This sixth mass extinction is the first one specifically attributed to human action. In the face of this observation, several political and scientific approaches have been proposed, which do not tackle the causes but try […]

More meat, milk, wool, etc. have always been some of the objectives of animal selection. For meat, two genetic modification strategies have been implemented : influencing the level of growth hormone, or blocking the gene responsible for the production of myostatin, a hormone that inhibits muscle growth. Research that is far from improving animal welfare…   […]

A certain number of insects are considered as pests, because they carry diseases or are parasites on crops. There are many ways to combat them : chemical insecticides, pheromone traps, induced sterility, etc.   Several techniques are being developed to induce sterility in an insect. These techniques – radiation mutagenesis, transgenesis, inoculation with the bacterium Wolbachia [1] […]

So far, few genetically modified livestock have been approved for marketing. But new mutagenesis techniques could change this. One modification that has already been authorised concerns hornless beef cattle : is this really a good idea ?   The US company Recombinetics [Recombinetics] is a US biotechnology company founded in 2008, specialising in genetic modification of animals […]

The current trend is for livestock farms to obey the « triptych » : digital, robotic, genetic technologies. This is in the name of innovation, profitability and, curiously, in the name of “animal welfare” [1]. Currently, very few GM animals are marketed and sales remain very low. As with plants, genetic engineering aims to accelerate the selection of certain […]