Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

China cloning on an 'industrial scale'
BBC ^ | 13 Jan 2014 | David Shukman

Posted on 01/14/2014 7:27:56 AM PST by Theoria

You hear the squeals of the pigs long before reaching a set of long buildings set in rolling hills in southern China.

Feeding time produces a frenzy as the animals strain against the railings around their pens. But this is no ordinary farm.

Run by a fast-growing company called BGI, this facility has become the world's largest centre for the cloning of pigs.

The technology involved is not particularly novel - but what is new is the application of mass production.

The first shed contains 90 animals in two long rows. They look perfectly normal, as one would expect, but each of them is carrying cloned embryos. Many are clones themselves.

This place produces an astonishing 500 cloned pigs a year: China is exploiting science on an industrial scale.

To my surprise, we're taken to see how the work is done. A room next to the pens serves as a surgery and a sow is under anaesthetic, lying on her back on an operating table. An oxygen mask is fitted over her snout and she's breathing steadily. Blue plastic bags cover her trotters.

Two technicians have inserted a fibre-optic probe to locate the sow's uterus. A third retrieves a small test-tube from a fridge: these are the blastocysts, early stage embryos prepared in a lab. In a moment, they will be implanted.

The room is not air-conditioned; nor is it particularly clean. Flies buzz around the pig's head.

My first thought is that the operation is being conducted with an air of total routine. Even the presence of a foreign television crew seems to make little difference. The animal is comfortable but there's no sensitivity about how we might react, let alone what animal rights campaigners might make of it all.

(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Food; Gardening; Pets/Animals; Science
KEYWORDS: bacon; china; cloning; farming; ham; hogs; pigs; pork

1 posted on 01/14/2014 7:27:56 AM PST by Theoria
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Theoria
on an "industrial scale"

colossal man

2 posted on 01/14/2014 7:34:13 AM PST by Alex Murphy ("the defacto Leader of the FR Calvinist Protestant Brigades")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Theoria

Sounds like an ideal breeding ground for disease.

Genetic variation is a good thing.


3 posted on 01/14/2014 7:35:24 AM PST by Jewbacca (The residents of Iroquois territory may not determine whether Jews may live in Jerusalem)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Jewbacca

Precisely.


4 posted on 01/14/2014 7:36:33 AM PST by Black Agnes
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Theoria
My fear is that the obamunists will try to clone this guy on an industrial scale. This way they'll have a male population they can truly control and dominate.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

5 posted on 01/14/2014 7:47:33 AM PST by ETL (ALL (most?) of the Obama-commie connections at my FR Home page: http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl/)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Jewbacca
Sounds like an ideal breeding ground for disease.

They are not cloning stock for consumption but for research. In medical and pharma research, a great many specimens are cloned and genetically bred for very specific traits. These are very useful when you first have to give the specimen a certain disease and then work the medicine to fix it. There are mice and rats that are bred with no immune system, no skin pigment, brain peculiarities, no fur, etc. By the way, these are expensive animals. You don't feed them to your pet python.

6 posted on 01/14/2014 7:47:57 AM PST by Tenacious 1 (Liberals can afford for things to go well, to work, for folks to be happy. They'd be out of work.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Theoria

That squares nicely with their One Child Policy. / SARCsarcsarcsarcsarc


7 posted on 01/14/2014 7:51:26 AM PST by Buckeye McFrog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: FReepers

Click The Pic To Donate

Support FR, Be A Building Block

8 posted on 01/14/2014 7:53:54 AM PST by DJ MacWoW (The Fed Gov is not one ring to rule them all)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Buckeye McFrog
That squares nicely with their One Child Policy

One Child, Many Copies.

9 posted on 01/14/2014 8:09:59 AM PST by Alex Murphy ("the defacto Leader of the FR Calvinist Protestant Brigades")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: ETL
What do you mean they'll try to clone this guy?

Knowing a few millennials, I think they've been quite successful already.........

10 posted on 01/14/2014 8:13:24 AM PST by Lakeshark (Mr Reid, tear down this law!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Theoria

I don’t know what all the fuss is about. They’ve been cloning humans in Appalachia for generations.


11 posted on 01/14/2014 8:13:46 AM PST by henkster (Communists never negotiate.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Theoria

They are doing everything in an industrial scale. They are having a huge science/industry explosion while we are imploding. And using words like “shocking” and “reeling” won’t help the fact we are heading to a 3rd world country with nukes. You can thank all the free-loadeders on our decline..


12 posted on 01/14/2014 8:15:54 AM PST by xenob
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Lakeshark
What do you mean they'll try to clone this guy?

Lol. You're right. I guess the main difference being one they'd create in the lab, as opposed to through brainwashing and indoctrination.

13 posted on 01/14/2014 8:21:58 AM PST by ETL (ALL (most?) of the Obama-commie connections at my FR Home page: http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl/)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: ETL
Yep, we willingly send them to school, allowing any good parenting to be reversed......

And if they don't get done in by the schools, the Hollywood/media/rat complex will go a long way in finishing them off!

All hail Pajama boy, the newly cloned gelding!!!!

:-)

14 posted on 01/14/2014 8:28:47 AM PST by Lakeshark (Mr Reid, tear down this law!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: ETL

Obomunists don’t need to clone an army of pajamaboys. They churn them out at taxpayer expense from college indocrination centers.


15 posted on 01/14/2014 12:59:01 PM PST by Organic Panic
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson