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Beef and pork products from somatic cell-cloned cows, pigs and their offspring are as safe as those from conventionally bred animals, the Japanese government’s food risk assessment body said in a report Thursday.

The Food Safety Commission, a body under the Cabinet Office, will soon file the report with the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, officials said.

The health ministry and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries will look at the commission’s report and decide whether to allow products from cloned animals to be put on the market, they said.

However, the ban on such products is not expected to be lifted immediately due to persistent opposition from various groups.

Japanese producers and dealers have imposed a voluntary ban on the distribution of domestically produced beef and pork products from cloned animals in response to a request from the farm ministry.

There have been no confirmed cases of imported beef and pork products from cloned animals being put on the Japanese market.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced in January 2008 that products from cloned cows, pigs and goats are as safe for human consumption as products from conventionally bred animals. The European Food Safety Authority later followed the United States.

Following the moves in the United States and Europe, the seven-member food safety panel launched studies in April 2008 on the safety of products from cloned animals, acting upon a request from the health ministry.

In March, the Food Safety Commission, a body that undertakes risk assessment and is independent of the farm and health ministries, compiled a draft report stating beef and pork from cloned animals pose no safety problems with regard to human consumption.

Pete Forster has the first in a new series showcasing Swiss innovation, this week featuring a report on the Lausanne-based scientist’s recently-completed project to map the complete genome of cows, an interview with Keith Campbell – the scientist behind ’Dolly’, the first successfully cloned animal – and an enquiry into how mice’s sense of smell is so acute that it is able to detect illness in fellow mice before symptoms develop. Click here for audio.

Without a sex life, bananas are the fourth largest staple in the world. Entire civilizations rely on bananas for subsistence. The livelihoods of half a billion people depend upon the banana, yet bananas have a looming secret.

They are the result of vegetative propagation rather than pollination. All of the minor varieties of cultivated bananas are essentially sterile, genetically uniform clones. The banana varieties that do exist have come about not through the normal process of genetic shuffling that occurs during sexual reproduction, but by mutations within a clone that are vegetatively propagated by taking cuttings or “suckers” growing from the base of the plant.

There is, in fact, nothing very natural about the banana, which would have remained an obscure plant confined to somewhere in India or Malaysia had it not been for the Stone Age farmer who took a fancy to the fruit of its sterile mutant plant and propagated the first cutting from one of the suckers.

How the banana has gotten away without sex for so many thousands of years is 100 percent the result of science, technology and the human hand. Conversely, wild bananas do pollinate their flowers–having the botanical equivalent of sex–and their fruit is packed full of peppercorn-hard seeds which render them inedible.

I marvel at the number of people who will launch into a mouth-foaming tirade over biotechnology or even cloning in modern agriculture while eating a banana. Complete ignorance, I say.

It seems as though in the past couple of weeks many of the people I meet in my travels have voiced their concerns about our ability to feed an ever-growing population. If we simply take the time to learn about the lack of danger that such technologies offer to humans and the planet alike, these fears about feeding the planet would disappear.

Enter one of the largest hypocrites in today’s food business: Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. They have recently launched a website presenting a tainted view of cloned dairy cattle.

First of all, even though FDA recently approved cloned animals for the purpose of producing meat, milk and eggs, the number of cloned animals in production will be nearly non-existent. Yet, fear-mongering, science-rejecting Ben & Jerry’s uses this opportunity as a marketing ploy to cast a shadow of doubt on the safety of cloned dairy cows. In fact, their website recently stated:

Ben & Jerry’s, which has long stood firm against the use of hormones that lead cows to produce more milk, doesn’t think that using cloned animals to make milk and meat is a good idea. They reject science because in their words the “yuck” factor, as in, “yuck, I want my meat grown on a farm, not in a lab.” Animals that are genetically modified are obviously a different issue, but clones-genetic copies of existing animals-might not produce milk that’s any different from what comes out of a happy organic heifer.

First of all, a cow that does not use hormones to produce milk is a dead cow. Naturally occurring hormones are involved in the milk production of all mammals, including humans. Secondly, cloned animals pose zero risk to humans and have the potential for tremendous opportunities.

What about when the day comes that a certain cow is found to be resistant to food-borne pathogens and the cloning of that cow could improve the overall safety of all dairy foods? Is cloning still a bad idea?

Even more importantly, I see that on the Ben & Jerry’s website one of their featured flavors is Banana Split. Since we have determined that all bananas have been cloned since the Stone Age, why aren’t they equally concerned about the banana portion of their ice cream?

Could it be that it doesn’t really give them a controversial niche to fill, in the minds of frightened consumers who are led to believe that they have to buy Ben & Jerry’s overpriced products just to keep their kids safe?

If the fear-mongering, profiteering non-governmental organizations would not continue to stymie science and technology, there is no question about whether or not we could continue to feed an ever-growing global population. But when food companies not only reject technology but then turn it into a marketing ploy and attempt to create a niche, it only works against sustainable food production.

Finally, Ben & Jerry’s has every right not to use milk from cows that have been administered additional BST or even from a cloned animal. Equally, so do I, as an American consumer, have the right to say “No, thank you” to their products, as I prefer to purchase my ice cream from a supplier who actually implements real “green policies” instead of just using them to lure in unsuspecting do-gooders hoping to save the planet. And make mine a double dip!

TOKYO, Mar. 12, 2009- Beef and pork products from somatic cell-cloned cows, pigs and their offspring are as safe as those from conventionally bred ones, the Japanese government’s food risk assessment body said in a draft report released Thursday.

The assessment by the Food Safety Commission, a body under the Cabinet Office, could pave the way for beef and pork products from cloned animals to be put on the market.

The seven-member commission will file a final report to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare after soliciting public comment for about a month, officials said.

The health ministry and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries will study the commission’s final report due later and decide whether to allow products from cloned animals to be put on the market, they said.

However, the farm ministry is cautious about an immediate lifting of a de facto ban on beef and pork products from cloned animals for human consumption, noting the need to listen to consumers and producers and also to study various aspects other than the safety issue.

One farm ministry official said the ministry would not take it as a green light even though the Food Safety Commission finally concluded that products from cloned animals are safe, and would not ask producers and dealers to immediately lift the current voluntary ban on the distribution of products from cloned animals, the official said.

In the draft, the commission said many cows and pigs cloned from somatic cells die at birth or shortly afterward. But it said that those cloned animals could grow to be as healthy as conventionally bred ones if they survive for their first six months.

In conclusion, the panel said there is no safety problem for human consumption of beef and pork from cloned animals.

The Food Safety Commission is an organization that undertakes risk assessment and is independent from the farm and health ministries. It is chaired by Takeshi Mikami, an authority on animal medicine and a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo.

Somatic cell cloning is a technology that uses cells of an animal to produce one that has the same genes as the parent body. In the case of a cloned cow, the quality of beef and the milk yield are said to be excellent as it inherits genes from its parent.

In Japan, a Kinki University team was successful in producing a somatic cell-cloned cow in 1998, leading the world in this field.

A total of 557 cows were born through somatic cell cloning technology between 1998 and 2008 in Japan, farm ministry data show. Of those, 82 cows are still alive.

During the same period, 335 pigs were born through similar technology, of which 35 pigs are alive.

Somatic cell-cloned animals were reported to have been born in the United States, Europe, China, Australia and Argentina.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced in January 2008 that products from cloned cows, pigs and goats are as safe for human consumption as products from conventionally bred animals. The European Food Safety Authority followed the United States.

However, U.S. producers have imposed a voluntary ban on such products, while they are not for sale on the European market.

Keisuke Amagasa, leader of the Citizens Biotechnology Information Center, a Tokyo-based civic group, said he thinks the somatic cell cloning technology can be applied only for seed bulls in Japan.

It looks like a clone of Doc’s Serendipity may make history again — this time, by being the first clone in the United States to produce a foal. An embryo by the No. 1 leading cutting horse sire, High Brow Cat, and out of the clone of the 1977 National Cutting Horse Association Open Futurity Reserve Champion is due to be foaled in Texas in April. 

The clone, owned by David and Janet Brown, Gainesville, Texas, initially made history when it was the first clone to be offered for sale at public auction during the Western Bloodstock Preferred Breeders Sale at the 2007 NCHA Futurity. David Brown, who owned the original Doc’s Serendipity when Joe Heim piloted the great Doc Bar mare to a 220 in a finals run cutters still talk about today, purchased the clone for $14,000 from Performance Equine Associates, Whitesboro, Texas.

The original Doc’s Serendipity, out of Biltoft’s Poco by Bar Mix, died in 2006 at the age of 32.

The first offspring of a clone was foaled on May 5, 2008, in France. The filly, Pierazade du Vialaret, was the first get of Pieraz-Cryozootech-Stallion, a clone of the two-time World Champion endurance horse, Pieraz. 

The embryo of the Doc’s Serendipity clone was transferred by Dr. David Jasko at DLR Ranch Stallion Station in Weatherford, Texas. After a recipient mare carrying an initial embryo of the Doc’s Serendipity clone resorbed the embryo, another embryo was transferred to a second mare that has had no complications.

The recipient mare is at the Browns’ ranch in Gainesville, but will be transferred to a stallion station for delivery, Janet Brown said.

“The Doc’s Serendipity clone was real easy to get in foal,” she said. “The second recipient mare and embryo are doing well.”

The Browns have entered the Doc’s Serendipity clone in the 2009 NCHA Futurity. Jamie Beamer is training her in Weatherford.

“She’s not particularly interested in a mechanical cow, but when a real cow is put in front of her, she goes right after it,” Janet said with a laugh. “She’s a very smart horse.”

David Brown discussed the cloning process with Dr. Gregg Veneklasen, who performs all the embryo transfers for ViaGen, the Austin, Texas-based company that holds the patent for equine cloning. Veneklasen performs the transfers at his Timber Creek Veterinary Hospital in Canyon, Texas.

“We have 75 pregnancies this year of clones that include some of the world’s most famous jumping horses, as well as some top cutting and barrel racing horses, that will be born in 2009,” Veneklasen said.

Clayton, a clone of Scamper, Charmayne James’ 11-time World Champion barrel racing horse, is standing at Veneklasen’s facility.

Jan. 7, 2009– A Food Safety Commission working group likely will acknowledge the safety of meat from cloned cattle and swine in a report to the commission’s higher panel, potentially paving the way for cloned meat to enter the market, government sources said Tuesday.

The decision was made after its subgroup of experts had concluded meat from cloned animals was as safe as that from ordinary livestock.

Once the commission acknowledges the safety of the meat, it is expected to open the door to the distribution of beef from cloned cows in the market, the sources said.

The commission is under the jurisdiction of the Cabinet Office.

Concerns have been expressed over the safety of cows and pigs cloned from somatic cells because of their higher rates of stillbirths and deaths soon after birth.

After examining reports and studies from around the world, however, the subgroup concluded cloned animals would grow healthy after they reached 6 months of age, according to the sources.

The experts could find no discernible difference between offspring from cloned pigs and cows and those bred conventionally.

The working group plans to notify the commission’s Expert Committee of its conclusion by the end of this month. The Food Safety Commission is then expected to submit a report on the safety of cloned animals to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry by as early as the end of the year, according to the sources. The final decision will be made by the central government.

Several research institutes in the nation have cloned cattle from somatic cells. At the request of the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry, however, they have refrained from shipping such cows into the market to avoid public confusion.

Austin, Texas –In a breakthrough for the performance horse industry, ViaGen, Inc. is partnering with the Monash Institute of Melbourne, Australia, to harness equine stem cells to repair tendon, ligament, cartilage and bone damage in horses.

Dr. Paul Verma of the Monash Institute of Medical Research is working to develop equine embryonic stem cell lines, with the goal of creating a ‘bank’ of stem cells genetically matched to individual horses.

Tendon, ligament and cartilage injuries can range from minor inflammation to complete rupture, which can result in permanent lameness and the end of a horse’s competitive life. Once a horse has damaged a tendon or ligament, the risk of re-injury is very high. Bone damage varies in severity, with the most serious cases resulting in the euthanasia of the injured horse.

Stem cells have the potential to reverse this damage.

“We have developed techniques to derive stem cells from horse embryos, and through a pilot study, we have successfully created a number of equine embryonic stem cell lines,” Dr. Verma said. “The next step will be to look at using these stem cell lines to regenerate tendon, ligament, cartilage and bone cells. Once the stem cells can be coaxed into ‘becoming’ the appropriate tissue cells, they can be transplanted to replace the damaged tissue.”

The natural source of therapeutic cells developed by Dr. Verma will be recognized by a horse’s immune system as its own; there will be no risk of the tissue rejection that can occur with conventional transplants.

“The risk of rejection will be overcome because the new tissue will genetically match the horse receiving treatment,” said Dr. Irina Polejaeva, ViaGen’s Chief Scientific Officer.

Having ready access to a bank of individually-tailored equine cells will greatly speed up the rehabilitation process for injured horses, and give them a chance to resume activities that might otherwise have become impossible.

Current stem cell therapies involve aspirating adipose (fat) derived cells or bone marrow cells from the injured horse. The cells are then sent to a laboratory and grown into the required tissue cells — a process that can take up to three weeks. The use of equine embryonic stem cells guarantees to revolutionize equine lameness therapies.

Embryonic Stem Cell Advantages:

1. Flexible: Have the potential to make any cell type.

2. Immortal: One embryonic stem cell line can potentially provide an endless supply of cells with defined characteristics.

3. Availability: Unlimited production of embryos through somatic cell nuclear transfer process.

Current Stem Cell Technique Disadvantages:

1. Limited quantity-  Can be difficult to obtain in large numbers.

2. Finite- Do not live as long as embryonic stem cells in culture.

3. Less flexible- Difficult to reprogram to form other tissue types.

About:

Monash Institute of Medical Research

The Monash Institute of Medical Research was established in 1991 by Emeritus Professor David de Kretser AC, the Governor of Victoria, Australia. Since then, the Institute has pioneered research into the characterization and application of stem cells; the cause and treatment of inflammation and cancer; and the improvement of women’s, men’s and children’s health.

Dr. Paul Verma

Dr Paul Verma is renowned internationally for his research into reprogramming somatic cells and the isolation and characterization of embryonic and adult stem cells. His overarching research aim is to produce autologous (patient-specific) stem cells, using cell reprogramming techniques such as somatic cell nuclear transfer and iPS cell technology that are clinically relevant and transplantable into humans. He has published many scientific papers and edited a book on transgenesis, cloning and stem cells. He is listed as principal inventor on eight granted and provisional patents in the field of cell reprogramming and stem cells.

In a ruling that is the first of its kind in the performance horse industry, the National Cutting Horse Association has decided it will allow clones to compete in aged events.On Sept. 9 during the NCHA Executive Committee’s fall meeting in Fort Worth, Texas, the board unanimously approved a policy that will let clones to be shown, according to NCHA President Bronc Willoughby.

Executive Committee member Phil Rapp, who wants to show two clones in the 2009 NCHA Futurity, abstained from voting. The clones, Whats On Tap and Playboys Ruby Too, are being trained at Rapp’s ranch in Weatherford, Texas.

Whats On Tap is a replicate of Tap Olena, the multiple NCHA champion Rapp and his wife, Mary Ann, bred and own. Playboys Ruby Too is a clone of Playboys Ruby, the second all-time leading producer of cutting horses that Rapp showed and owned until he sold her and the clone to Waco Bend Ranch, Graham, Texas, in October 2006. Both of the originals and their clones remain at Rapp’s facility.

This is the first time an equine performance group has set a policy that allows clones to compete. The decision was made after NCHA member and attorney Lew Stevens addressed the committee and suggested that the policy be adopted, Willoughby said.

“Lew Stevens recommended that as a performance horse association, not a breed association, NCHA should allow clones to be shown,” he explained. “After it was discussed, Phil Rapp excused himself from the vote, and the policy was passed unanimously.”

Stevens was a member of the NCHA’s task force on cloning.

Rapp and his wife, Mary Ann, said they were relieved, but not totally surprised, by the vote’s outcome.

“According to NCHA rules, any horse can be shown if it’s 3 years old, whether it’s registered or not,” Rapp said.

Although other performance groups, including the National Barrel Horse Association, have no rules that prohibit clones, the American Quarter Horse Association, one of the world’s largest equine breed organizations, does not allow clones in its registry. AQHA tabled a proposal requesting that its rule be changed during its 2008 convention, pending a study on cloning by the association.

While the NCHA is the first equine performance group to actually establish a policy on cloning, it was just business as usual, said Willoughby, who was chairman of the NCHA’s task force on cloning. The policy was one of several items the Executive Committee considered during its annual two-day meeting.

“We didn’t look at it as a landmark decision. We just set a policy as we saw fit, like we do others,” Willoughby said.

“I hadn’t thought about it being historical, but I guess it’s a big step,” Rapp said after the meeting. “It’s pretty exciting. I guess we’ll get our entries in when we need to and go from there. We’ll send our check in shortly.”

The first payment for 2-year-olds to be entered in the 2009 Futurity is due Oct. 15. Whats On Tap and Playboys Ruby Too are being trained by Clint Modistach, who starts Rapp’s 2-year-olds. When he has time, Rapp plans to take over the clones’ reins.

“The clones are doing great,” he said. “I’ve been so busy getting my 3-year-olds trained and Clint does such an excellent job that I’ve been leaving the clones’ training up to him for a while. But I’m looking forward to working with them again.”

Meanwhile, Rapp has been busy in the cutting arena. On Sept. 5, the 39-year-old horseman, who is the industry’s all-time earnings leader, surpassed the $6 million NCHA milestone at a weekend cutting in Sweetwater, Texas.

Whats On Tap and Playboys Ruby Too were produced by ViaGen, a commercial cloning and gene-banking company headquartered in Austin, Texas. The company, which controls the patents for equine cloning, has successfully replicated at least 20 champion horses from around the world.

At press time, the company’s most recent clone to be born was foaled on Aug. 4. The clone is a replicate of Airwolf, the legendary saddle bronc horse who was inducted into the Canadian Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in 2006. It was born at Timber Creek Veterinary Hospital in Canyon, Texas.

Airwolf from Viagen on Vimeo.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Austin, Texas – ViaGen, Inc. announced today its merger with Start Licensing, Inc. (Start). ViaGen is the leading global livestock cloning and genomics company. Start manages and licenses a broad portfolio of intellectual property rights related to animal reproductive technologies, including foundational nuclear transfer cloning technology developed at the Roslin Foundation for the cloning of Dolly the sheep.

The merger cements ViaGen’s dominance in the emerging animal cloning field by combining animal cloning expertise and the necessary IP all under one roof.

“We will continue to offer our clients superior livestock cloning services,” said ViaGen President Mark Walton, Ph.D., “and now also look forward to enabling innovative partners to utilize these technologies through licensing with Start.” Nuclear transfer technologies have applications not only in animal cloning but also in therapeutic protein production, xenotransplantation, and biomedical animal modeling.”

Under the terms of the merger, ViaGen acquired the shares of Start held by Geron Corporation (Nasdaq:GERN) of Menlo Park, California. and Exeter Life Sciences of Phoenix, Arizona, in exchange for equity in ViaGen. Start will continue to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of ViaGen.

About Start Licensing

Start manages and licenses a broad portfolio of intellectual property rights related to animal reproductive technologies, including foundational nuclear transfer cloning technology developed at the Roslin Foundation (formerly Roslin Institute) for the cloning of Dolly the sheep. Start’s licensees are on the cutting edge of research and product development in food production, medical applications and many other fields.