The helpful link here to the New Yorker article about other BGI projects helped establish some context for this article. The BBC and the New Yorker are both professionally managed news organizations, but I think people don't appreciate how practiced BGI is at playing two weaknesses of most news organizations: (1) the gee-whiz factor of China as a still mysterious country where most reporters can't speak the local language(s) and the government still controls the press and (2) the gee-whiz factor of genetics research as a developing science that seemingly explains everything. I have a lot of in-person and online acquaintance with genetics researchers, and so far it looks like BGI is overhyping and underdelivering in the usual manner of the science news cycle.[1]

Particularly if we are talking about new developments in animal husbandry, an important industry all over the world where people eat meat or use leather, what is economical to do in one country may not be economical to do in another country, and national barriers to free trade in animal products on dubious scientific grounds are still very much a factor in international trade (and thus domestic prices) for animal products. So maybe this is a big deal for hog producers in other countries, or maybe not. The comment already posted here that the scale described in the article kindly submitted here counts as small-scale rather than "industrial scale" in the United States is correct--some of my cousins are hog producers, and they keep track of all the latest technology in the industry.

Here on Hacker News, we have had several discussions of gee-whiz stories about predicted future developments in China that end up never happening. (How many of you remember the many stories about the prefab skyscraper that was to be built in a matter of days?) Predicting the future in China is easy these days: just predict something amazing and seemingly impossible anywhere else, and watch the journalists lap it up. But sometimes the future never comes to China. Anyone who raises hogs for a living will follow this news closely, but whether this news will change any practices in the worldwide industry as a whole remains to be seen.

[1] http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174

AFTER EDIT: From another comment in a different subthread here,

They've already invested in researching the large patchwork of genes that are correlated with high IQ.

And that is why I think BGI is more hype than substance. So far BGI has not produced any publishable results from that research. When it has publishable results, I venture to predict, the results will show that any one gene, and any assemblages of genes that they find, will have limited effect on phenotype for IQ. The research on this subject consistently shows this, and some of the best human genetics researchers on the planet already have publications on this issue.[2][3][4]

[2] Deary, Johnson, and Penke (2010). "The neuroscience of human intelligence differences"

http://www.larspenke.eu/pdfs/Deary_Penke_Johnson_2010_-_Neur...

"At this point, it seems unlikely that single genetic loci have major effects on normal-range intelligence. For example, a modestly sized genome-wide study of the general intelligence factor derived from ten separate test scores in the cAnTAB cognitive test battery did not find any important genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphisms or copy number variants, and did not replicate genetic variants that had previously been associated with cognitive ability."

[3] Johnson, W. (2010). Understanding the Genetics of Intelligence: Can Height Help? Can Corn Oil?. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(3), 177-182

http://apsychoserver.psych.arizona.edu/JJBAReprints/PSYC621/...

looks at some famous genetic experiments to show how little is explained by gene frequencies even in thoroughly studied populations defined by artificial selection.

"Together, however, the developmental natures of GCA [general cognitive ability] and height, the likely influences of gene-environment correlations and interactions on their developmental processes, and the potential for genetic background and environmental circumstances to release previously unexpressed genetic variation suggest that very different combinations of genes may produce identical IQs or heights or levels of any other psychological trait. And the same genes may produce very different IQs and heights against different genetic backgrounds and in different environmental circumstances."

[4] Chabris, C. F., Hebert, B. M., Benjamin, D. J., Beauchamp, J., Cesarini, D., van der Loos, M., ... & Laibson, D. (2012). Most reported genetic associations with general intelligence are probably false positives. Psychological science, 23(11), 1314-1323. DOI: 10.1177/0956797611435528

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3498585/

http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9938142/Most_Repo...

"At the time most of the results we attempted to replicate were obtained, candidate-gene studies of complex traits were commonplace in medical genetics research. Such studies are now rarely published in leading journals. Our results add IQ to the list of phenotypes that must be approached with great caution when considering published molecular genetic associations. In our view, excitement over the value of behavioral and molecular genetic studies in the social sciences should be tempered—as it has been in the medical sciences—by an appreciation that, for complex phenotypes, individual common genetic variants of the sort assayed by SNP microarrays are likely to have very small effects."