No one wants to eat pork chops that smell like boar taint. That’s why male piglets are currently castrated shortly after birth. In Switzerland, this affects hundreds of thousands of animals every year. The procedure is anything but ideal from an animal welfare perspective: it’s painful for the piglets and costly for farmers.

It’s therefore no surprise that the industry is looking for alternatives. One of them involves a genetic intervention. In Germany, researchers recently succeeded in breeding pigs that do not develop male sexual organs, as reported by NZZ am Sonntag. The benefits are obvious: the piglets are spared the painful removal of their testicles because they never develop any in the first place.

Does this mean such pigs will soon appear in Swiss barns? Of course not. In Switzerland, plants and animals produced using genetic engineering are still banned. The genetic engineering moratorium continues to apply to so-called “new breeding techniques,” such as CRISPR-Cas, which was used to produce these testicle-free boars.

At present, the federal government is working on fulfilling a parliamentary mandate to allow the use of new genomic techniques in plant breeding. However, the Federal Council’s current proposal is too restrictive to attract investment. Many consultation responses have pointed out these weaknesses, so it remains to be seen whether and how the proposal will be revised. One thing is clear: animals will not be included. Testicle-free boars remain science fiction for now.

From the anti-genetic engineering camp, the message is clear: resist from the start — first plants, then animals. But would that really be so bad? Targeted interventions could help reduce animal suffering — by making animals more resistant to disease or by making painful procedures like dehorning or castration unnecessary. They could also help adapt livestock to climate change, for instance by producing cattle that better tolerate heat, experience less stress, or emit less methane.

From Pain Prevention to Species Protection

The position of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is also noteworthy. The IUCN — the world’s leading conservation body, with over 1,400 members from more than 160 countries — recently spoke out against a blanket ban on genetically modified organisms in conservation. Instead, it advocates for science-based, risk-assessed evaluation. This means that projects aiming to save endangered species through biotechnology or gene-editing approaches can be supported.

It’s also worth noting that new genetic techniques are already used in human medicine — for example, to treat severe hereditary diseases such as sickle cell anemia or beta-thalassemia. These genomic therapies make it possible to correct defective genes, and patients report significantly improved health and quality of life — an impressive demonstration of the potential of these technologies.

All these examples from plant breeding, animal breeding, and human medicine show that technologies capable of resolving conflicts and delivering genuine improvements will prevail — because it makes sense to use them. Let’s hope the Federal Council keeps that in mind when finalizing its upcoming legislation on new plant breeding technologies.