Pieces of flesh about the size of a quarter have yielded two calves that might be the foundation of a herd that can produce prime beef with less feed.
Teachers and students from West Texas A&M University, a local veterinarian and a wealthy rancher have teamed to produce clones from the carcasses of a steer and heifer that met quality and yield requirements to grade at the top of the list.
I'll have the details on amarillo.com and in the Globe-News Monday, but the benefits could be many. First, a reliable way to produce top grading beef which would lower the price. Second, it would take fewer days in a feedlot meaning less corn fed, less methane from bovine belches and less water through the process including irrigating that corn.
The bull calf is just over 100 days old and the heifer is less than two weeks old. They are identical twins of the slaughtered cattle the flesh was taken from to multiply DNA.
There will be years of experimenting and testing, but the hope is to make a breed without manipulating genes that will reliably produce that high quality beef and maybe even be less susceptible to diseases that slow growth or cause death in cattle.
The cloning was done with a FDA-approved method. The agency found the method humane and that meat produced this way is 100 percent natural and identical to that of the donor animal making it just as safe for human consumption.