South Korea Begin Using Cloned Dogs

Tue, 21 Jul 2009

The South Korea customs service has revealed that it has begun using the world’s first cloned sniffer dogs . The animals are being used to detect drugs at South Korea’s main airport and border crossings, after they completed a sixteen month training programme. The dogs were cloned in late 2007 from a Canadian born sniffer dog called Chase. The Labrador retriever had a litter of seven puppies, six of which have gone on to report for duty. All the cloned dogs are called Toppy, a combination of ‘tomorrow’ and ‘ puppy .'

Less than one in three naturally born sniffer dogs make it as sniffer dogs, whereas scientists expect as many as 90 per cent of cloned dogs to be up to the job. Indeed, Park Jeong-Heon, a customs spokesman at Seoul’s Incheon International Airport, commented that the dogs were displaying better drug detection skills than the naturally born sniffer dogs. Consequently, the customs agency believe cloning to be an efficient way of maintaining standards and reducing costs.

Some experts and vets have joined animal rights groups in opposing the cloning of animals . However, with this latest trial an apparent success, the door seems to be opening for similar projects in the future.

Link to this page

Copy and Paste the following HTML into your page.