020638 Cloning Could Help Pork Producers

Athens, GA - University of Georgia scientists say their success at cloning little pigs could hold big promise for pork producers, helping them to replicate their choicest pigs to produce better chops and slabs of bacon.

The Georgia scientists, working with the agriculture biotechnology company ProLinia Inc., late last month produced three piglets cloned from the same skin tissue cells of a boar.

The university's partnership with the company has already produced the world's first calf cloned from cells of a slaughtered cow.

"This is another step in our program to advance the technology of cloning," said ProLinia President Mike Wanner. "There are still inefficiencies in cloning process, but we're making improvements."

Among the challenges in the process cited by Wanner is a significant number of losses during gestation, compared to non-cloned embryo transfer.

"We're probably half as efficient, but we're trying to figure out what's going on and improve it," he said.

Artificial insemination has been primarily used to date in the pork industry, but Georgia and ProLinia say they hope to eventually be able to clone pigs from carcasses selected for their quality, as was the case with cloned calf.

The host boar from which the piglet cells were removed came from the commercial breeding operation of Smithfield Foods, Inc., the largest hog producer in the world.

The result will be better bacon at a cheaper price for consumers and the industry — saving producers $5 to $15 per pig, said Steve Stice, chief scientific officer of ProLinia and a professor at Georgia.

The technology used to clone the pigs will be patented by the University of Georgia, but licensed exclusively to ProLinia.

The focus of the partnership is agricultural production, particularly how to improve the quality and consistency of livestock for a greater return investment for farmer or rancher, said university spokesman Chuck Toney.

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