CANYON, TEXAS -- Indeed, cows are being cloned, in the pursuit of the "perfect steak," at the Canadian Ranch.
"What we've done is we've selected cattle technically carcasses graded by the USDA prime. USDA prime quality is the premiere quality grade in the beef industry and represents three percent of the carcasses that would be harvested annually." said Ty Lawrence , Ass. Prof. of Animal Science at WT.
What they've done is remove the DNA from the carcass that WT chose.
From there, they extracted DNA from it and combine it with an egg from a hand-picked heifer.
Once the embryo is seven days old it is placed inside a surrogate mother cow.
She will carry the baby like it's hers, and birth it.
"What we've done is just remove the DNA and put the DNA in from the original cow." said Jason Abraham, of Abraham Equine, Inc.
The point?
Create a steak that is lean with taste fat, without as much waste fat.
"So we're trying to do, taste fat without the waste fat. Which would be a very, very efficient animal." said Lawrence.
In short, means more steak from the animal, and not as much wasted.
The clones are bottled fed, as the animals are too valuable if the surrogate mother decides to not milk the calf.
That's where students get hands on experience with the clones.
Lawrence and Abraham are expecting the heifer and bull to begin breeding within the next year, and that offspring is expected to be the steak that is so sought after.
