Two decades on, Dolly’s legacy lives on in the food supply chain
PARIS — Two decades after Scotland’s Dolly the sheep became the first cloned mammal, consumers may well wonder whether they are drinking milk or eating meat from cookie-cutter cows or their offspring.The simple answer: "probably". The fact is, there is no way to know for sure, say the experts, even in Europe, which has come closer to banning livestock cloning than anywhere else in the world.With the possible exception of the ram sacrificed by Abraham in the Bible, Dolly must be the world’s most famous sheep.The ewe’s birth in an Edinburgh laboratory on July 5, 1996 was front-page news, provoking hype and hand-wringing in equal parts. For the most part, cloning turned out to be a dead end.But there is one sector in which Dolly’s legacy is alive and well: the duplication of prize breeding animals.How aggressively the private sector has developed this niche market has depended in large part on national or regional regulations, with key differences between the US, China and the EU."The ...
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