China will be opening the world's largest animal cloning center in the port city of Tianjin next year, according to an announcement of biotechnology companies, Chinese firm Boyalife and Sooam Biotech which is a research company from South Korea, that are behind this joint venture.

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The US $31 million facility will be able to clone farm animals such as beef cattle and even dogs as pets and for police work, including racehorses. Apart from farm animal cloning, the center will also hold a museum and a gene bank.

According to the board chairman of the Boyalife Group, Xu Xiaochun, China's farmers have been struggling for the longest time to produce enough beef cattle due to extreme market demand where the center will help produce 100,000 cattle embryos a year that will eventually lead to 1 million.

However, social media went ablaze with skepticism and disgust of the idea of eating meat from cloned animals, and it does not help that this meat comes from a nation that is notorious for food safety scandals. Comments include, this beef should be first saved for government leaders and only after them and their families have already eaten this meat for 10 years then this beef would be deemed safe to give it to the people, really can't wait! Another comment asks, will this meat be sold in South Korea or China? If this is in China, please make leaders eat it first before the citizens.

Experts and critics regarded this facility with unease since the founder of Sooam Biotech, Woo-suk Hwang, who is also a pioneer in animal cloning, was also convicted in 2009 for the embezzlement of research funds and worse, buying human eggs for research.

According to senior policy analyst oc the U.S. Center for Food Safety, Jaydee Hanson, anything in connection to Woo-suk is going to be suspect and it is not expected that Boyalife will be around for long.

Cloning technology has been around for more than 20 years where the first cloned farm animal ever called Dolly the sheep was born in 1996, however, this practice is still filled with controversy. Last September, the European Parliament completely banned farm animal cloning, focusing on animal welfare concerns.

According to biotech project director of the U.S. Center for Science in the Public Interest, Gregory Jaffe, the most important thing to consider with any technology regarding food supply is to ensure that products made from these technologies are safe to eat. In 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, ruled that food originating from cloned animals are safe to eat. 

Since 2000, scientists in China already cloned many animals that include cattle, sheep and pigs. Boyalife says that before this facility, cloning in China has only been restricted to scientific research however, more companies are now showing interest in investing more in this kind of technology for commercial use, particularly in animal husbandry.

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