The Atlantic

The FDA Wants to Regulate Gene-Editing That Makes Cows Less Horny

What happens when new technology meets old laws
Source: Pascal Rossignol / Reuters

Dairy cows grow horns. But dairy cows in the U.S. rarely have horns because they are seared, cut, or chemically burned off in a process that is as painful as it sounds. When Scott Fahrenkrug, then an animal scientist at the University of Minnesota, learned about dehorning, he decided to apply his genetics expertise to creating a hornless dairy cow. And he left academia job to co-found a company, Recombinetics.

Fahrenkrug and his team ended up using a relatively new gene-editing technique called TALENs. They

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