‘Genetic modifications that used to take two decades can now be done in a few months’. This is explained by José Miguel Mulet, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, in the Dreams section of Madrid Fusión 2026. CrisPR is the magic word that is revolutionising genetics in livestock and agriculture. The dizzying genetic accelerator that will create the food of the future.

CrisPR is a revolutionary genetic editing tool, a pair of ‘molecular scissors’ that allow DNA sequences to be cut, inserted or modified with precision in living cells. Derived from a bacterial immune system, it uses a guide RNA to locate specific sequences and the Cas9 protein to make the cut, facilitating disease treatments, agricultural improvements, and biotechnological advances.

‘CrisPR modifies DNA without incorporating anything from outside. It is not a transgenic because there is nothing foreign in it. Transgenic is cutting and pasting, and this is different’, Mulet explains. ‘There are already animals modified by CrisPR that you can eat, such as non-toxic varieties of puffer fish. In the United States, two types of pigs have been approved that suffer less from the climate and are better adapted to heat, and three months ago, Argentina presented a breed of horses that builds more muscle and is suitable for playing polo’, explained Mulet.

‘There are some very powerful developments coming in livestock genetics’, he warns. ‘We can introduce fat into meat and turn an unpopular breed into a premium breed’. he gave as an example. The path has been different for plants. ‘Agriculture began before livestock farming. We have domesticated many plants, but very few animal species. Now, the challenge is to produce plants that are viable in the face of climate change. To make plants that are not nutritious more nutritious, for example by adding vitamin A to rice, or enriching cereals such as wheat and maize with iron.

‘Genetic selection is a reality that significantly improves the production of goats, sheep and cows’, said Rafael Valenzuela, representative of the Royal Spanish Federation of Select Livestock Associations. Other challenges are being considered, such as harnessing methane from cows, closed farms, capable of using bio-fermenters and biodigesters in closed circuits.

What and how will we eat in the future? How will genetics change our diet? What ethical and moral challenges do we face? Will we modify animals and plants at will? Will there finally be food for everyone? Genetics holds many answers to these questions. It plays an increasingly important role in food innovation, whether in laboratory research or in production on farms or fish farms. Scientific innovation is often invisible but ‘highly transformative’, as José Miguel Mulet pointed out in Dreams, a space for generating conversation and debate between science and the primary sector, exploring how innovation at the origin of the food chain can redefine the food of the future.