Mad-cow-resistant calf cloned
2006-04-26 11:56
Beijing - Chinese scientists have cloned a calf that may be resistant to mad cow disease, state press reported on Wednesday.
The calf, weighing 55kg, was born on Tuesday in eastern China's Shandong province with genes that are resistant to mad cow disease, Xinhua news agency said, citing a local science institute.
Two scientists from Shandong who cloned China's first two healthy cows in 2001 led the project to produce the mad cow-resistant calf, according to Xinhua.
However the report, which gave few other details, cautioned that further tests were needed to confirm whether the cloning was a success.
Mad cow disease, known also as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, has been connected to the fatal brain-wasting disease in humans called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Mad cow disease decimated Britain's cattle industry in the 1990s, and has also impacted stocks in the United States, Canada and Japan.