CRISPR gene editing is being applied to reduce disease susceptibility in farmed animals, potentially preventing large-scale suffering from infections that affect hundreds of millions of animals.
Disease-related suffering in farmed animals is one of the largest welfare problems in animal agriculture by sheer scale. Diseases like PRRS cause chronic respiratory distress, reproductive failure, and death across populations of millions. If CRISPR editing can reliably confer disease resistance without creating new welfare harms, it could prevent an enormous amount of suffering. The welfare calculus is complex, however, as disease resistance may also enable higher-density production that creates other welfare problems.