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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Dutch Issue Ban On Cloning Technique 2 Female Calves, Born Feb. 17, Produced From Frozen Embryos

Jenifer Chao Associated Press

The Dutch government is outlawing a technique that produced two cloned calves, announcing the ban just as scientists were showing off the newborn animals.

The identical female calves, Holly and Belle, lay languidly in their sheds as photographers jostled for their first glimpse Friday, the day the Agriculture Ministry introduced the ban. The calves were born Feb. 17, apparently healthy, on a farm in the northern Netherlands.

The newborns, cream-colored with black patches, were produced in a joint experiment by Pharming, the country’s leading biotechnology company, and researchers from the University of Luik in Belgium.

Although U.S. scientists had already successfully cloned calves using the same nuclear transfer technique, Holly and Belle were front-page news here amid growing debate over cloning.

Pharming said its calf-cloning was different from that done elsewhere because the embryos were frozen before and after the cloning to allow more time for study.

But before Pharming could fully savor its success, the Dutch Agriculture Ministry decided to ban the nuclear transfer technique.

“The method has not been proved necessary. There is no scientific purpose,” said ministry spokesman Paul van der Brug.

The ban won’t deter Pharming, which said it will continue its research through joint ventures with companies in the United States and Belgium.

“The knowledge we’ve gained doesn’t go away,” said Frank Pieper, Pharming’s vice-president of research and technology.

To create Holly and Belle, scientists first harvested fertilized and unfertilized eggs from cows at a slaughterhouse.

They then took a fertilized egg and injected its nucleus into an unfertilized egg. The researchers applied an electric shock to the newly fertilized egg, which caused it to make multiple copies of itself.

Two copied eggs, which contained identical genetic material to the fertilized egg, were then implanted into surrogate mothers for Holly and Belle, who were delivered by Caesarean section.

They have been moved to a laboratory farm in the western Dutch village of Polsbroek, where they will be raised.

Pharming produces therapeutic human proteins that are extracted from the milk of genetically engineered animals. The company says cloning will be a faster way to produce genetically modified livestock than its current method of injecting embryos.