During my research at Utah State University’s South Farm, I watch as goat 602, marked with neon blue spray paint, approaches her pen’s edge. Her ear tag identifies her as part of a remarkable experiment – one of a specialized herd of “spider goats,” genetically engineered to produce spider silk proteins in their milk. But 602 and her herd are approaching what may be their twilight years, caught between scientific advancement and market forces that threaten to render them obsolete.
The story of these goats reveals complex questions about how we value the lives we engineer. Created in the 1990s by inserting genes from Golden Orb Weaver spiders into goat embryos, they were initially funded by the U.S. military in hopes of producing lightweight body armor “stronger than Kevlar.” When the original biotech company collapsed, Dr. Randy Lewis acquired the herd, moving them first to Wyoming and eventually to Utah. Here, they served as proof that spider silk could be produced at scale – their milk purified into proteins for potential use in everything from bulletproof vests to medical devices.
But maintaining living factories isn’t simple. During my visits to the farm, I observe the intensive daily routines. Twice daily, herdsmen guide the goats to a milking parlor where machines extract their precious cargo. Their udders are carefully cleaned, hooked to suction devices, and later sprayed with disinfectant. The milk, containing the prized spider silk proteins, fills carefully labeled containers in walk-in freezers.
“Right now, it’s our most defined system,” explains Justin Jones, a scientist at the lab. “We can put many grams of protein on the bench and have it there consistently.” But he adds soberly, “They’re just an expensive necessity.” With annual care costs rising to $30,000 while protein production declines, the economic reality is forcing hard decisions.
The real tragedy may lie in what’s been engineered out of these animals. Unlike typical dairy goats, these mothers are separated from their kids immediately after birth. During my visits, I watch as babies scream for food – not at their biological mothers passing by, but at the humans who control their sustenance. “They have no concept that they are really goats,” Dr. Lewis tells me, a phrase that haunts my observations.
The daily reality of maintaining living factories reveals the complex emotional landscape navigated by the researchers and herdsmen. “I’ve got two people out at the farm,” Justin explains. “Every year since we’ve been here a minimum of two people that are out there daily, usually twice daily milking.” These aren’t just routine farm tasks – they’re interactions that build relationships and emotional bonds, even as scientific objectivity demands distance.
The scientists maintain careful records of each goat’s productivity. Those who produce insufficient milk or protein end up on the “cull list.” During one Monday meeting, I listen as researchers discuss individual goats like machinery: “718 protein is low… 602 has high fat content… 607 is bad, we had to dump her milk.”
When I ask Brianne, a research scientist, how it feels to put animals on the cull list, she looks down and says quietly, “Oh I still feel bad, every time.” Then she changes the subject.
The emotional toll of these decisions becomes clear in conversations with the herdsmen. “We’re drying her all right now with all the ones that were on the cull list,” one explains during a Monday meeting, referring to the process of ending a goat’s milk production. The clinical language barely masks the underlying discomfort. When they say a goat is “decent,” it carries the weight of a life hanging in balance.
Throughout my research, I find myself caught between competing frameworks for understanding these creatures. The Marxist analysis is obvious – they represent capitalism’s infiltration of scientific knowledge, transforming living beings into mere means of production. But this framework feels insufficient for capturing the full complexity of our relationship with these engineered animals.
My own experiences with reproductive technology inform my increasingly fragile attachment to notions of “natural.” As someone who conceived three children through donor insemination, I understand how scientific mediation of reproduction challenges our ideas about authenticity and kinship. The spider goats exist in a similar liminal space – neither fully natural nor purely artificial.
The lab’s Christian Iverson, Director of Technology Transfer Services, frames the situation in stark terms: “Goats have been the most stable line that’s been ongoing at our farm for years. It’s been a very viable academic option, but I don’t know if it is a commercial option.” His words highlight the gap between scientific success and market viability.
Meanwhile, newer technologies using bacteria or yeast promise more efficient spider silk production. Companies like Bolt Threads are already marketing spider silk-inspired fabrics and cosmetics made without any goats at all. Their CEO David Breslauer acknowledges the goats’ historical importance while dismissing their future: “All their ideas were right, only goats were the wrong core technology.”
This shift in the industry reveals how quickly living technologies can become obsolete. The spider goats were revolutionary when created, but market forces and technological advancement may soon render them unnecessary. It’s a pattern familiar in technology but more ethically complex when the “hardware” is alive and breathing.
When people learn about my research, they often ask: “How could they do that to goats?” or “Isn’t that against nature?” But these reactions ignore our long history of shaping animal bodies to serve human purposes. As one researcher pointed out, we’ve been manipulating dog breeds for centuries with little ethical outcry, creating animals completely dependent on human care.
The deeper question may be how we reckon with creating wholly dependent species that must be managed and maintained. The spider goats exist at the intersection of multiple markets and institutions – military research, academic science, biotech industry, and agricultural production. Their silk protein is transformed into various forms of capital: safety (bulletproof vests), healing (medical devices), knowledge (scientific papers), and profit (commercial products).
Yet they are more than just means of production. They are living beings who experience the world in ways we can only dimly understand. Their impending obsolescence raises uncomfortable questions about our obligations to the life we engineer. If we create animals to serve human needs, what do we owe them when those needs change?
The researchers themselves embody these contradictions. “No one cares about the spiders and no one cares about the bacteria,” explains Danielle, a Masters student from Randy’s lab. “All of our drugs come from genetically modified bacteria and no one cares about that. I think if people really understood the process maybe they could be more informed but they think the treatment of the goats is cruel.” She pauses, then adds, “Their manipulation happens as an embryo. We aren’t torturing goats.”
The story of the spider goats challenges us to consider how capitalism shapes not just our relationship with technology, but with life itself. They represent both the promise and peril of biotechnology – our ability to reshape nature to serve human needs, and the ethical complexities that arise when we treat living beings as technological solutions. The researchers’ experiences reveal how personal connections and emotional bonds develop even within a system designed to maintain scientific objectivity.
As I sit surrounded by these carefully engineered creatures, I am acutely aware of my own complicity in their precarious existence. These spider goats are more than a scientific curiosity – they are a living testament to the complex moral landscape where technology, capitalism, and biological innovation intersect. Like my own journey of assisted reproduction, they represent a radical reimagining of what it means to create and sustain life. We have engineered a species that exists in a profound state of dependence, entirely removed from any natural ecological context, bred solely to serve human technological ambitions.
Their genetic makeup – a deliberate fusion of goat and spider – symbolizes our growing capacity to treat living beings as programmable infrastructure, as malleable resources to be designed, optimized, and potentially discarded. The researchers’ language betrays this perspective: when Justin describes them as “an expensive necessity” or Christian Iverson questions their commercial viability, they reveal a deeper truth about how we conceptualize living beings. These goats are not animals in any traditional sense, but a form of biological technology, their worth measured in grams of protein and production efficiency.
Yet, within this clinical framework of utility, something more profound emerges. The quiet moments of connection – Brianne’s whispered admission of feeling bad about the cull list, Justin’s daily interactions, Dr. Lewis’s haunting observation that these goats “have no concept that they are really goats” – point to an emotional complexity that defies pure economic calculation. They remind us that even in a system designed to maintain scientific objectivity, human empathy finds a way to break through, challenging our most carefully constructed boundaries between subject and object, between living being and industrial resource.