Some dairy farmers have been breeding polled genetics into their cattle for years, but editing genes for top genetics at the cellular stage would dramatically move the trait into the population.

Editorial: Dealing with disruptive technology

My family bred polled Holsteins for 30 years, working away in fits and starts carefully crossing the limited number of polled families in the breed. In the last few years of his dairy career, until the cows were sold late last year, my father put greater emphasis on the trait, using mostly polled bulls in […] Read more

The first generation of precision-bred hornless bovines.

Partnership aims to edit genes for polled dairy cattle

This will be one of the first applications for gene editing in food animals, so companies involved expect regulatory approval to take years

Semex has formed a partnership with Recombinetics, a genetic engineering firm, to use genetic ‘editing’ to produce animals that have no horns. Semex, a farmer-owned company and Canada’s largest dairy genetics company, and the Minnesota-based Recombinetics will use gene editing for polled as a test case of the regulatory process for gene edited foods in […] Read more