5-Animals: Cloned cows give milk

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TITLE:  Scientists, Breeders, Ethicists and Regulators ponder milk from
        cloned cows
SOURCE: The Chicago Tribune, USA
DATE:   July 29, 2002

------------------ archive: http://www.gene.ch/genet.html ------------------


Scientists, Breeders, Ethicists and Regulators ponder milk from cloned cows

"These are all cloned from the same cow," said dairy herdsman John Kemper, 
picking out seven from the dozen or so less biologically significant cows 
moseying around the barnyard. Like six of their fellow clones being milked 
in the barn and four other cows cloned from a different ancestor at the 
University of Connecticut, the creatures are big; they have recently given 
birth, and to the increasing interest of federal regulators, they are 
giving milk.

Now, questions are starting to be asked about whether it can be sold like 
other milk on the market, a topic captivating interested parties from 
cloning scientists and the dairy industry to the U.S. Food and Drug 
Administration.

Academics are testing the clones' milk to make sure it has all the right 
components and in the right quantities and finding that it's pretty much 
like any other milk.

Even so, it is all being destroyed.

But it is a lot of milk, said scientists at Infigen Inc., the private 
Wisconsin biotech and breeding firm that produced 18 of the animals three 
years ago.

It's the same at the University of Connecticut, where a slightly different 
method used the same year cloned Amy, Betty, Cathy and Daisy from an aging 
dairy cow named Aspen, a champ who could produce 100 pounds of milk a day 
in her prime.

That translates to about 11.5 gallons a day or more than 4,000 gallons a 
year, triple the national average. The average production per dairy cow in 
the U.S. is 3.9 gallons of milk per day.

"It became evident to us in 2000 that this time, these types of clones may 
become commercial," said an FDA official who asked not to be identified 
before a report on the milk's safety is released. Expected as early as next 
month, the FDA-commissioned report not only will open public discussion 
about the safety of milk from cloned cows, but also will delve into other 
issues born of the collision between genetics research and food production.

Providing data and analysis for that report are cloned-milk studies from 
the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Utah State University.

Making a definitive statement about safety will be difficult, said John 
Lucey, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin who is 
studying the milk.

He pointed out that milk is a mixture of some 100,000 individual components.

"There are so many elements in milk that you can never say never," Lucey 
said. "I think the FDA didn't seem very sure about what it is that they 
should do or not do. It's a very unique, emerging situation for them."

Those wary of cloning dairy cows--and that includes the dairy industry--
remember the public outcry in the 1980s when bovine growth hormone was 
injected into diary cows to boost their milk production. Cloning adds a new 
wrinkle to that, and dairy promoters fear consumers will see the new beasts 
as Frankencow monsters, writes the Tribune.

"Milk has enormous cultural symbolic value. This is the first primordial 
food that people eat, and we don't like people messing with it," said Paul 
Wolpe, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Center for 
Bioethics. "There has not yet been a single cloned mammal that has yet been 
alive long enough to have lived out a natural life span for that animal. We 
can't underestimate the unanswered questions about cloning."

Theoretically, their milk should be exactly the same as milk from the cow 
from which they were cloned, milk known to be safe.

"So far it has been not too exciting. It looks pretty similar," Lucey said. 
The information from his study will be submitted for peer review later this 
summer.

In the meantime, agricultural researchers see a future in such animals, and 
the FDA-commissioned study comes at a time when biotechnology is at the 
forefront of food policy debates. Genetic manipulation of plants has been 
commonplace for years. Now, regulators say science and agribusiness are 
poised to make comparable advances with animals.

Proponents say herd sizes could be reduced while production stays level, 
saving dairy producers millions in feed costs. But scientists add the 
ultimate aim of current cloning research is cows with specific properties 
spliced into their genes--such as vaccines or human growth hormones--which 
could then be reproduced in their milk.

Existing clones have no modified genes. Rather, they are exact genetic 
copies of cows chosen for their extraordinary ability to produce milk.

But while production is short of ultimate research goals, the clones' 
prolificacy does give them commercial appeal, said Xiangzhong "Jerry" Yang, 
head of the Biotech Center at U. Conn.'s Transgenic Animal Facility.

"Certainly, in agriculture, we are duplicating the elite cows, the cows 
that produce a lot of milk or that have some other desirable quality," Yang 
said. "This wouldn't be a day-to-day technology for all farms, and you are 
certainly not expecting to have all clones in one farm.

"But you can reduce the size of the herd, or you can have the same size 
herd but with twice the amount . . . of production."

Even if their milk is not approved for human consumption, the clones could 
benefit dairy breeders, industry experts believe.

Artificial reproduction techniques have been used in the dairy industry for 
decades, from 30-year-old artificial insemination techniques to the 
transfer of fertilized embryos into surrogate mothers beginning in the late 
1980s.

More recently, cloning techniques like that used to produce Dolly the sheep 
have improved from a 1 in 300 chance of conception to about 1 in 10, with 
no apparent side effects among the surviving clones.

Unlike Dolly and earlier clones, however, recent cloning has been the 
product of a realization that any cell, not just embryonic cells, can 
provide genetic information for copy.

A skin cell, for instance, can be removed from an adult donor and then 
starved of nutrients until it ceases dividing. The cell's nucleus, with its 
genetic material inside, is then sucked out and injected into an awaiting 
egg cell whose own nucleus has been removed. A zap of electricity 
reactivates the development process, which continues until the 
reconstructed egg reaches the embryo stage, when it is implanted into a 
surrogate mother. If all goes well from then on, the clone grows to term, 
according to the Tribune.

The process has been successful enough that wealthy farmers already have 
had champion dairy cows and prize bulls cloned for breeding projects.

Among them is Westlynn Tom Dee, a 14-year-old champion Guernsey cow owned 
by Clark and Joy Vilter.

In her prime, she produced 26,000 pounds of milk a year and, thanks to her 
size, bone structure and coloration, was a grand champion among Guernsey 
cows at the World Dairy Exposition competition four years in a row, the 
only Guernsey ever to have accomplished that.

Even better, she was a champion genetically. Her daughters, who aren't 
clones, also made exposition herds and were all named in the top of their 
classes at other competitions.

Already the star of the Vilter's suburban Milwaukee show farm, Westlynn Tom 
Dee made more for the couple through the embryos she produced for sale to 
other breeders--thousands of them over the years--than she ever brought 
them through milk production or competition winnings.

"It was like hitting the lottery," Clark Vilter said. "The original 
Westlynn Tom Dee is a once-in-a-lifetime cow."

Only now, he amended, she may be a twice-in-a-lifetime cow.

In a shed across the Vilters' tidy barnyard stands Westlynn Tom Dee II, a 4-
month-old calf Infigen Inc. cloned from the original. She shares her 
mother's size and demeanor, even compared with a genetic half-sister, Royal 
Dee Debonaire, who was produced through embryonic transfer.

Besides her obvious edge when it comes to cattle competitions, the Vilters 
hope Tom Dee II will have her mother's prowess when it comes to breeding.

"What's so exciting about this clone is, Westlynn Tom Dee stopped giving us 
embryos about a year ago," Clark Vilter said.

"Now we have the clone to start all over again."



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