Clone Farm

Factory farmingcould soon enter a new era of mass production .Companies in the US aredeveloping the technology needed to"clone"chickens on a massivescale.Once a

chicken withdesirable traits has been bred or genetically engineered,tens of thousands ofeggs,which will hatch into identical copies,could roll off the production linesevery

hour. Billions ofclones could be produced each year to supply chicken farms with birds that allgrow at the same rate,have the same amount of meat and taste the same.

This,at least,is thevision of the US'sNational Institute of Science and Technology,which has given Origen Therapeuticsof Burlingame,California,and Embrex of North

Carolina $4 .7 million to help fund research.Theprospect has alarmed animal welfare groups,who fear it could increase thesuffering of farm birds.

That's unlikely toput off the poultry industry,however,which wants disease-resistant birds thatgrow faster on less food."Producers would like the same meat quantity butto

use reduced inputsto get there,"says Mike Fitzgerald of Origen.To meet this demand,Origenaims to"create an animal that is effectively a clone",he says.Normalcloning

doesn't work inbirds because eggs can't be removed and implanted.Instead,the company is tryingto bulk-grow embryonic stem cells taken from fertilized eggs as soon as

they'relaid."The trick is to culture the cells without them starting todistinguish,so they remain pluripotent,"says Fitzgerald.

Using along-established technique,these donor cells will then be injected into theembryo of a freshly laid,fertilized recipient egg,forming a chick that isa"chimera".Strictly

speaking a chimeraisn't a clone,because it contains cells from both donor and recipient. ButFitzgerald says it will be enough if,say,95 percent of a chicken's bodydevelops

from donorcells."In the poultry world,it doesn't matter if it's not 100percent."he says.

Another challengefor Origen is to scale up production .To do this,it has teamed up withEmbrex,which produces machines that can inject vaccines into up to 50,000 eggsan

hour. Embrex is nowtrying to modify the machines to locate the embryo and inject the cells intoprecisely the right spot without killing it.

In future,Origenimagines freezing stem cells from different strains of chicken.If orders comein for a particular strain,millions of eggs could be produced in months or even

weeks.At present,maintaining all the varieties the market might call for is too expensive forbreeders and it takes years to bread enough chickens to produce the billions of

eggs that farmersneed.According to thefirst paragraph,which statement is the best description of the new era offactory farming?

A.Eggs are allgenetically engineered.

B. Thousands of eggsare produced every hour.

C. Cloned chickensare bulk-produced with the same growth rate,weight and taste.

D. Identical eggscan be hatched on the production lines.