Gene editing enables insertion of DNA sequences (e.g. coding and regulatory genetic constructs) at precise locations in the genome of modified organisms. In the case of livestock species, especially, the additional precision may or may not provide a basis for reevaluating the ethical significance of specific genetic modifications. This paper applies a risk-based ethics to determine when gene editing has ethical significance beyond that of modification using earlier methods utilizing recombinant DNA (e.g. GMOs). Ethical concerns about any form of genetic modification, from conventional breeding to gene editing, can be classified into the categories of environmental hazards, socio-economic consequences, food safety and animal welfare. The chapter describes risk-based ethics and discusses the significance of gene editing for each of these categories. Gene editing of agricultural species is ethically significant to the extent that greater precision reduces the probability for realization of specific hazards in one or more of these categories is either increased or lessened. This effect is primarily meaningful in the context of food safety and animal welfare because the potential for unintended and unnoticed disruptions of genetic functionality has bearing on these hazards, and the precision afforded by gene editing is expected to have meaningful impact on the opportunity for such disruption. Gene editing may also have social consequences for the traceability of certain types of genetic modification. In other areas where the ethics of genetically engineered livestock has been debated, gene editing has little material effect when compared to earlier applications of gene technology in agriculture.