Cloning livestock
Programs are underway to clone agricultural animals, such as cattle and pigs, that are efficient producers of high-quality milk or meat.
A group of researchers at Utah State University led by Dr. Ken White, Dean of College of Agriculture & Applied Science, have been able to clone steer from slaughterhouse carcasses. Their aim isn't to produce animals for consumption—cloning is far more labor-intensive and expensive than conventional breeding methods. Instead, they want to use these animals as breeding stock.
The important thing to know about beef cattle is that the quality and yield of their meat can be assessed only after they are slaughtered. And male animals are routinely neutered when they're a few days old. That is, their testes are removed, so they are unable to make sperm. But cells from a high-quality carcass can be cloned, giving rise to an animal that is able, though conventional breeding methods, to pass its superior genes to its offspring.
Scientists have also cloned mules, a reproductively sterile hybrid of a male donkey and a female horse; dairy cows; and horses. One gelded racing horse, a male whose testes have been removed, has a clone that is available for breeding. Some of the cloned cows produce about twice as much milk as the average producer. And a cloned racing mule is ranked among the best in the world.