Transparency and responsible communication are needed to drive consumer and producer acceptance of gene-edited animal products.

Those words come from ex­perts who say genetic improvements that could make a pig disease-resistant or allow an animal to handle digestion more efficiently could be only months away but are limited in market availability by regulation, imagination and funding.

“The only limit to these products coming to market is actually the regulatory environment that we currently have,” Evan Grusenmeyer, graduate research assistant at the University of Missouri, told a standing-room-only crowd at the World Pork Expo in Des Moines. “Genetic engineering is an incredibly powerful tool when...