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Mass-produced chicken 'clones' on way By Robert Uhlig, Technology Correspondent (Filed: 16/08/2001)

AMERICAN companies are developing the technology to mass-produce "cloned" chickens, provoking outrage among animal welfare campaigners.

They aim to create a production line which will churn out tens of thousands of eggs an hour that will hatch into identical birds. Each chick will be a copy of a chicken bred or genetically engineered to have ideal traits.

Billions could be produced each year to supply farms with birds that all grow at the same rate, have the same amount of meat and taste the same. Normal cloning does not work in birds because their eggs cannot be removed and implanted.

Instead, Origen Therapeutics, of California, wants to bulk-grow embryonic stem cells taken from fertilised eggs as soon as they are laid. These are unprogrammed parent cells that can grow into any part of the body.

The donor cells will then be injected into the embryo of a fertilised recipient egg. The result, known as a chimera, is not technically a genuine clone because it contains cells from both donor and recipient.

But by ensuring that 95 per cent or more of the chicken develops from the donor stem cells, a virtual clone can be produced. Origen has already created a few chicks that are 100 per cent donor-derived pure clones, New Scientist said.

To increase production, the company has teamed up with Embrex, of North Carolina, which produces machines that can inject vaccines into about 50,000 eggs an hour. The two companies have received a £3 million government grant to develop the technology.

Animal welfare groups fear that the development could increase the suffering of farm birds. Compassion in World Farming said: "The prospect of this happening is appalling. "We need to change our farming practices, not change the animals by tampering with their genetic make-up."

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001