Mendelson of the Center for Food Safety added that his group worried about the ability of the food and drug agency to determine the safety of genetically modified foods. And he said the cloning process could produce unhealthy animals.
Kang said the work began a few years ago when he put a gene for the production of omega-3 fatty acids into mice. Mammals do not have that gene; it is found instead in microorganisms, plankton, algae and worms, he said. Fish get the fatty acids by eating algae.
Kang used a gene from roundworms that converts an abundant form of fatty acid, omega-6, to omega-3. He had to modify the worm enzyme, making it into one that would function in mammals. Then he injected the gene for the enzyme into mouse embryos, some of which took it up, yielding mice that made their own omega-3s.
The next step was to create pigs with the enzyme. That work was done by Randall S. Prather, a pig cloning expert at the University of Missouri, who ended up with the five cloned pigs that had the gene in every cell of their bodies and made their own omega-3 fatty acids in their muscles.
Although pigs have been cloned before -- along with a growing list of animals, including sheep, mice, rats, cows, goats, rabbits, cats, a mule, a horse and a dog -- these are the first livestock to be cloned and genetically modified to make omega-3s.
Prather said the omega-3 pigs, born in November, will be bred when they reach puberty. Then, he said, "we will distribute them to researchers who are interested."
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