Source: GENETIC LITERACY PROJECT, 7/26/18


For nine nerve-racking months beginning in the summer of 2014, Dan Carlson waited for his lab experiments to be born. Carlson and his team at the biotechnology startup Recombinetics had made a small tweak in the genetic code of dairy cattle in an attempt to prevent the animals from growing horns. Buri and Spotigy, two calves born in April 2015, were free of the telltale bumps that eventually sprout into horns. That meant they would be spared the fate of millions of U.S.-raised cattle, whose horns are destroyed with a hot iron or toxic paste shortly after they’re born or are sheared off…

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