Transgenic Animals For Food
Created by: Tom Silvestrone & Max Pirozzi
What are transgenic animals and how are they being used?
Transgenic animals are animals that are injected with a foreign gene. Most animals made this way start off with a surrogate mother who then has an egg fertilized. The result of this is a genetically modified offspring. To create a pure transgenic line the offspring is bred with similar transgenic offspring. Currently transgenic animals are being used to make more of an animal that is hard to get or that has a sensitive population.
Benefits,disadvantages, and risks
The benefit of this type of genetic engineering is that several over harvested animals can be saved through transgenic animals.There are some disadvantages such as it is expensive,difficult, and it usually leads to breeding problems. A huge risk is the chance of a transgenic fish escaping into a natural environment. This is a big problem because for example salmon choose mates based off size so if a large transgenic fish escaped it could reproduce quickly. And based off of transgenic animal studies, they do not have long life expectencies. This could potentially harm an organism's existence.
Phyical affect on organism
There has been ethical concerns about these animals. There has been limited comfort and quality of care for these animals. We are actually just exploiting these animals and not furthering science. The animals that are tested on are given disease that often kill them, and the procedures are painful for them.