Editor's Note: 

Recently a Chinese bio-technology enterprise announced its plans to build the world’s largest cloning factory in Tianjin, a port city in North China. The factory is designed to mainly clone beef cattle and produce up to 1 million cattle embryos for breeding stock annually. Is the ambitious plan plausible? Is beef from the offspring of clones safe? What is the status of commercial cloning in other countries? Global Times (GT) reporter Huang Jingjing interviewed Gábor Vajta, Adjunct Professor of Central Queensland University, Australia, about these issues via e-mail. Former senior consultant with BGI (Beijing Genomics Institute) in Shenzhen, China, Vajta has substantially contributed to the establishment of the world's biggest cloning laboratory in that city.

GT: How do you see the news about the “world largest cloning factory” being built in China? 

Vajta: I see the news about the "world largest cloning factory" with cautious optimism. 

Optimism, because during the past - almost twenty - years cloning was Incorrectly oppressed. In the history of science there were very few examples of such an irrational, emotionally charged, sometimes hysterical and unified resistance against a scientific breakthrough that may obviously be abused (please note you can abuse a match or a kitchen knife, too), but with proper regulations and control can also be extremely useful for agriculture and biomedical applications. A properly designed and well managed venture may prove the value of cloning and help to eliminate the suspicious and negative atmosphere around.

Caution, because a failure may be a strong arguments for the opponents to justify their concerns and delay the long-expected breakthrough. Unfortunately we had such experiences in the past. Absurd projects to recreate extinct animals in 10 years have been launched, then practically nothing has happened. Nonsense and irresponsible announcements about plans to clone human babies, which - at this stage of preparedness - is absolutely unacceptable by both professionals and public. Other scandals also overshadowed our area making serious damage not only to our science but to all scientists working in this field.

We need now realistic goals, hard work, trustworthy projects and first of all - scientifically sound, commercially viable achievements.

I just hope it will happen from now all over the world, including China.
 
2. Does their planned level of productivity sound feasible?

Vajta: My forty years in science has taught me not to say "impossible" to anything, especially if it is coming from China. 
On the other hand, available data about this new venture are from newspapers, interpreted by journalist, which intrinsically means a kind of uncertainty.

I have personal experience only in cattle and pig cloning, so my remarks focus on these field, especially cattle that I find the most important area of cloning for animal breeding purposes.

For the first glance, the published/available numbers about this project seem to be extreme. However, to produce 100,000 cloned cattle embryos (just: embryos) a year is not impossible. At BGI Arc Biotechnology in Shenzhen, in the biggest cloning laboratory of the world (so far) we have produced 220,000 cloned pig embryos in 4 years in smaller facilities, with incomparably less financial support and human resources (Liu et al., Cell Reprogram. 2015 Dec;17(6):463-71). We used an alternative technology (called Handmade Cloning, developed by us) that has made the whole cloning process simpler, cheaper, more efficient and easier to learn/perform.

I am not sure what cloning technology will be used by Sooam Biotech (their previous publications refer traditional, micromanipulation based cloning). Even with this older technique, one cloner who gets ALL technical support and assistance may produce 80-100 reconstructed embryos per day, 15,000 per year, so 10 good cloners could be enough to produce 100 to 150,000 reconstructed embryos. On the other hand, maximum 30 to 50 percent of these embryos will be good enough for transfer.  Moreover, initially it may be very difficult to find enough good quality recipients (foster cows), and enough skilled specialists to perform such a huge amount of embryo transfer. Losses will occur at transfer (even with two transferred embryos, only 30-50 percent of recipients get pregnant), during pregnancy and also at/after the birth.

However, as far as I know Sooam Biotech was talking just about 100,000, later 1,000,000 embryos, nothing about embryo quality, pregnancies, births and healthy offspring. Accordingly, if we see strictly the published numbers these goals are not impossible to achieve, although they are highly ambitious, especially in the initial period. On the other hand, the financial viability will depend on the next steps, i.e. what happens afterwards with these embryos.
 
3.How is commercial cloning in Australia developing? How are the prospects for commercial cloning in your opinion?

Vajta: Commercial cloning in Australia has been seriously compromised by two factors. One is the public concern, but it is far less serious than for example in Europe. The other is an irrational legal issue. A small company has obtained the exclusive rights of cloning from the owners of the Dolly patent, and hampered everybody to enter this field - although this company itself was not very successful in the field. Accordingly only a handful of cloned animals are produced each year. However, in less than one year, the Dolly patent will expire. I expect a rapid increase of activity in this field here, as in Australia (just like in America, Canada, Latin America, South Africa, there are no legal restrictions to clone domestic animals for human consumption. The situation is entirely different in Europe.
 
4.Many Chinese also raised food safety concerns, as GM food has already aroused great controversy in China. The EU parliament voted in September to ban the cloning of all farm animals as well as the sale of cloned livestock, their offspring, and products derived from them. The Roslin Institute, which cloned the world’s first mammal, Dolly the sheep, also ceased research related to cloning of animals. Do you support Chinese to develop research and commercial cloning? Why?

Vajta: I have to clarify that cloning itself does not mean genetic modification. In contrast, cloning is producing a pure copy of the donor somatic cell genome, an animal that is identical with the genetic parent (a single elite cow or bull, for example) regarding all base pairs of the nuclear genome. Not even mixture and crossing over of the chromosomes of two parents - just a pure copy. So in one generation, you can make tens, hundreds or - eventually - thousands of highly valuable animals, using genetically inferior cows as foster mothers.

When I was invited to the relevant authorities of EU to discuss the legislation of cloning, this misunderstanding was a principal issue. We, cloners, strongly emphasized that cloning is one thing, transgenes is another; they said they cannot make separate legislation for each single scientific method. Accordingly, they banned both. I think it is a typical example of bad , irrational decisions made by lawyers and politicians.

The fact that a few animals were unhealthy after cloning are not proof of harmful effect of cloned animals to human health. There are unhealthy animals among those born after natural reproduction, either. I admit, developmental problems after cloning were more frequent than after natural births, but these were minimized by perfecting the technology.
Roslin's decision was mostly political, to avoid the hysteric reaction that surrounded Dolly. They sold the patent (made a good income from that) it is owned now by an American Company, and cloning is part of animal breeding schemes in North and South America. No health hazard for humans was reported.

Meat and milk of cloned cattle was compared with controls both in the USA and (independently) in Japan by relevant authorities. The results were absolutely identical in the two countries. No difference was found. Not a single evidence showed harmful effect of cloned products. 

Accordingly, in the USA there are no restrictions ¬- and in Japan, there is a total ban. Absurd, isn't it?
I just hope that the Chinese authorities will consider pragmatically the future of domestic animal cloning. This is an extremely prospective technology that may radically improve the quality of beef and dairy cattle stock in China in years, sparing decades for breeders to reach the international top level,  and contributing substantially in improvement of domestic products. 

I also hope that during the forthcoming years, responsible and reliable business ventures will exploit the great potential that exists in this important, very promising technology that has been disregarded for decades. 


Gábor Vajta
gabor.vajta@hotmail.com