Agro-Biotechnology: - The Greens | European Free Alliance

28 | Cloned farm animals - a ‚killing application‘? | Cloning in farm animals potential benefits, products and players
introduction of animal cloning for food production, concluding:
“At present, the EGE does not see convincing arguments to justify the production
of food from clones and their offspring.”
4.3 Who benefits from the cloning of farm animals?
Some companies marketing cloned farm animals were listed by Suk et al.,
2007. Among those are four US companies, one from Australia, New Zealand
and one from China. Companies in Japan and Europe are not listed. ViaGen
and its partner TransOva is said to be responsible for most of the cloned animals
in the US 29 . They hold the rights on the patent that was originally granted
for the creation of Dolly. According to ViaGen it costs at least US $15,000 to
clone a cow and US $4,000 to clone a sow 30 .
Table 1: Livestock biotech companies applying animal cloning for food production
(Source: Suk et al., 2007)
Company
Location
ViaGen
Celentis
Clone International
Cyagra/in vitro Brazil/Goyaike
Yangling Keyuan Cloning
Trans Ova Genetics
Minitube USA
Austin, TX, USA
Auckland, New Zealand
Melbourne, Australia
Elizabethtown, PA, USA/Mogi Mirim, Brazil/Escobar,
Argentina
Yangling, China
Sioux Center, IA, USA
Verona, WI, USA
The list of companies is based on company contacts as well as internet searches. The industry dynamics
in this sector is rapidly changing and this table should not be considerd either definitive or fully
up to date.
Taking a closer look at the expectations of the companies involved in cloning
it becomes evident that their interest is not only in selling certain animals
at high prices. Cloning is largely driven by intellectual property rights that
give control over access to genetic material such as semen, embryos and animals.
Analyses of patents show that patents filed on cloning technology also
cover the animals and their genetic resources as part of the so-called invention.
Therefore cloning goes hand in hand with the introduction of exclusive intellec-
29 http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN127887120091113?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a49:g43:r1:c1.000000:b3
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30 http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN127887120091113?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a49:g43:r1:c1.000000:b3
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