Researchers in the U.K. are using genetic engineering to develop resistance to African Swine Fever in domestic pigs.
African Swine Fever is found in wild pigs in Africa, but they have developed tolerance to the disease. But some strains can wipe out domestic pigs, as well as wild pigs in Europe and North America. The virus can survive in processed meat (but isn’t a human health risk), as well as on clothes, livestock feed, and equipment.
African Swine Fever has not been found in Canada.
Scientists with the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, which was the birthplace of Dolly the cloned sheep, used a new gene-editing technique on a male piglet, dubbed Pig 26.