Why don't they genetically modify livestock to make them bigger to reduce the number of animals being reared and slaughtered?

Why don't they genetically modify livestock to make them bigger to reduce the number of animals being reared and slaughtered?

farmed salmon is not dyed pink. Dying would mean that color is added to the meat after the salmon is slaughtered.

What happens instead is that the pink/orange pigments some wild salmon obtain from eating small crustaceans are added to the fish feed given to the farmed fish. The exact same pigment molecules. Because it’s what consumers want. They assume that good salmon ought to be bright red-ish, so farmers make sure that their salmon has that color. Whereas in nature, wild salmon meat can have any color between white and dark red depending on the diet of the salmon in question. One could also argue with the modifications done to make animals fatter faster that it actually changes the amino acids in the protein in turn humans get fatter faster and our US food supply is actually the root of obesity. Nearly anything we've eaten has been genetically modified, and has been for thousands of years. The method of modification is a different question. For thousands of years, we modified genes through selective breeding and cross breeding. Today, we genetically engineer desired traits. That we'd call one unnatural while declaring the other “organic and natural” is hilariously hypocritical. If anyone has any doubts, just think for a moment about the banana tree, and why a plant would produce fruit with no seeds naturally. The Belgian Blue is a prime example of a cattle breed that could not survive without human intervention. Female Belgian blues have a narrower than normal birth canal, and their calves are significantly larger than those of normal cow breeds.

By consequence, natural delivery is nearly impossible. Nearly 100% of births from purebred Belgian Blues require Caesarean sections. It’s the main reason why the breed is falling out of fashion: most of the extra profit you gain from its superior feed conversion is eaten up by vet fees. By the way, the Belgian Blue phenotype is caused by a single, tiny deletion in the myostatin gene. Introducing Belgian Blue ‘gainz’ into any other random cattle breed is trivial using modern gene editing methods, although the resulting animal would be inexpcliably considered GM for regulatory purposes, whereas the original Belgian Blue is not. Roughly 1/20 wild-caught Chinook salmon have (nearly) white flesh due to a combination of genetics and diet. These salmon are every bit as tasty and nutritious as their red brethren, but fetch a much lower price.You literally wear clothes, speak and use a phone. Air was not meant to harbor our voices, the electromagnetic field was not meant to house our internet or electricity. This feeling of wrongness is inefficient and people who do not abolish it will force the universe to abolish it for them by reducing your reproduction, enhancing social stigma towards those who harbor these thoughts by using more powerful and spread efficient thoughts and enhancing chances of death. Once you go against the universe, it will crush you.

This of course has absolutely nothing to do with GM or not: all farmed salmon is fed pigments, regardless of whether it is GM

I’m pretty sure we have done that.

At least, we’ve carried out selective breeding on all kinds of livestock to increase the size (and thus, amount of meat) per animal.

Humans have done this for thousands of years, though we’ve kicked it up a notch in the last century.

Do you think cattle naturally look like this?

Moo.

Or chickens?

I’m not sure how much is technically genetic modification, since selective breeding doesn’t involve inserting foreign genetic material into the animals.

But I’m pretty sure we have also genetically engineered livestock to grow faster, among other things.

Livestock are modified with the intention of improving economically important traits such as growth-rate, quality of meat, milk composition, disease resistance and survival. Animals have been engineered to grow faster, be healthier, and resist diseases.[1]

Now, I’m not going to open a can of worms by delving into this phrasing. I’m sure it has its drawbacks, especially for the animals.

I also know that there are various restrictions, so don’t ask me which countries do and don’t allow this kind of thing.

But here’s one definite instance — a GM salmon behind a regular one at the same age:

(In 2017), the Canadian authorities allowed a GM salmon designed by US company AquaBounty to be sold to consumers. It is engineered to reach market size in 18 months, half the time of its natural counterpart. However, the fish is not labelled GM in shops.

So, either we are already creating GM livestock, or selective breeding has already created much larger animals. (Sometimes both, it seems.) How much more muscular could a Belgian Blue plausibly get without just collapsing from sheer “gainz”?

I don’t think this has reduced the number of animals being reared and slaughtered, though, because there’s simply more demand for meat than ever before. Now, I’m not claiming to know anything much about GM; I’m just quoting a few facts. I know plenty of people are quick to demonise it without understanding it (it’s improved yields of certain crops which has helped save many lives, for instance) but at the same time, it’s definitely not good for the planet (nor its many wild animals) to sustain this rate of meat production and some of these livestock we’re basically “creating” through artificial selection are getting to be grotesque.

Picture Source Google

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