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Still a Dream to Clone Miracle Cow |
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By Dalia Acosta*
Cuba continues trying -- unsuccessfully -- to produce a repeat of the mythical cow that reportedly produced more than 100 liters of milk in just one day.
HAVANA - The unlimited multiplication of Ubre Blanca is the dream hounding a team of scientists in Cuba, bent on cloning the celebrated cow, who in January 1982 produced 109.5 liters of milk in a single day.
A month later, the famous animal, belonging to the Cuban F-2 Holstein-Cebú species, broke another world record, by reaching a total output of 24,268.9 liters of milk in 305 days.
Ubre Blanca's death in 1985 did not leave her name in oblivion. A white marble statue pays tribute to her achievements, which are also recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records.
"How could I ever forget? That cow appeared every day in the newspapers. It seemed we were going to have many others like her," Aurelio Ponce, a 43-year-old schoolteacher, told Tierramérica.
But Ubre Blanca never made it beyond serving as a symbol. Cuban livestock production continues to lag behind the food demands of the island's 11.2 million people.
For years, scientists have been attempting to reproduce the prodigious cow through the cloning of embryos based on frozen tissue samples from the late Ubre Blanca.
José Morales, director of the governmental Animal Improvement Research Center, said earlier this year that the Ubre Blanca cloning project "is very important" to the president of this socialist-run island, Fidel Castro.
Morales acknowledged in 1999 that the possibility existed to clone the prodigious animal, though pointed out that the 14 years the tissue samples had been preserved meant that success cannot be assured.
That same year, Fidel Oviedo, an expert with the state-run Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Center, revealed that local laboratories had obtained embryos using cloning techniques and were preparing "to transfer them to cows". But it was not confirmed that the embryos came from cells of Ubre Blanca.
The reproductive method of cloning allows the production of an embryo using a cell from a single adult -- it does not require fertilization of an ovum by a sperm --, by extracting the cellular nucleus and introducing it into another cell. The result is an individual with identical genetic material to that of the cell's origin.
The first successful cloning procedure, which produced the sheep Dolly, took place in 1997, carried out by scientists at Scotland's Roslin Institute.
However, the method continues to face numerous roadblocks. Oviedo cited the premature aging experienced by Dolly. "We have to wonder if the cloned calves would be able to produce as much milk as their progenitor (Ubre Blanca), or if by age eight they would already have reached old age."
Cuba had hoped to produce its first cloned animal by 2001, but has yet to achieve that objective.
Brazil became the Latin American pioneer in this field, when the first cloned calf was born in March 2001.
Meanwhile, milk continues to be relatively scarce in Cuba. It is rationed and sold in Cuban pesos for children under age seven and for pregnant women. The rest of the population can only obtain milk by paying for it with hard to come by dollars.
According to the official statistical almanac, in 1989 the country imported 38 percent of its dairy requirements from the European socialist bloc. After the 1991 downfall of the Soviet Union, imports stopped. And milk production on this Caribbean island fell from 1.51 billion liters in 1985 to 590 million liters in 1995.
* Dalia Acosta is an IPS correspondent.
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