Clone factory raises fear in China

BEIJING: The world’s largest animal cloning factory is under construction in China, with plans to churn out dogs, horses and up to a million beef cattle a year, reports said, prompting online and scientific concerns on Tuesday.
The 200-million-yuan facility will include cloning laboratories and a gene bank, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
It is being set up by Chinese biotechnology firm Boyalife and South Korea’s Sooam Biotech -- whose founder was embroiled in controversy a decade ago over claims to have cloned human embryos -- along with two Chinese research institutions.
It will develop animals such as pet and police dogs, racehorses and cows, to be sold on the open market on an industrial scale.
The factory in the northern port of Tianjin is set to start production next year, with initial capacity of 100,000 cattle embryos a year, growing to one million, Xinhua cited Boyalife chairman Xu Xiaochun as saying. "Chinese farmers are struggling to produce enough beef cattle to meet market demand," he said.
Boyalife reposted Xinhua’s report on its website on Tuesday.
But social media users expressed scepticism over consumer appetite for cloned meat, pointing out that the plant will be near the site of chemical explosions that killed at least 165 people in August, and that China is plagued with food safety scandals. "Is this meat going to be sold in South Korea or China? If in China, please make our leaders eat it first," said one user.
Another commentator wrote sarcastically: "This beef definitely must first be saved just for the central government leaders; only after they and their families have eaten it for 10 years should they deign to give it to us, the people! Really can’t wait!"
Zhu Yi, a professor of food science at China Agricultural University, told AFP that there would be "almost no difference" between cloned and real cattle, but that companies should not rush to put cloned meat on the table without "rigorous risk assessments and repeated experiments".