Company Trots Out 2 Workhorse Clones

A company that offers horse owners clones of their animals said Thursday that it had successfully replicated two champion cutting horses for $150,000 each.

ViaGen Inc. announced that two mares had delivered clones of the horses, which are trained to help separate individual animals from cattle herds.

The foals, born at a ranch near Purcell, were doing well, according to the Austin, Texas-based company. The firm said it would produce as many as 30 more horse clones over the next year.

The first cloned horse was born in 2003 in Italy. In 2005, Texas A&M; University created the first cloned horse in the United States.

Elaine Hall of Weatherford, Texas, owns one of the horses ViaGen cloned. She said the foal was the image of its mother.

“I can already see so many similarities from the original horse, a certain look about the eyes,” she said.

ViaGen predicted it would one day produce 100 cloned horses a year, which could make commercial horse-cloning a viable enterprise.

However, the American Quarter Horse Assn., which safeguards that breed by issuing papers on the animals, has prohibited registration of any clone.

So has the Jockey Club, the association that registers thoroughbred horses.

Although scientific evidence and a preliminary report by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2003 have offered few signs that cloned products such as meat and milk are unsafe, public opinion polls have shown that consumers are skeptical.

“One of the issues I’ve had all along with cloning is that just because we can do something scientifically doesn’t mean we should do it,” said Greg Jaffe, a spokesman at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.