China claims it successfully cloned 3 ‘super cows’

© Associated Press Young cows at Barstow’s Longview Farm in Hadley, Mass. China says it has clone three “wuper cows.”

The competitive nature between China and the U.S. has fueled another innovation. Chinese scientists managed to successfully clone three “super cows” that have the ability to produce a high amount of milk, as CNN reported.

This breakthrough, which allows these cows to generate 50% more milk than the average American cow, created calves that had the same shape and skin pattern as their parent.

According to CBS News, one of the calves weighed 120 pounds and stood 2 feet, 6 inches tall. Scientists used sampled tissue from cows raised on Chinese farms to create embryos.

Global Times, a state-run news outlet, reported that China purchases 70% of its dairy cows from overseas and this research will help the country become more self-sufficient.

The Asian country has an estimated 6.6 million imported Holstein Friesian cattle, known to be a productive breed. But out of these, only a small percentage “are highly productive, long-lived and stress-resistant at the same time in their living environment in China,” Global Times reported.

“Using cloning technology alone won’t have any economic meaning, and the combination of tapping reproductive technology and using low-productive cows as surrogates allowed us to reproduce 20 more offspring compared with just using cloning for a given time period,” said Jin Yaping, the lead scientist on the project. 

He further added that the goal is to take a few years to build a large herd of super cows that will help China’s dairy industry.