Just because we can, should we?
The article below was found on the ABC news online 17/4/07. One cloned cow isn't all that scary or bad news, I hear you say, however the devil is in the detail. At the prices they are talking, it means the bull will spend his life being "milked" for semen, and the cow will spend her life being "flushed" for eggs. Not a happy life for the animals I assure you. For the uninitiated, "milking" a bull involves electric "stimulation", aka shocks, to induce ejaculation.
The compounding result of these profitable proceedures, is that the gene pool is reduced to a few "elite" animals. The best example of this is from Canada, where a few years ago the entire commercial Angus herd (many tens of thousands of cattle), could be traced to six (6) "elite" bulls! A bull can be "milked" to produce thousands of sperm "straws" and these are then frozen in liquid nitrogen for many years and used in artificially inseminating cows.
This is just more evidence of an economically rational arguement subverting ethical and moral responsibilties, and counter to what we believe farming should be.
Scientists unveil Australia's first cloned beef cow
In an Australian first, scientists have cloned a beef cow on a central Queensland property.
The process of cloning "Mini" the brahman cost her owners around $30,000 and was cloned because a prized stud cow became too old to breed.
Dr Richard Fry from Clone International says the process is quite difficult with a success rate of about one in 10.
"There
are problems with the genetics because if we don't completely rub off
the memory of the cell that we've used then you get the incorrect
expression of genes," he said.
"You don't get embryo forming and they won't result in pregnancy."
But Dr Fry says the success rate for cloning cattle represents a big improvement since Dolly the sheep was first cloned in Scotland in 1996.
"I think with Dolly it was a one in 277 to result in Dolly, so with cattle it has progressed a long way," he said. "At one in 10 cattle are one of the easiest to clone compared with other species.
"The first horse to be cloned was about one-in-300 transfers to get that foal."
Chris Fenech from the Fenech Brahman Cattle Company says the cow was cloned from one of the family's prized stud cows.
"Last year, we sold her great-grandson for $90,000, her grand-daughter for [an] Australian record of $60,000," he said.
"She's just been a really powerful breeder for us."