By Betsy Freese
Meredith Corporation
2019 AAEA First Place Winner, Technical Feature
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When I first heard about the African swine fever outbreak in China in August 2018, I knew it could devastate the global hog industry and wondered if gene editing could create pigs resistant to the virus. That new technology had already resulted in pigs resistant to the PRRS virus.
I made a few calls to researchers and one thing led to another. The resulting story, Genes 2.0: What the Future Holds for Gene Editing in Livestock, won the Technical Feature category in 2019.
When I write any technical story, I like to have someone who knows the general topic well read the rough drafts. I also ask someone who knows nothing about the topic read early drafts. It is important to assume your readers know very little about technical topics like gene editing.
I try to write in a conversational tone. My mentor in that style is Gene Johnston, a retired Successful Farming editor. Gene read all my livestock stories for 25 years and helped me simplify my writing.
For the gene editing story, I leaned on my oldest son, Nowlan, a scientist in North Carolina. He had told me several years ago about gene editing and how it would speed up genetic progress and change agricultural research forever. He gave me leads on animal scientists like Alison Van Eenennaam and genetic companies like Recombinetics.
I emailed the story to Nowlan several times ahead of publication and he pointed out a few things to change and additions to make. This is payback for the stories I copy edited for him in high school.
When I picked up the trophy for the story, I noticed it said “Technical Future” instead of “Feature.” I left the typo, because it seemed appropriate for this topic.