School Stops Selling Research Pigs to Market

A university livestock program has stopped selling former research pigs to market after the announcement of a federal investigation into whether the animals had been genetically modified. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign took the step after the Food and Drug Administration said more than 300 pigs sold to market should have been destroyed instead.

The research involved increasing pigs’ natural levels of some growth proteins already present in meat. None of the manipulated pigs was sold, but 386 of their offspring were sold to a livestock dealer after tests verified the piglets hadn’t inherited changed genes, the school said.