When choosing a leg of pork in the local butcher or at the supermarket, how do we know that it's going to be the best quality meat ? A new discovery by scientists in the US will help farmers determine which pig will yield the best meat for consumers and hopefully make our choice a little easier.

After a $10 million donation from the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES), scientists at Iowa State University began to sequence the swine genome in 2003, with excellent results. They have recently discovered four "gene markers" which indicate how fast a pig will grow, how lean it will be, and whether it will produce quality, tender meat.

The National Pork Board states, "This technology will allow breeders to choose the characteristic, growth or leanness that they consider best for their programme."

In addition to this, the "gene marker" findings also show that pigs holding certain genetic characteristics have reduced occurance of disease. Interestingly, this information could be used to help biomedical research on humans, as the swine and human genomes are remarkably similar. Further into the future, we may even be transplanting tissues from pigs to humans in the fight against disease.

"There's a lot of valuable information coming from the swine genome that may have implications for human health," says Gary A. Rohrer, an animal geneticist at the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center in Nebraska.

These newly published discoveries will no doubt prove beneficial, and profitable, to the pork industry, but how can we as consumers make an informed judgement on whether we should eat this stuff, it looks a lot like Genetically Modified crops all over again doesn't it ?