" I heard it through the AgLine"

December 31, 2009

 

 

·        Forbes names Monsanto Company of the Year

·        GM bans, laws and labels from around the world

·        Ground breaking moments in global agriculture

·        Welcome to Oklahoma’s cattle Clone Farm

 

 

Forbes names Monsanto Company of the Year

 

(Forbes.com) – Monsanto biochemist Roy Fuchs takes fish oil pills every morning in hopes of warding off heart disease. He'd much rather get his omega-3 fatty acids in a granola bar or cup of yogurt. But it is tricky to add omega-3s to food products without adding unwanted flavors. After a while on the shelf, omega-3-enriched products can smell and taste like old fish, he says.

 

Fuchs hopes that the new genetically engineered soybeans Monsanto is working on will solve this problem. The soybeans contain two new genes to make a tasteless oil that is converted inside the body into the form of omega-3 thought to be good for the heart. In a 157-patient study presented at a cardiology conference in November, those volunteers who had high triglycerides saw their levels drop 26% after eating 15 grams of the oil daily for three months.

 

Wouldn't that be a wonderful product to have for sale? Stops heart disease--and protects the environment, too. People could get their nutritional supplements without depleting fish stocks.

 

Monsanto needs crowd-pleasers like this to get past its image problems. In economic terms, the company is a winner. It has created many billions of dollars of value for the world with seeds genetically engineered to ward off insects or make a crop immune to herbicides: Witness the vast numbers of farmers who prefer its seeds to competing products, and the resulting $44 billion market value of the company. In its fiscal 2009 Monsanto sold $7.3 billion of seeds and seed genes, versus $4 billion for second-place DuPont and its Pioneer Hi-Bred unit. Monsanto, of St. Louis, netted $2.1 billion on revenue of $11.7 billion for fiscal 2009 (ended Aug. 31). Its sales have increased at an annualized 18% clip over five years; its annualized return on capital in the period has been 12%. Those accomplishments earn it the designation as FORBES' Company of the Year.

 

But economic achievement is not the same thing as public adulation. Over most of the time that Monsanto has been working to make humanity better fed, it has been the object of vicious criticism. In the first round of attacks the company was portrayed as the Satan of agriculture for daring to modify the genes in corn and soybeans. That people have been selecting plant genes for 5,000 years was no defense; Monsanto's gene-splicing threatened the world with ecological catastrophe. Genetically modified crops were the subject of legislation outlawing them and numerous protests in Europe and elsewhere in which biotech crops were ripped from the ground. In 2002 Zambia, during a famine, rejected a cargo of donated corn because it might have been tainted with the offending seeds.

 

Over time the protests have mellowed, and the legal impediments to GM are gradually falling. It didn't make sense for a hungry planet to reject tools to increase the productivity of farmers. Much of Europe, while still forbidding the planting of GM crops, permits the importation of foods made from them.

 

But now Monsanto has a new round of enemies. This time its supposed sin is making seeds that are too good. The company has something too close to a monopoly in some seed markets.

 

The public is hard to please, isn't it? But Monsanto perseveres. It has been in biotech long enough to develop a thick corporate skin.

 

Chief Executive Hugh Grant, 51, is both manager and evangelist. He says the new generation of biotech crops will go beyond mere herbicide tolerance and pest-killing to help feed the world. "There is bigger demand for food than ever. There is no new farmland," he says. "The business model is you provide more yield to growers, and you are rewarded for that." He vows to increase gross profit (approximately $6.8 billion in 2009) by 25% over the next three years.

 

By marrying conventional breeding with genetic engineering, Monsanto aims to produce more food for less money on the same amount of land. Conventional breeding--these days a high-tech matchmaking process guided by DNA sequencing machines--will help boost maximum yields. Biotech genes will ensure that pests, weeds, drought and other problems don't destroy a crop's potential, Grant says.

 

"It is like computers in the 1960s," says Robert T. Fraley, Monsanto's chief technology officer. "We are just at the beginning of the explosion of technology we are going to see." Adds Grant: "Our pipeline is richer and deeper than it has ever been." A new corn variety that includes eight genes for pest resistance and herbicide tolerance could become the company's next big product. It is due out this spring. Also in testing are drought-tolerant corn, corn that needs less fertilizer and higher-yielding biotech soybeans and corn.

 

Farmers complain about Monsanto's prices, but they still buy the seeds. Ninety percent of the U.S. soybean crop and 80% of the corn crop and cotton crop are grown with seeds containing Monsanto's technology. Other countries are also growing Monsanto's biotech crops, including India, with 20 million acres of cotton; Brazil, with 35 million acres of soybeans; and Argentina, with 43 million acres of soybeans. (Brazil once blocked genetically modified plants, but farmers planted the crops anyway, and it eventually legalized them.) Packaged foods with corn syrup or soybean oil likely contain the fruits of Monsanto's gene-modified agriculture.

 

But agriculture is not a business that tolerates resting on your laurels. Monsanto faces a rough 2010. Rivals are producing more competitive products, and farmers are likely to resist further price increases. Sales of the herbicide Roundup, the company's second-biggest product, have been declining as renewed availability of raw materials allows other companies to make cheap generics. Monsanto laid off 8% of its staff this fall. Another headache: The Justice Department is looking broadly at competition in agriculture--and is asking questions about Monsanto's practices in particular.

 

One trend in Monsanto's favor: Demand for grain is likely to grow as emerging countries like China adopt a meat-heavy Western diet. It takes a lot of feed to make all that steak. "How are you going to feed everybody? Yield. Farmers are going to get better yield with genetically modified seeds," says Edward Jones analyst Daniel Ortwerth. Monsanto "is chasing every acre in the world, figuring what bugs are eating people's crops and how to stop them." He predicts Monsanto's sales (after a slight drop in 2010) will climb 10%, to $13 billion, in fiscal 2011.

 

The business model here is productivity: increasing the tons of crop that can be produced per hour of labor and/or per acre of land. Monsanto created soybeans, corn and other plants resistant to Roundup by inserting a gene from glyphosate-resistant bacteria found near a Roundup factory in Luling, La. Farmers can plant their crops and then, whenever weeds emerge, spray on Roundup without worrying about killing their crop.

 

Monsanto's other main line of products is corn and cotton seeds containing genes for pest-killing toxins produced by the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt. Organic farmers have been spraying these natural pesticides on their crops for decades. Monsanto's technology puts the stuff right into the plant. "We are getting more bushels per acre with the same amount of fertilizer" and fewer pesticides, says Champaign, Ill. farmer John Reifsteck, who plants mostly biotech corn and soybeans on his 1,800 acres. Terry Wanzek, a farmer in Jamestown, N.D., used to plant mostly conventional wheat. Now he plants mostly bioengineered corn and soybeans because they produce crops that are more reliable and more profitable. "Wheat and barley haven't kept up with the times," he says.

 

Even some organic farmers are clamoring for genetically modified crops. Don J. Cameron grows both organic and conventional cotton on his farm in Helm, Calif. The organic fields cost $500 per acre to weed by hand, versus only $30 an acre for glyphosate-immune fields. Lately he can't even sell organic cotton because the stuff coming out of India, Syria and Uganda is so cheap. "I feel the organic industry has painted itself in a corner saying that all genetically modified organisms are bad. Eventually they're going to have to allow it," Cameron says.

 

The enemies haven't disappeared entirely. A 2009 Union of Concerned Scientists study calculated that only 14% of recent corn-crop yield increases are due to genetically engineered Bt corn. Roundup-ready corn and soy seeds don't increase crop yield at all, it found. Genetic engineering of crops "is inherently risky," says Greenpeace Policy Director Marco Contiero. "We cannot recall crops that are released into the environment." He says Monsanto's dominance decreases seed biodiversity.

 

Monsanto, formed in 1901, was a food additives and chemical company before starting crop biotech research in 1981. Its biotech crops come out of the same genetic engineering revolution that produced companies like Genentech and Amgen. But while biotech medicines hit the market in 1982 with the approval of recombinant insulin, biotech crops took longer to develop. (The chemical business was spun off in 1997.)

 

Some of the difficulty was technical. It took a while to figure out how to regenerate whole plants from genetically modified plant cells. In one method scientists would blast new genes into plant cells at high velocity with a gene gun. An advance came in the early 1980s, when researchers at Monsanto and, independently, in Europe discovered that the soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens could do the job more precisely. The bacteria cause benign tumors called crown gall disease in trees. Researchers remove disease-causing genes from the bacteria, add new genes of interest and then mix the bacteria and plant cells in a petri dish; the bacteria do the hard work of inserting the new genes into the plant. Most of Monsanto's genetic engineering work still uses this method.

 

Monsanto's foray into biotechnology was controversial from the start. Its first genetically engineered product, bovine growth hormone for boosting milk production, was introduced in 1994 to a furious debate over whether it was deleterious to health. "It probably wasn't the wisest product to bring out first," admits Earl Harbison, Monsanto's president from 1986 to 1993. "But we had it." (Monsanto sold the product line to Eli Lilly in 2008.)

 

Initially Monsanto aimed to roll out biotech seeds slowly, Harbison says, building consensus by engaging potential critics. "Seeds are not products people have to accept," he says. The go-slow approach evaporated when Robert Shapiro, who had been head of Monsanto's former Nutrasweet business, became Monsanto's chairman. Highly promotional, Shapiro courted the press with stories about how Monsanto's crops were going to help the environment by reducing pesticides and pushed seeds through friendly regulators. A backlash was inevitable.

 

Making crops resistant to Roundup was an obvious idea. But it proved difficult to do until someone came up with the clever idea of trying genes from bacteria living in the wastewater near a Roundup plant. "I walked in the lab one day and saw the results on my robot, and it was 'Holy cow,'" recalls Monsanto Vice President Stephen Padgette. Roundup-ready soybeans were introduced in 1996. Bt-endowed cotton came that same year, followed by Bt corn in 1997. The cry went up that genetically engineered crops would cause allergies, but this has not been true for marketed crops "at all," says University of Georgia researcher Wayne Parrott. Then it was charged that Bt corn would kill butterflies or do other bad things to the environment. But the effect on the environment is just the opposite. GM seeds lower pesticide use or, in the case of Roundup resistance, may reduce soil erosion by making low-till farming more practical. "We have to feed people in a less destructive way," says uc, Davis plant biologist Pamela Ronald, author of the pro-biotech book Tomorrow's Table. "Genetically engineered crops can be useful for that."

 

When drug giant Pharmacia (now Pfizer) agreed to merge with Monsanto in 1999 to snag its arthritis drugs, Pharmacia shares dropped because drug investors wanted no part of the controversial seed business. The genetically modified crop controversy reached a climax in 2000, when a competing genetically modified corn product--one not approved for human consumption--was detected in Kraft taco shells, prompting a nationwide recall and yet more bad publicity.

 

When Monsanto was spun off from Pharmacia in 2002 sales of the synthetic seeds were gaining, but the company was not making money on them. "We were a mile wide and an inch deep," recalls Monsanto molecular biologist David Stark. There were research projects in everything from wheat to turf grass to coffee. Hugh Grant, a company lifer who snared the top job in 2003, killed most of these projects and bet heavily on three big crops--corn, soybeans and cotton. These crops were the most likely to generate sales big enough to justify the $100 million investment that new genetically engineered crops require. Bioengineered corn and soybeans are less controversial because they are rarely sold directly to consumers.

 

Grant also realized that genetic engineering alone was not enough for success in the seed business. It cannot replace conventional breeding methods, which allow crop scientists to create hundreds of seed varieties tailored to different soils and weather. Monsanto's research budget is now split equally between genetic engineering and conventional breeding. "If you have incredibly brilliant biotech and extraordinarily average seed, you will end up with average crop yields," Grant says. "The thing the [genetic engineering] does is protect that preprogrammed yield."

 

Grant's job gets more difficult from here on out. A main patent on Roundup-ready soybean seed expires in 2014. This could threaten $500 million in royalties Monsanto gets from licensing this genetic trait to competitors, estimates JPMorgan. Monsanto just introduced a second-generation herbicide-tolerant product that it says will produce 7% more soybeans per acre. But rivals like DuPont are working on their own herbicide-tolerant seeds. Dupont hopes to combine its herbicide-tolerant trait with the Roundup-proof trait; Monsanto is suing DuPont to stop it. "It's all being slowly chipped away," says Ticonderoga Securities analyst Chris L. Shaw, who calls the company overvalued.

 

Then there are antitrust questions. Competitors like DuPont, which has countersued Monsanto on antitrust grounds, and some farmer groups object to Monsanto's licensing agreements with numerous small seed companies. They say the agreements are too restrictive and limit other companies' ability to blend in their own traits. Monsanto says the Department of Justice has made inquiries "similar to the claims made by DuPont" in its lawsuit. "Concentration in the seed industry has resulted in higher prices and less choice" for farmers, complains William Wenzel of the Wisconsin nonprofit Farmer to Farmer Campaign on Genetic Engineering. Wisconsin dairy farmer Paul Rozwadowski blames Monsanto for the difficulties he has had finding the conventional corn seed that he has used for decades. "Monsanto is taking over the industry," he says. "They are trying to eliminate all conventional seed."

 

"Any time you have a firm with 90% to 95% market share and you have concerns about supercompetitive pricing, you're going to get on the doj's radar," says Brian A. Weinberger, an antitrust attorney at Buchalter Nemer. "If Monsanto clamps down too hard on the licensees, it puts itself front and center."

 

Monsanto says it licenses its genetic traits broadly and is so far ahead simply because it bet heavily on genetic engineering years before the competition. "Farmers vote one spring at a time. You get invited back if you do a good job," Grant says.

 

Since 2005 Monsanto has been gradually moving back into other food crops, including fruits and vegetables. Among the projects in the works are a lettuce with the crunch of iceberg and the nutrients of romaine, and a watermelon whose flesh doesn't leak after being cut. This research involves conventional breeding. Monsanto abandoned its biotech wheat research in 2004 after it proved too controversial. In July Monsanto reentered the wheat business by acquiring conventional breeder WestBred for $45 million. It hopes to use genetic engineering to create drought-tolerant varieties.

 

"When people are confused or worried the natural tendency is to just say no," says Monsanto scientist Stark. "The only thing we can do is produce products with real benefits and hope that people eventually become comfortable what we are doing is good."

 

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GM bans, laws and labels from around the world

 

(TreeHugger.com) – Prince Charles has called them the "biggest environmental disaster of all time," while agriculture industrialists like Monsanto swear they're safe for human consumption and a boon for the environment. Genetically modified foods are nothing if not controversial, and that controversy spans the globe. From Ireland and the European Union to Africa and Japan, and all the way back to the U.S., various bans, laws, and labels can make GMOs difficult to keep up with. Here's a roundup of the world in GMOs.

 

Ireland Bans Growth of GMOs

 

Ireland recently banned the growth of any genetically modified foods, and the country has also made available a GMO-free label that can be placed on animal products like meat, poultry, eggs and dairy, fish, and crustaceans, that are raised with feed free of GMOs. The government's two coalition partners signed the agreement [pdf] that officially declares Ireland a "GM-free Zone." That's good news for no-GMO advocates in the United States, since it imports a good bit of Irish dairy; lots of casein for cheese production comes to the U.S. from Ireland.

 

Egypt Bans Import/Export of GMOs

 

In a move that has as many implications for world trade as it does for agriculture, Egypt has banned the import and export of GMOs. That means that none can come in -- meaning they can't import from any countries growing GMO foods they want -- and none can leave -- meaning they can't grow any GMOs, either. This sets in motion a complex agripolitical dance involving many countries where agriculture is a big part of foreign trade.

 

For example, "A non-GMO policy would not cause difficulties for sunflower oil but it would for soyoil," according to one European trader. "It would mean that soyoil imports would only be possible from Brazil and not from the U.S. or Argentina." The countries are the world's three largest producers, so Egypt's decision cuts two out of that equation; it remains to be seen if the ban will leverage more GMO-free growth in other countries.

 

Japan Says No to GMO

 

Though Japan imports a lot of food from countries still growing and exporting GMO foods -- Australia, the U.S., and Canada, to name a few -- they are staunchly opposed to consuming GMOs. Most of the soy and corn -- two of the most frequently modified foods -- that enter Japan is carefully sourced explicitly as "non-GM," using expensive traceability schemes, but that doesn't cover all of their bases. Keisuke Amagasa, of the Tokyo-based No! GMO Campaign, summed it up:

 

Japan does not produce any GM crops. However, because Japan imports GM canola from Canada, GM contamination has already occurred and it is spreading to a much greater degree than one could imagine. Judging by the ominous precedent of Canada, once GM crops are cultivated, segregation between GM and non-GM will become almost impossible, and keeping pure non-GM varieties away from GM contamination will be very hard.

 

France Defines GMO-free Labeling

 

Currently, there is no European regulation on what constitutes GMO-free, although products that contain more than 0.9 percent genetically modified ingredients must indicate GM content on their labels. That doesn't apply to animals, though, and their meat and dairy products don't require a distinction whether they were fed GMO foods or not.

 

In France, the Haut Conseil des Biotechnologies is attempting to clear things up, when it comes to the labeling used to identify GMOs; their recent recommendations are expected to become law in the second half of 2010. These recommendations include an upgrade to a threshold of 0.1 percent for genetically modified material in plant products and animal feed, and a minimum distance between apiaries and fields where GM crops are grown (though that distance was not specified). Labels could then designate plant products as 'GMO-free,' animal products as 'fed on GMO-free feed' or 'derived from animals fed without GM feed,' and honey as 'biotech-free.' Stay tuned for final results on this one.

 

GMO Sorghum Comes to Africa

 

Despite the growing tide against GMOs, they're finding their way (legally) into the food systems in some places. In South Africa, the government gave permission to proceed with trials of genetically modified sorghum, with the blessing of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and DuPont, among other supporters. The justification is that, while it is one of the few crops that grows well in arid regions, it lacks most essential nutrients and it has poor protein digestibility; modifying it allows more nutrients to be "put" back in. Opponents of the decision are concerned that the introduction of the GMO crop threatens one of Africa's most important heritage crops.

 

The U.S. Bans GMOs. In Missouri. In a National Wildlife Refuge

 

While the U.S. has engaged in a much-publicized holdout from widespread GMO bans, a few small events have started the GMO-free ball rolling. A federal judge issued a ruling in Missouri stating that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife shouldn't have allowed genetically modified crops on a national wildlife refuge. That may not sound like much, but, thanks to the ruling, 37 farming contracts -- many being used for GMO soybean and corn crops -- have been canceled.

 

Will it lead to more widespread action? Whole Foods Market is on board with a GMO ban, having its store-brand products independently tested to certify that they contain zero GMO content -- who'll be next?

 

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Ground breaking moments in global agriculture

 

(Reuters via Yahoo! News) – Organized cultivation of food crops like wheat and barley began about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, what is now the Middle East.

 

Great strides in agriculture have been made since through innovation, technology and genetics to help feed the world's growing population. Despite this, however, more than 1 billion people went hungry in 2009, 100 million more than last year.

 

The increase is not a result of poor harvests, but due to high food prices, particularly in development nations, and lower incomes and lost jobs due to the economic downturn.

 

Here are some landmark moments in world agriculture:

 

* 1701 - Briton Jethro Tull invented the seed drill, an improved plough that was drawn by a horse.

 

* 1798 - Thomas Malthus predicts impending famine as population growth outstrips food production.

 

* 1831 - American Cyrus McCormick introduced his mechanical reaper, which was mass produced by 1847 in a Chicago factory.

 

* 1863 - The U.S. Agriculture Department, which forecasts crop production for major countries across the globe, publishes its first monthly crop report.

 

* 1866 - Austrian Gregor Mendel laid the foundation of modern genetics by showing traits pass from parents to offspring.

 

* 1873 - American John Deere designed the first cast steel plough.

 

* 1881 - First generation of hybrid corn to increase production created.

 

* 1892 - First successful gasoline engine farm tractor built by American inventor John Froelich.

 

* 1923 - Commercial hybrid seed corn developed by Henry Wallace, who in 1926 founded the Hi-Bred Corn Co (now Pioneer Hi-Bred International).

 

* 1934 - Worst drought in U.S. history swept through the Great Plains and covered more than 75 percent of the country.

 

* 1944 - Normal Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution to increase food production, joins Rockefeller Foundation.

 

* 1945 - Beginning of the Green Revolution to increase food production through new cultivars, irrigation, fertilizer, pesticides and mechanization.

 

* 1956 - Mexico becomes self-sufficient in wheat as a result of the Green Revolution.

 

* 1960 - Philippines government, Ford and Rockefeller foundations establish the International Rice Research Institute in Manila.

 

* 1968 - William Gaud, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, coins the term Green Revolution. "These and other developments in the field of agriculture contain the makings of a new revolution. It is not a violent Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a White Revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it the Green Revolution."

 

·        1970 - Borlaug is awarded Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply.

 

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Welcome to Oklahoma’s cattle Clone Farm

 

(Reuters) ENID, Oklahoma – To the untrained eye, Pollard Farms looks much like any other cattle ranch. Similar looking cows are huddled in similar looking pens. But some of the cattle here don't just resemble each other. They are literally identical -- clear down to their genes.

 

Of the 400-some cattle in Barry Pollard's herd of mostly Black Angus cattle there are 22 clones, genetic copies of some of the most productive livestock the world has ever known.

 

Pollard, a neurosurgeon and owner of Pollard Farms, says such breeding technology is at the forefront of a new era in animal agriculture. "We're trying to stay on the very top of the heap of quality, genetically, with animals that will gain well and fatten well, produce well and reproduce well," Pollard told a reporter during a recent visit to his farm.

 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2008 approved the sale of food from clones and their offspring, stating the products are indistinguishable from that of their non-clone counterparts. Japan, the European Union, and others have followed suit.

 

The moves have stirred controversy about whether tinkering with nature is safe, or even ethical, prompting major food companies to swear off food products from cloned animals. But consumers are likely already eating meat and drinking milk from the offspring of clones, which are technically not clones, without even knowing it.

 

Farmers can now use cloning and other assisted breeding technologies to breed cows that produce bigger, better steaks or massive amounts of milk, and animals that resist diseases or reproduce with clockwork precision. Premier genes can translate to improved feeding efficiency, meaning the ability to convert the least amount of feed into the most meat or milk, which results in a smaller environmental footprint.

 

"If you don't need as much corn to feed your cattle, you might be able to cut back on the amount of fertilizer put out there on the countryside that might end up in a river. You can cut the amount of diesel that's spent raising that corn," Pollard said. "Just like they improve the genetics of corn, so they can produce more bushels per acre, we're trying to do that same type of thing by using cloning and superior genetics to produce more meat with less input."

 

RISING FOOD DEMAND

 

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization has said food production will need to double by mid-century to meet demand from a growing world population, with 70 percent of that growth coming from efficiency-improving technologies. Such forecasts have prompted calls for a second Green Revolution, a rethinking of the movement championed by Norman Borlaug, who won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in boosting grain production for starving nations.

 

Biotechnological advances in grain production will remain at the forefront of the global fight to alleviate hunger, although animal agriculture will likely contribute in the longer term.

 

"When people talk about feeding the world, reducing or eliminating hunger, I don't think animal agriculture has much of a role to play. But, as people successfully move out of that extreme poverty, that's when you get the growth in demand for animal protein and potentially cloning could have positive benefits," said Robert Thomson, professor of agricultural policy at the University of Illinois.

 

Some animal breeds, ideally suited for arid climates, could be propagated to utilize grazing pastures unsuitable for crop production. Others may be bred to resist local maladies, like the Nguni cattle breed, which can develop resistance to ticks and immunity to tick-borne diseases.

 

Meanwhile, a growing and more affluent population in the developing world is seen boosting demand for meat and dairy products. Meat consumption in developing countries more than doubled from about 10 kilograms (22 pounds) per person per year in the 1960s to around 26 kg near the turn of the century, according to the FAO. By 2030, that was expected to rise to 37 kg per person. Milk and dairy product consumption has made similarly rapid growth.

 

SLOW ACCEPTANCE

 

Supporters say cloning will no doubt play a role in accelerating production, but the technology has been slow to take, primarily because of the high cost and resistance on ethical grounds. Of the more than 2.4 million Angus cattle that have been registered with the American Angus Association since 2001, only 56 were clones, according to Bryce Schumann, the group's chief executive.

 

It costs at least $15,000 to clone a cow and $4,000 to clone a sow, although improving efficiencies will likely lower those costs in coming years, said Mark Walton, president of ViaGen, a company in Austin, Texas, that provides animal cloning and genomics services.

 

ViaGen owns the intellectual property rights to the technology that in 1996 produced Dolly the sheep, the world's first animal cloned from an adult cell, at Scotland's Roslin Institute. ViaGen, along with its partner company, Trans Ova Genetics of Sioux Center, Iowa, produces the vast majority of the clones in the United States. Other cloning companies are in Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and China.

 

Of the roughly 102 million cattle and 66 million hogs in the United States, "no more than a few thousand" are clones, according to Walton. Global numbers are around 6,000.

 

The most common cloning technique is called somatic cell nuclear transfer, a process in which a donor egg cell's nucleus is removed and replaced with the nucleus (and genes) of a cell from the animal that scientists aim to duplicate. That cell is then stimulated and later implanted in a surrogate mother.

 

Walton said cloning is costly because it is a relatively tedious process and the technology is relatively immature, comparable to the production inefficiencies to that of the early automobile industry. Years ago, scientists were able to achieve success in only 2 or 3 percent of attempts, but ViaGen now boasts 10 to 15 percent efficiency in producing a calf. It's aim is nearer to 60 percent, about the same as traditional in-vitro fertilization, Walton said.

 

CONSUMER ACCEPTANCE

 

Despite the steady improvement in the technology, consumer acceptance of cloning as a viable means to produce human food remains the top hurdle for breeders and cloning companies.

 

A survey conducted by the International Food Information Council found that half of Americans surveyed viewed animal cloning as "not very favorable" or "not at all favorable." A similar number said they were unlikely to buy meat, milk, or eggs from offspring of cloned animals, even if the FDA says the products are safe. Other surveys have found that nearly half of consumers have moral objections to cloning.

 

"When you're genetically modifying a plant, creating a seed that perhaps has a resistance to insects, that's different than cloning, and maybe modifying a sentient being," said Chris Waldrop, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America. "There are different ethical, religious, and moral issues that a society has to grapple with before they move forward on such a technology."

 

Despite cloning's gradually improving rate of success in producing healthy animals, the process still has a high rate of failure. Some animals are born with abnormalities and have to be euthanized and some have more health problems at birth than conventionally bred animals.

 

Large Offspring Syndrome also occurs more often with assisted breeding technologies like cloning. The syndrome causes the fetus to grow too large, causing problems for both the clone and the surrogate.

 

Opponents also say the FDA's risk assessment was not thorough enough and a long-term, multi-generational study of cloning's effects on food products is needed. At the very least, the products should be labeled as derived from cloning, they say.

 

"The largest study looked at milk from only 15 cows. Only one study used standard methods of toxicology, and that study looked at the effects of feeding 20 rats products from clones for 14 weeks," said Jaydee Hanson, policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit advocacy and research group. "We don't think that cloning is a technology that's ready yet, and we certainly don't think it's ready to be on your plate."

 

The only way to definitively avoid food from clones is to buy organic products, which by the Organic Trade Association's definition are from only traditionally bred animals, he said.

 

The U.S. Agriculture Department has asked the livestock industry to voluntarily keep clones out of the food supply for the moment, but the moratorium does not apply to progeny of clones. Major meat and dairy companies, such as Tyson Foods, Smithfield Foods, and Dean Foods, have said they will not accept products from clones, citing the desires of their customers.

 

BREEDERS, NOT FOOD

 

ViaGen's Walton said cloned animals are far too valuable as breeding stock to be used for food, but that the progeny of clones are "undoubtedly already in the food chain." However, he said, "the proportion is infinitesimally small compared to the total meat supply, a tiny little drop in the ocean."

 

Still, ViaGen and the Biotechnology Industry Organization have helped to create a supply chain management program to track clones from birth to death. ViaGen also gives farmers the incentive to disclose when and where they cull a clone by holding a deposit until the clone's owner can verify that the animal has been euthanized or slaughtered for meat.

 

In time, Walton said, consumers and food producers will become more comfortable with cloning, much like they have with genetically modified crops, but it will take time and it will take openness from cloning providers.

 

"Companies have a bottom line to protect, so they are cautious about new technologies and they are cautious about listening to their customers," he said. "No scientist can say definitively that nothing will be different tomorrow. But, given the body of knowledge and the amount of work that's been done, you can be extremely confident that the probability of something untoward happening is incredibly small."

 

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