A clone of Mandy, a prize dairy cow, raised $82,000 at an auction on Friday at the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin. It was the first time a clone had been offered for commercial sale, says biotechnology company Infigen.
Infigen is so confident in its techniques that the clone has not yet been created. But the promised exact genetic copy fetched nearly seven times the price of Mandy鈥檚 normal calves. As a two-year-old Mandy was valued at $100,000.
Infigen thinks commercial cloning of cattle is now viable. But not all experts agree. 鈥淎t this stage of the development of the technology, this is probably a publicity issue rather than the start of a genuine commercial service,鈥� says Harry Griffin of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, where Dolly the sheep was cloned.
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Techniques for cloning cattle are more advanced than for any other species, Griffin says. But he thinks there are important welfare issues to consider. Cloned cow embryos often don鈥檛 develop properly. Some grow larger than normal, creating health risks for the mother and calf during birth. The clones may also die prematurely.
鈥淎 1998 report by the UK Farm Animal Welfare Council recommended that the problem of large calf syndrome should be solved before cloning becomes a commercial reality here,鈥� Griffin says.
Price to drop
Mandy will be cloned in December, says Infigen spokesman Peter Steinerman. The heifer will be due nine months later.
It will be produced using nuclear transfer, the technique that created Dolly. Infigen technicians will fuse an unfertilised egg with a cell taken from the cow鈥檚 ear. The embryo will be grown in the laboratory and then implanted in surrogate mothers.
Infigen is claiming only a 5 per cent success rate in developing viable embryos from fused cells. But it thinks this will be sufficient for the process to be commercially successful. It hopes soon to be selling cloned calves for $25,000, and expects this price to fall as the technique is improved.
Public concern
In Britain, there is no law against farmers buying cloned cattle, says Griffin. But Phil Hudson of the National Farmers Union thinks many will be wary.
鈥淚f farmers in Britain wanted to buy these animals, they鈥檇 have to consider the implications. There would be a number of issues to consider, including animal welfare and public perceptions. Perceptions carry a lot of weight.鈥�
In Japan, there was widespread public concern in April following a newspaper report that unlabelled 鈥渃loned鈥� beef had been on sale for four years. The beef had in fact been produced using embryo splitting, which doesn鈥檛 involve cloning an adult animal. Early embryos are surgically split and the separated cells go on to develop into identical calves.
Milking profits
The cloned calves are expensive, possibly too expensive for most farmers says Griffin.
鈥淭he average cow costs 拢800 to 拢1000. It鈥檚 very much touch and go whether the costs can be brought down so the average farmer can benefit.鈥�
Many scientists think the future of cattle cloning lies in pharmaceutical production, rather than in making copies of prize farm animals. Infigen is also developing cloned herds of cows genetically engineered to produce therapeutic proteins in their milk.