Nov. 3, 2003, 6:26AM

Sales of cloned cattle multiply
Associated Press


FORT WORTH -- Cattle are quietly being cloned and sold for high prices as
the livestock industry anticipates government approval for letting their
offspring into the food chain, industry officials said.

Meat or milk derived from healthy cloned farm animals appears safe to eat,
the Food and Drug Administration said Friday in its first attempt at
assessing questions about the emerging technology.

The FDA is still trying to decide if cloned farm animals will require
government approval before being sold as food. That decision is expected to
take another year.

The cattle industry has voluntarily agreed to keep products from cloned
animals out of the food supply. But in the meantime, there already are as
many as 300 cloned bulls in existence, said Lisa Dryer of Biotechnology
Industry Organization, a Washington lobbying group.

And an Austin-based biotech firm, ViaGen, said Friday that a cow cloned from
a prodigious producing animal was auctioned for $170,000 in Iberia, Mo.

Some members of Texas' cattle circles have reservations about whether
cloning is commercially practical. The cost of a cloned calf currently is
estimated at $19,000. And some cloned animals develop health problems.

"A lot of those cloned animals have not been as high performance as the
animals they've been cloned from," Ernie Davis, professor of livestock
marketing at Texas A&M University, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "I
think the jury is still out on cloning."

But others said they are ready to consider the technology to enhance their
breeding stock.

"Look at it this way. It's like duplicating Michael Jordan until you have
five Michael Jordans on a team," said Donald Brown, who runs the
cattle-breeding program at his family's Throckmorton ranch. "Cloning takes
breeding to a whole new level."

ViaGen President Scott Davis said "thousands and thousands" of units of
frozen semen from hundreds of cloned bulls are being stockpiled around the
country, ready for sale to cattle breeders when the FDA issues its new
guidelines.

He said ViaGen is working with Smithfield Foods, the world's largest hog
processor and producer, to use cloning to create more productive and
faster-growing pigs. Even if the company saves just a dollar or less per
pig, "multiply that by 10 million," he said.

And Scott Davis, not related to Ernie Davis, said cloning likely will become
even more accessible and profitable in the future as the cost to clone an
animal falls.

"All cloning is a way to accelerate the rate of genetic progress," he said.
"It's basically just another breeding tool in the animal breeder's tool
kit."