Racing industry rejects horse cloning

The first commercial clones of farm livestock are already being created by trans-Tasman partners in a new biotech business being attacked by horse-racing authorities on both sides of the Tasman.

"The first orders are in the order book and the first clones are under way," said Agresearch chief executive Keith Steele, who said the first commercial "copies" were being produced in Australia.

The company's first cattle clone is an elite holstein dairy bull, and a couple of top cloned bulls are due to be born monthly through much of next year.

But Dr Steele told NZPA that no horses had yet been cloned.

Agresearch's Melbourne-based partner, Clone International, has the exclusive licence to clone horses on both sides of the Tasman and has said breeders of elite horses will be able to clone special animals, including geldings.

But Victorian Racing Minister Rob Hulls said yesterday, after a meeting of Australasian racing ministers in Melbourne, that cloning was against the spirit of racing and abhorrent to the "heritage" element of the sport.

"All racing ministers at today's conference are vehemently opposed to cloning," he told reporters.

Punters wanted uncertainty, to be able to back a horse without being absolutely sure whether or not it was going to be able to win.

And Andrew Harding from the Australian Racing Board said the industry was leading the world in ruling out cloning.

"We just don't think the technology is ready and we don't think it should be applied."

Agresearch is a world leader in cloning sheep and cattle, with some 70 successful births already recorded, mainly for research purposes, but it recently teamed up with Clone International to commercialise the technology.

The Australian company is already collecting genetic material from one of Australia's best harness racing horses, and plans to gather cells from leading sheep and cattle. It has already established cell lines, frozen in liquid nitrogen, of legendary 23-year-old Australian pacer Gammalite, and expects to produce the world's first cloned horse in around five years.

But Dr Steele said it was expected to be much more difficult to clone horses than it had been to reproduce exact copies of cattle and sheep.

The process is similar with cattle and horses. Thawed out cells created from horse tissue can be planted in a host egg to produce an embryo.

But horses produce fewer ova than cattle. For attempts to clone horses to be commercially viable, scientists will have to improve on the 2 per cent to 4 per cent success rate that Clone International has achieved with cattle.

After yesterday's meeting of racing ministers, industry sources questioned whether the ministers would need to stop cloning of horses, or simply reinforce requirements for conventional breeding techniques in the racing sector.

While the cloning of sheep and cattle is freely permitted, in harness racing artificial insemination is allowed but not cloning, and in thoroughbred racing no artificial form of reproduction is permitted.

The Cambridge Stud's Sir Patrick Hogan has said if only the very best horses were cloned and the rest ignored "you would lose your genetic pool".

"I see no point in cloning thoroughbreds," he said when the concept was first canvassed. Harness Racing Victoria chief executive Rob Pollock said the emphasis on biotechnology was "flashy" and ran counter to the rich traditions of the sport.

The eagerness to clone Gammalite was ill-conceived because current champions were running better times by far.

But Dr Steele said cloning was a standard laboratory practice these days and he questioned separate efforts in New Zealand to have the technology taken under the wing of the Environmental Risk Management Authority (Erma).

Even though cloning was specifically excluded from its terms of reference, the Royal Commission called for law changes to cover cloning technology used on mammals.

Dr Steele said he had read the recommendation by the Royal Commission with some surprise.

"It's something I don't think should sit within the rounds of Erma," he said.

- NZPA