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| Science & Technology | |
| Chinese Scientists Claim to Have Produced Robot-Cloned Pigs | |
| 2022-06-05 | |
| [Breitbart] "Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the Researchers at China’s Nankai University claimed this week that they successfully cloned pigs through an entirely automated process for the first time in March, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Thursday. A surrogate sow allegedly birthed seven cloned piglets in March at the College of Artificial Intelligence at Nankai University in northern China’s Tianjin city. Nankai University’s cloning development, if true, is especially significant in China, which is the world’s top consumer and producer of pork. The nation currently relies heavily on the import of breeding pigs to sustain its pork industry. A reliable technique for cloning pigs could provide a cheaper pork source for China’s agriculture industry that would additionally benefit Chinese consumers. China’s pork industry took a massive hit from 2018 to 2019 when a nationwide outbreak of the African swine fever virus decimated the nation’s pig population and killed off much of its domestic breeding pool. Beijing has promoted an agricultural campaign in the years since then designed to wean Chinese pig farmers off of imported stock and encourage them to instead breed self-sustaining herds. “Raising a pig in China costs about two-and-a-half times more than in the United States due to costly imported feed and high levels of disease,” Reuters observed in May, adding, “Genetic improvements for cheaper meat are thus in high demand.” The announcement of China’s latest pig cloning development this week follows years of bizarre reproductive experiments out of China, including scientists claiming to have impregnated male rats (in 2021) and produced gene-edited human babies (in 2018). In the rodent experiment, Chinese scientists say they stitched together a male and female rat. They subsequently transferred a uterus from the female to the male, and then implanted embryos from the female into the male’s transplanted uterus. In the gene-editing experiment, scientists said they created “the world’s first genetically edited babies — twin girls,” using the CRISPR gene-editing tool. A Chinese court sentenced the lead scientist on the project, He Jiankui, to three years in prison in December 2019 for “illegal medical practice,” as the use of CRISPR on human embryos is considered unethical.
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| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #1 Re:Related - it appears the girth on the feral one was smaller than the domesticated ones lounging around on the sand. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2022-06-05 08:12 |