> The pigs were assessed at approximately 205 days in age. Pigs can live up to 20 years. Would be good to test the long term effects and the effects over multiple generations.
It would be good to test for those things if the concern was for the long-term health of the pigs. The concern is whether or not they produce safe meat. Somewhere between most and all of the pork I've eaten in my life came from pigs less than a year old.
I understand that. But maybe at 205 days you won't detect a change which would more easily detectable later. Maybe we don't know exactly what to look for, but if something breaks over the long term that would give a clue.
They also only looked at the health of one generation, along with the number of offsprings from that first generation. What happens after 10 generations? 100? Could there be cumulative epigenetic effects from deleting this gene?
It would be good to test for those things if the concern was for the long-term health of the pigs. The concern is whether or not they produce safe meat. Somewhere between most and all of the pork I've eaten in my life came from pigs less than a year old.