Powerful gene-editing techniques have the potential to improve modern farming by making animals resistant to heat and disease, reducing methane emissions and increasing productivity, but the same approaches could also exacerbate animal welfare problems, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics says.

Though farms have yet to embrace genome editing for animals, its potential in agriculture has driven intense research efforts around the world, leading to experimental animals that demonstrate the viability of the approach. In September, the UK government announced it would bring forward legislation that would pave the way for some genome editing to be allowed in animal breeding.

Elizabeth Cripps, a co-author on the report and a senior lecturer in political theory at Edinburgh University, said a particular concern was the creation of animals that could tolerate poor conditions without it apparently having an adverse health impact. “That could mask the effect that they continue to live in unacceptable conditions,” she said. Another serious concern was the possibility of animals being bred that are no longer physiologically capable of having “a good life”.

The ethicists are calling for an “urgent” public discussion before genome editing is approved for commercial farming.

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