- TSUKUBA, Japan (AP) -- It is just after feeding time. Two calves are
contentedly drinking water from a trough in their nondescript pen, a few
stray pieces of hay stuck to their wet, brown noses.
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- The two 4-month-olds -- ES1 and ES2 --
are the prototypes of a brave new world of cloning that Japanese researchers,
farmers and entrepreneurs are rapidly taking out of the laboratory and
putting onto the dinner table.
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- Cloned potatoes, tomatoes and asparagus
are already commonplace in Japanese grocery stores. Cloned orchids are
sold by florists, and cloned goldfish are available at pet shops. Cloned
flounder and salmon are in the works.
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- But with the domestic cattle industry
being squeezed by cheaper imported beef, Japanese scientists and agricultural
officials see the real goal of cloning to be the widespread genetic copying
of mammals.
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- "Our primary interest is to revive
Japan's cattle industry," said Makoto Tabata, who is in charge of
cloning research for the Ministry of Agriculture.
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- Cloning, it is hoped, will spawn a breed
of supercattle and reliable source of high-quality beef that can be produced
at lower cost.
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- Japan's strides in cloning have generally
been heralded in the media and welcomed by the public, with little of the
angst and debate over ethics and safety that has been seen in the United
States and elsewhere.
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- Tabata said Japan is probably the only
country in the world where state-of-the-art cloning techniques are already
being performed widely in rural breeding centers.
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- Robert Foote, professor of animal science
at Cornell University, cautioned that the government's claims of being
ahead are sometimes more perceived than real. He said the overall level
of research is similar in Japan and the United States.
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- But Foote agreed that one difference
in Japan is the government's involvement in allocating funds, compared
with a stronger tendency for private financing in the United States.
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- Along with dozens of self-funded projects,
more than 30 public and private livestock centers received a total of $2.2
million from the ministry for cattle cloning research this year. A significant
increase in government grants is expected next year.
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- Cloning techniques vary from simple plant
cuttings -- a method that has been used by farmers and gardeners for centuries
-- to the extremely delicate and still unreliable replication of adult
mammals from their genetic material.
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- Even so, nearly 400 cows cloned from
fertilized eggs have hit the market as beef or breeders. Since early July,
15 calves have been born using the same technique used for Dolly, the Scottish
sheep that made history as the world's first adult-animal clone. Nine have
survived.
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- ES1 and ES2 are the products of a more
primitive technique in which an embryo's cell is inserted into an egg whose
nucleus has been removed. After the two are fused by an electric shock,
the egg is put into the womb of a surrogate cow and carried to term.
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- The ES stands for embryonic stem cell,
the kind of cell from which the calves were cloned.
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- "What we are trying to do here is
to help cattle farmers increase the number of superior cows," said
Yoshito Aoyagi, chief scientist at the government's cloning research institute
in Tsukuba, just north of Tokyo.
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- There are dissenters.
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- "Escalating research, fading ethics,"
the Asahi, a major newspaper, said in a recent editorial. "Because
the technology can be used to produce human clones, there is an urgent
need for a social consensus for such an advanced reproductive technology."
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- To cover all bases, the Science and Technology
Agency appointed a 16-member panel last January to ponder the ethics of
cloning. Last year, the Education Ministry followed the United States'
lead by freezing funds on human cloning research.
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- But market forces continue to be the
overriding concern.
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- Imported beef, banned in Japan until
1995, now accounts for more than 50 percent of the domestic market.
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- In 1997, Japan produced 554,968 tons
of beef, and imported 629,641 tons from the United States, New Zealand,
Australia and Europe, according to the Japan External Trade Organization.
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- Agriculture ministry officials are afraid
that keeping up with imports under present conditions may well be impossible.
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- The majority of Japanese livestock farms
are family operated, with the owners' aged 60 or more. Space is severely
limited and the dropout rate growing -- the number of cattle farms with
more than three cows plummeted 20 percent to 113,000 in 1996 from 1993.
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- "We have to find ways to reduce
costs to compete with foreign beef," said Masanori Oka, an official
in charge of promoting cattle production in the rural southern prefecture
of Oita, one of Japan's cattle-raising centers.
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- "If we can establish the technology,
we can make a lot of clones and boost our supply of high-quality beef at
a low cost," he said.
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