Athens, Ga. -- Since her unusual start in a Petri
dish, KC has matured into a very normal cow. And on the last day of 2005, she
routinely gave birth to Moonshine, her second calf.
“KC has done just like every other cow out there and
produced a calf within 12 to 13 months of her last calf,” said Steve Stice, the
University of Georgia scientist who directed the team
of scientists who cloned KC.
“Moonshine and Sunshine (KC’s firstborn) were both normal
pregnancies and were delivered without assistance, which is important to
commercial cow-calf operations that will be using cloning to improve the
quality, diseases resistance and productivity of their herds.”
KC is different from other cloned cows because she is the
first to be cloned from kidney cells taken from a frozen side of beef. The
others have been formed from living animals, Stice said.
“Right now there are probably a lot of cloned cows out there
having calves,” he said, “which is a good thing because it proves cloned cows
do have normal offspring.”
The public is still wary of cloned cows. Around the time
Moonshine’s sister, Sunshine, was born in December 2004, polls indicated that
nearly 60 percent of U.S.
consumers opposed cloning animals, including livestock.
Stice hopes that will eventually change.
“The Food and Drug Administration has still not given their
approval on cloned animals entering the food chain,” he said. “They have the
data they need to give the clearance but other issues may be slowing this down.
Once the FDA acts, I think it will mark the beginning of wider acceptance of
cloned animals.”
Stice is a Georgia Research Alliance eminent scholar and one
of the world's top cloning experts. He conducted the cloning research with the
biotechnology firm ProLinia Inc., which was later bought by ViaGen Inc.
Since cattle were first domesticated, farmers have been
trying to improve their herds through selective breeding. Cloning can speed up
the process by allowing scientists to make exact copies of the desired animals
and their traits.
According to UGA agricultural specialist Joseph Durham,
Moonshine came into the world weighing 70 pounds. And although KC did all the
work, various animal and dairy science faculty members got to name the new
calf.
“We did a survey of the animal and dairy science
department,” Stice said, “and Moonshine came up on several suggestions.”
They decided to move away from the disco theme that started
when Sunshine was named after the rhythm and blues group, KC and the Sunshine
Band. But Stice recalls that Boogie Shoes, a hit song from the band, was one of
the names suggested.
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Note to editors: Photos of KC and Moonshine are available at
http://georgiafaces.caes.uga.edu/storypage.cfm?storyid=2732.
