Are pigs used in biomedical testing ever butchered for their meat?
Seems like we kill a lot of pigs every year anyways. Would be neat if we could get multiple birds from one stone - for experiments where there isn't a risk of making the meat dangerous at least.
I doubt it. All disposed of according to hazardous waste rules. Also, large study animals are so important that most tissues and bits are studied during necropsy in close details with retained material kept frozen for years.
Actually, I heard an NPR story over the holidays about a tick borne disease that causes a meat allergy, and how pigs raised for another purpose then became suitable for butchering to eat their meat for people with that disease... So it happens in at least one case.
“ In 2020 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved genetic modification of pigs so they do not produce alpha-gal sugars. Pigs developed with the trademarked name GalSafe may be able to be eaten safely by people with alpha-gal allergy.[44] They may also produce alpha-gal-safe drugs,[45] and their organs can also be used for xenotransplantation.”
It depends! One of my kids is a biochemist wrapping up his degree this semester in a vet-med lab (send job opportunities!). He's done one study with pigs, where they were developing new enteric vaccines. At the conclusion of the study there's nothing wrong with the pigs --- they're just hyper-vaccinated --- but without a place to send them, all they can do is euthanize. He spent a week or two trying to re-home the pigs, but he's at UIUC and there is no pig shortage in the area. You could have taken those pigs for free and ultimately butchered them.
Euthanizing research pigs seems especially difficult. I'm really into butchery --- invested in a butcher in the area --- and would happily attend a slaughter. But the circumstances attending euthanizing research pigs are tricky; the pigs are all in a common area, and they're social animals and know something's up when you put one of them down. It messed with the boy.
> But the circumstances attending euthanizing research pigs are tricky; the pigs are all in a common area, and they're social animals and know something's up when you put one of them down.
Interesting. I wonder if people have experimented with more humane slaughtering practices like giving the pigs a bunch of booze/opiates so they can have a big pig party, then slaughtering once they've had their fun and passed out. Seems like it could be much more humane. Give em a last hoorah.
Certainly would be easier, but would the pigs prefer it? I'm more curious about the thought experiment of what would be the kindest to the pigs (that still results in their slaughter).
It's not particularly difficult. The method depends on jurisdiction and what is going to be done with the remains. If you need those for further testing, for example.
Without looking it up, I would guess the go-to method usually would be anesthesia followed by an overdose of narcotics or a special euthanasia agent. It's just that a "Mini pig" of 70kg or more will require higher volumes of all of that compared to to a mouse or even a beagle. Of course, when using pharmaceuticals you can't use the meat.
In the EU it is also very dependent on what kind of medications the pigs received during the testing. Only if all of those have been explicitly allowed for meat production can the meat be used at all. Here in Germany the researchers would include the "what do I do afterwards with them" in the planning. So in some cases, like for experiments on feeding or maybe vaccines (if no infections are attempted) then they may actually plan to bring them into the food chain.
Right; it depends on the circumstances. There are things you can do to a pig that make them unavailable for other uses, but I can say with some authority that there is medical research you can do on a pig that leaves it available. Also, the pigs the boy was working with hadn't been euthanized yet (avoiding euthanizing them was the point of finding someone to take them).
Well, if they were "euthanized" with narcotics, there are good reasons not to eat them... Or even to give them out to the public for drug addicts to get at.
I think an effectively anesthetic dose of narcotics would be low enough, once distributed through the body, that it wouldn't be major issue. Liver, kidneys and GI might have higher concentrations, but I'd imagine pork shoulder would have significantly below 1/100th of a recreational dose per serving size.
Nitrous oxide asphyxiation could be quite pleasant for the pig, and there would be little risk to anyone eating the tissue.
Seems like we kill a lot of pigs every year anyways. Would be neat if we could get multiple birds from one stone - for experiments where there isn't a risk of making the meat dangerous at least.