Cloned Pigs

A pork chop, is a pork chop,is a pork chop correct?

Two USA specialist companies are working on producing cloned pigs and cattle and Smithfield Foods, claimed to be the world's leading pork-producer, has invested 1 million dollars in ProLinia, a young company in Athens, Georgia, that is developing pig-cloning technology. The goal is to produce cloned pig embryos for implantation in Smithfield sows. Natural breeding tends to dilute the desirable traits concentrated in genetically-superior stock. Cloning, by comparison, makes exact copies so that traits like growth-rate, leanness and fertility are preserved.

The Smithfield goal is to clone a number of desirable pigs, not just one universal genotype. Terry Coffey, senior vice president of production operations at the Smithfield subsidiary, Murphy Farms, is quoted as saying "I doubt we would ever want 1,000 copies of the same animal to produce a million pigs from one animal. You have risks from eliminating genetic diversity. I think cloning will change a little bit the way animals are bred, but with the potential to avoid [gene/trait] dilution."