Bacon is safe for people with red meat allergies

Some people who develop strange and terrifying allergies to red meat after being bitten by the Lone Star tick can eat pork from an unlikely source: genetically modified pigs created for organ transplant research.

Don't look for it in your grocery store: The companies that raise these special pigs offer them in small quantities, free of charge, to allergy sufferers.

“We get hundreds of orders,” Revivabicor president David Ayares said as he opened a freezer packed with packs of ground pork patties, ham, ribs and pork chops.

The allergy, called alpha-gal syndrome, named after a sugar that's present in the tissues of nearly all mammals except humans and some primates, can cause severe reactions hours after eating beef, pork or other red meat, or certain mammalian products like milk or gelatin.

But where do organ transplants take place? There aren't enough donated human organs, so researchers are trying to use pig organs instead. And that same alpha-gal sugar is a big obstacle: this sugar causes the human immune system to instantly destroy transplanted organs from regular pigs. So when they started genetically modifying pigs for animal-to-human transplants, the first gene Livivicol inactivated was the one that produces alpha-gal.

While xenotransplants are still experimental, Revivicor's “GalSafe” pigs were approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2020 to be used as a food source and a potential source of human therapeutics. The FDA determined that there were no detectable levels of alpha-gal across multiple generations of pigs.

Revivicol, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics, is not a food company but instead studies xenotransplants, and Galsafe pork has yet to find anyone in the agricultural industry interested in selling it.

Still, Ayares said when shipments first began a few years ago, “These are FDA-approved research pigs, so let's get them to patients.”

LiviviCo's GalSafe pig herd is raised in Iowa, and to keep the population under control, some of the meat is periodically slaughtered at a USDA-certified slaughterhouse. LiviviCo then mails the frozen pork to alpha-gal syndrome patients who fill out a pork application.

Letters of gratitude expressing their joy at being able to eat bacon again are lined up on a bulletin board near the freezers at Revivico's headquarters.

Separately, Revivicor Farms in Virginia is raising a variety of genetically modified pigs for xenotransplantation research, including the GalSafe pigs that were the basis for a recent experimental kidney transplant at NYU Langone Health.

And so the question arises: Can pigs be used for meat after their transplantable organs have been harvested?

No. The company does not meet USDA regulations for drug-free foods because it uses strong anesthetics to prevent the animals from feeling pain during organ removal, said Dewey Steadman, a spokesman for United Therapeutics.

©2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.