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Clone Farm Factory farming could soon enter a new era of mass production. Companies in the US are developing the technology needed to clone chickens on a massive scale. Once a chicken with desirable traits has been bred or genetically engineered, tens of thousands of eggs, which will hatch into identical copies, could roll off the production lines every hour. Billions of clones could be produced each year to supply chicken farms with birds that all grow at the same rate, have the same amount of meat and taste the same. This, at least, is the vision of the USs National Institute of Science and Technology, which has given Origen Therapeutics of Burlingame, California, and Embrex of North Carolina $4.7 million to help fund research. The prospect has alarmed animal welfare groups, who fear it could increase the suffering of farm birds. Thats unlikely to put off the poultry industry, however, which wants disease resistant birds that grow faster on less food. Producers would like the same meat quantity but to use reduced inputs to get there, says Mike Fitzgerald of Origen. To meet this demand, Origen aims to create an animal that is effectively a clone, he says. Normal cloning doesnt work in birds because eggs cant be removed and implanted, Instead, the company is trying to bulk-grow embryonic stem cells taken from fertilized eggs as soon as theyre laid. The trick is to culture the cells without them starting to distinguish, so they remain pluripotent, says Fitzgerald. | 
