AP News, February 9th, 2007
A dairy farmer who faced selling his cloned cow for hamburger because of a bitter family business dispute said Friday he struck a deal with neighbors to spare the animal from the slaughterhouse.
Financial woes had pushed Gregory C. Wiles to decide to sell his 6-year-old Holstein named Genesis for slaughter, despite the U.S. food industry's voluntary ban on products from cloned livestock.
The Williamsport farmer said the pregnant Genesis and 51 other cattle from his herd were placed on two nearby farms under a plan to settle his nearly $7,600 debt to his father.
Wiles said the other half of his 104 cattle were either sold to a dealer or earmarked for slaughter by midnight Thursday as a court-imposed deadline expired. It wasn't clear whether there was a livestock auction willing to handle the cloned cow or a slaughterhouse willing to process the meat.
Wiles managed the family's dairy operation for about 20 years and invested heavily in cloned cattle, but he was evicted in early January for failing to pay rent to his father Charles.
Wiles traced his financial problems to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's request in 2003 that farmers refrain from selling products from cloned animals into the food supply. Wiles complied by dumping milk from his two cloned cows and their 15 offspring.
Wiles said his other cloned cow, Cyagra, died Jan. 26. He said he sent her remains and those of her aborted fetus to the Maryland-Virginia College of Veterinary Medicine in Blacksburg, Va., for study.
