Word: dna
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...life in the country. The accolade attracts a steady flow of fashionable Paulistas (São Paulo is only an hour's flight away), young surfers and families coming to while away their weekends at the wide sandy beaches nearby. Style and glamour are in the city's DNA - its most famous son and daughter are tennis player Gustavo Kuerten and supermodel Gisele Bündchen. But one of the most popular hangouts is not some swanky rooftop hotel restaurant; it's a stand-and-be-served bar in the busy fish market, known simply by its stall number...
IdentiGEN's traceback system starts with a small DNA sample taken from an animal carcass while it is still intact. The sample is stored in a computer database, and from that point on, at any step in the distribution process, another sample can be taken from any product to confirm its origins. The entire process costs one half of 1% of the value of the animal, according to Cunningham. If cloned-animal DNA were made publicly available (cloners now keep DNA information proprietary), Cunningham says he could trace a single steak back to an individual cloned steer in less than...
...ViaGEN, a cloning and animal genetics company based in Austin, Tex., produces some 150 cloned cattle annually, which it sells to meat suppliers, primarily for breeding. ViaGEN says it will launch a system to log and track each of its clones, with a unique tracking number - but not its DNA - that will be stored in an independently run database. The company will also make efforts to keep any food products made from its clones out of markets that don't want them. "We're not making it voluntary," says Mark Walton, president of ViaGEN. "We will register every animal...
...tracking number isn't enough, Cunningham says, calling it little more than a "paper trail." He says, "that's not adequate. The only way you can be sure is if you put the DNA of these clones into an independent database," pointing out that a single cow can enter a packing plant and come out the other side in as many as 1,000 different products...
IdentiGEN opened its U.S. headquarters and a DNA lab in May 2007 in Lawrence, Kansas. Last October, the company received the official go-ahead from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to launch its DNA TraceBack system and is currently offering it up to American meat producers and retailers. For the record, Cunningham says he would happily enjoy a steak from a cloned steer, but recognizes there's a "general, unscientific feeling that something that's cloned is getting too close to Frankenstein...