Three Big Ideas #33
Progress for pigs, flexing thresholds, and potent plants
Welcome to our weekly Three Big Ideas roundup, in which we serve up a curated selection of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.
🐽 Eamonn Ives, Research Director
Whether it’s the bacon in your butty or the bangers with your mash, pork plays a starring role in some of Britain’s most cherished delicacies. Nearly five million pigs are reared each year in the United Kingdom, producing close to one million tonnes of meat. And while that might result in some tasty meals, it also serves up a number of less desirable consequences.
One of those is a virus called porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PPRS) which causes pneumonia, stunts growth and can even kill pigs. Most obviously, it’s a serious problem for the infected pigs themselves, but it’s also a significant burden for the pork industry too – causing billions of dollars of losses globally.
Enter PIC – or the gloriously titled Pig Improvement Company – a British biotech firm. Harnessing the power of CRISPR technology, they genetically modify pig embryos to cut out the receptor used by the PRRS virus to infect its unwitting host. Test data shows that the process results in pigs which are immune to 99% of the known versions of the PRRS virus. No doubt thanks to these impressive numbers, the technology has just been given the seal of approval from America’s Food and Drug Administration – meaning they agree that it is safe to eat.
Technological answers to increase how ‘efficiently’ farmers can rear livestock usually, and often rightly, come with a lot of ethical baggage. But this development seems to me to be an unalloyed positive. If rolled out across farms, fewer pigs will suffer and there will be less wastage overall – including in terms of carbon emissions and other pollutants created by the pork industry.
Irrespective of if you eat pork or not, this ought to be news to cheer – or happily oink at.
💷 Will Prescott, Senior Research Fellow, Bright Blue
On Monday, the Government unveiled its new Immigration White Paper. One of its core pledges is to uprate the baseline minimum annual salary requirement for Skilled Worker visas – which itself had only very recently been increased from £26,200 to £38,700 by the previous Conservative Government.
While there’s every reason to believe this will reduce numbers of immigrants coming into the country, there’s a risk that it creates an insurmountable cliff edge for many promising, younger people who are just starting out in the workforce, including foreign graduates who studied at British universities. (While such individuals can remain in the UK to work for up to two years on a Graduate visa, the Government is now vowing to cut this route to just 18 months.)
Fortunately, as outlined in Bright Blue’s new essay collection, A positive contribution, there is a relatively simple solution – vary the salary threshold based on age.
Median weekly pay varies substantially by age. According to 2024 ONS data, the median weekly wage for someone aged between 22 and 29 – the typical age range for recent university graduates – was £621 per week, considerably lower than the equivalent figures for 30 to 39-year-olds and 40 to 49-year-olds, which were £769 and £823 per week respectively. In addition, because younger workers have more years to pay into the tax system, and are less likely to rely on services such as healthcare, their lifetime fiscal impact on the UK Treasury will be lower.
Accordingly, if we impose higher thresholds for older workers while maintaining lower ones for younger skilled workers, we can balance the economic need to recruit foreign talent with the public’s growing desire to reduce net migration further and ensure that those who stay make a lasting contribution to their new home. In all sorts of areas – from the minimum wage to perks like subsidised travel – we apply policies differently depending on age. Perhaps it’s time to do the same in our immigration system?
🩺 Jessie May Green, Events and APPG for Entrepreneurship Coordinator
The use of plants in medicine predates written records. ‘Herbalism’ and ‘medicine’ were interchangeable until not too long ago, and trainee medical doctors in the UK were taught botany until the 20th century. Yet, in the 21st century, many of us would struggle to point out the lemon balm among a sea of nettles; most wouldn’t know that the whole dandelion plant is edible, and could be effective for a range of health complaints – from acne, to arthritis, to PMS.
On Beltane, I took a walk at Olympic Park in east London – home to West Ham’s stadium and ABBA Voyage, but also a nature reserve where I saw probably twenty wildflowers with medicinal value. For example, hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) – a traditional tonic for anxiety, grief and heartbreak, which blossoms in May to gently let us know that summer is near. There was also great mullein (Verbascum thapsus) – a trusty cough remedy due to its constituent mucilage which lines and soothes the throat. Historically, mullein was nicknamed ‘candlewick plant’ in Europe, as its flowering head was dipped in tallow to make torches. In the western US, it has another nickname, ‘cowboy toilet paper’, but I’ll let you research that one.
‘Herbalism’ and ‘medicine’ only began to diverge when researchers discovered that the active ingredients of these plants could be separated out and sold. Take meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria) as an example. Meadowsweet is a river-hugging, red-stemmed plant with small creamy flowers and a hypnotic sweet smell. Vikings used it to sweeten mead (where it got the name ‘meadsweet’ which eventually became ‘meadowsweet’, much like maṅgūs became mongoose). As well as tasting nice, meadowsweet contains a compound called salicin, which has anti-inflammatory and painkilling properties. Felix Hoffmann is said to have used this to synthesise the first aspirin in 1897 (‘aspirin’ coming from meadowsweet’s previous botanical name ‘Spiraea’), which is of course still sold in pharmacies today.
Save for the common plant-derived drugs – such as morphine from poppies and digoxin from foxgloves – herbalism and medicine are largely distinct now in this part of the world (unless you’re a medical herbalist). However, we may see them begin to intersect more. Clinical trials on wild plants are sparse as they are not particularly lucrative, but the Covid-19 pandemic did cause a surge in interest, so expect more research to pop up that confirms (or discredits) traditional uses. As new research comes through to back plants, the challenge for entrepreneurs in the health and wellness sectors will be to make associated products economically viable while keeping actual production sustainable. So, watch this space – and enjoy your walk.