New Genomic Techniques (NGT) in animals and their agri/food/feed products

This report presents a review of the commercial and pre‐commercial stage applications of new genomic technologies (NGT) applied to farm animals and their agri/food/feed products. Additionally, a literature review was performed to compile a comprehensive listing of peer‐reviewed research and development stage gene edited animals for food and agricultural applications. A total of 195 publications resulting in live animals were compiled. To date, several developed or ongoing research applications have been authorized for commerce, or judged to be “non‐GMO” hence conventional, in at least one country including knockout tiger pufferfish and red sea bream in Japan; tilapia, cattle, pigs and horses in Argentina; cattle and tilapia in Brazil; and two gene‐edited cattle were granted enforcement discretion in the United States meaning their products can enter the food supply. One application, the targeted exon deletion of a gene resulting in porcine respiratory and reproductive syndrome virus resistance in pigs is formally in the precommercial stage. There are proof‐of‐concept applications in multiple food species testing gene targets for traits of commercial interest. The most common trait category targeted was meat and fibre yield (31%), followed by reproduction (24%), biotic stress (18%), multiple traits (7%), colour (6%), production of hypoallergenic products (5%), product quality (4%), abiotic stress (1%), and other (4%). The majority of these were SDN‐1 applications using Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9 to introduce small insertions and deletions to inactivate a gene. The large number of applications focused on reproduction is due in part to interest in both single‐sex offspring in numerous industries (e.g. females in the case of egg production), and infertility coupled with germline complementation chimeras (where germline‐competent donor cells are used to replace the germline of an otherwise sterile host of a different genetic background) in multiple species including finfish, chickens, cattle, goats, and pigs.