The US Food and Drug Adminis-tration (FDA) is searching for 386 pigs that went to market when they should have stayed home.
The piglets were all bred from genetically modified sows involved in a research experiment and then sold to a livestock broker without FDA authorization.
The assumption is that most of them made it into the food chain, according to officials who became aware of the mistake last week.
FDA investigators will take any of the piglets they track down off the market, but they acknowledged Thursday that they are probably too late -- the Illinois university researchers have been selling off the pigs since April 2001.
FDA officials and researchers in the animal sciences department at the University of Illinois, who bred the pigs, insist that the mix-up is not a cause for concern, although critics of genetically modified food have cautioned that the effect of these foreign agents on humans remains unknown.
"We're very confident that no pig with trans-genes made it through our very comprehensive screening process," said Bill Murphy, spokesman for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The researchers tested all the piglets for the presence of the trans-genes or any expression thereof be-fore selling them off for slaughter.
The FDA also sought to quash any fears about threats to public health Wednesday, noting in a statement that "all available scientific evidence indicates that [the meat] would present no risk to public health."
The agency also pointed out that the genes would only be expressed in adult female pigs and the animals sold for slaughter were all piglets.
The aim of the researchers' experiment was to breed sows that would provide better quality nutrition to their offspring and hence allow farmers to raise bigger pigs faster.
To that end, the mostly female pigs had two genes added to their DNA -- a cow gene that increases milk production and a synthetic gene that makes the milk easier for piglets to digest.
FDA officials noted the genes were engineered so that the proteins would be produced primarily, if not exclusively, in the mammary glands of lactating sows.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last