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Sjoerd den Daas
corresponding China
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Sjoerd den Daas
corresponding China
It was new in 1996: the birth of Dolly the sheep, the world’s first cloned mammal. Cloning is slowly becoming commonplace, at least in China. “We have now cloned hundreds of pets.”
The new style of Chinese impersonators: the kittens that roam the premises of Sinogene in Beijing. “Our first cloned cat was born in 2019, the first cloned dog in 2017,” says Mi Jidong. He is president of Sinogene, one of only three companies in the world that clone pets for commercial purposes.
The company has the wind in its sails, even if Mi doesn’t want to give exact figures. “The number of pets in China has however grown rapidly in recent years, especially the number of cats,” she says. “I think it has something to do with the pandemic.” In parts of the country, lockdowns were commonplace until recently, and working from home was often the norm. Pets provided comfort.
The Chinese research agency iiMedia estimates the growth of the “pet economy” in 2022 at around 25%. The value would amount to 267 billion renminbi, almost 37 billion euros.
More and more Chinese have their dog or cat cloned:
Cloning allows you to reanimate your deceased pet
The number of pets in China is estimated at around 100 million. “But don’t forget that China has 1.4 billion people,” Mi says. “The numbers are still much lower than in Europe, America or Japan.”
There’s still a lot of potential, you mean, even for cloned pets. The corresponding price is high: almost 50,000 euros to clone a dog and around 35,000 euros for a cat. But according to Mi, that figure is no obstacle for a growing group of Chinese. “Our customers see their pet as a member of the family. So it’s not expensive, there are many people who can afford it.”
It usually takes two or three attempts to bring a healthy animal into the world.
He describes the cloning process to me as a scientific experiment. An experiment that is not always successful. “There’s a certain chance of success involved,” she says. “It usually takes two or three tries to give birth to a healthy pet.”
As you walk through the kennel you will see surrogate mothers feeding their brood of clones. “Harry 2” and “Harry 3” can be read on a chalkboard with two identical looking dogs. With ‘Miumiu’ there has been less success, it seems: she has a ‘4’ behind the name. “The process begins with collecting tissue from the animal to be cloned,” explains Wang Yining in the corridors of Sinogene. He is the company’s vice president.
That tissue can be a piece of skin, which is shed during life. But the company also knows what to do with deceased pets, provided the pet has been kept cool as recommended on the company’s website. Behind the glass, the employees scrutinize the Petri dishes through the microscope.
The cell nucleus, containing the DNA stored in it, is removed from the cultured cells and placed in an egg cell. This process is repeated several times, after which the fertilized eggs are placed in the uterus of a surrogate mother, usually a beagle. “From there, she grows into an embryo,” Wang says. “For the surrogate, it looks like it’s her own baby.”
Not undisputed
In addition to pets, including horses, Sinogene clones police dogs, among other things. “The first generation is now three or four years old,” Mi says proudly. “These dogs are also used at big events, such as during the Olympic Games.” Last fall, the company said it cloned an arctic wolf for the first time. Sinogene hopes to do the same for other endangered species.
Animal cloning is illegal in many places around the world. Not in China, but not in South Korea and the United States either. “There aren’t any very clear rules here yet,” says Mi. The government takes a pragmatic position and looks with interest at the opportunities that technology offers. But the freedom to clone is not unlimited.
Just because monkeys can be cloned doesn’t automatically mean that people can.
A few years ago, a Chinese scientist was sentenced to three years in prison for genetically modifying two human embryos. He had modified their genes to make them resistant to HIV. Cloning of monkeys is allowed. In late 2017, Chinese scientists created five identical monkeys.
“Just because monkeys can be cloned doesn’t automatically mean people can do the same,” Mi says, when asked if he thinks humans will be cloned in the future. “Apart from that: there are legal restrictions. Embryo research is not allowed and we don’t intend to do it.”
