After a safety review, U.S. food regulators said that short-haired cattle produced by gene editing can be created for meat production. Beef from cattle may be available for purchase in less than two years, the Food and Drug Administration said. 

The so-called PRLR-SLICK cattle joins a short list of animals edited by FDA-approved genes for human consumption, including Aqua Bounty's GMO salmon and a pig whose meat doesn't have the sugar that causes some people to have allergic reactions to red meat.

"We hope that our decision will encourage other developers to bring animal biotechnology products to the FDA's risk determination in this rapidly developing field, paving the way for animals containing low-risk IGAs (intentional genomic changes) to hit the market more efficiently," said Steven Solomon, director of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine.

Gene-edited cattle were the first to receive a "low-risk FDA determination for application discretion." The agency reviewed data on gene-edited cattle before deciding that the genetic change was similar to the natural mutations observed in cattle in hot climates. "In addition, cattle food is the same conventional farmed cattle food that has the same characteristic of smooth hair," the FDA said.

Acceligen, a "precision-raising" company based in the suburbs of Minneapolis, used the CRISPR gene editing technique to produce cattle with the feature of short hair, known as smooth coat. Some scientists say that cattle with an extremely short coat may be better able to tolerate the hot weather. 

Source: Agrolink