{"id":178566,"date":"2023-12-18T06:22:21","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T12:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/chinese-robot-clones-pigs-with-no-human-help"},"modified":"2023-12-18T06:22:21","modified_gmt":"2023-12-18T12:22:21","slug":"chinese-robot-clones-pigs-with-no-human-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/chinese-robot-clones-pigs-with-no-human-help","title":{"rendered":"Chinese robot clones pigs with no human help"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/chinese-robot-clones-pigs-with-no-human-help2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A robot that automates a common technique for animal cloning has been used to produce a litter of cloned pigs in China \u2014 with a much higher success rate than human scientists.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The challenge:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/sponsored\/china-appetite-still-growing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">China<\/a> is both the world\u2019s biggest producer of pork and its largest consumer, so having ideal breeding stock \u2014 animals that birthe large litters of quick-growing piglets \u2014 is important for the nation\u2019s economy and food security.<\/p>\n<p>However, in 2018 and 2019, an epidemic of deadly African swine fever wiped out almost <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2222501-a-quarter-of-all-pigs-have-died-this-year-due-to-african-swine-fever\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">50%<\/a> of China\u2019s pig population. As a result, many farmers have had to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/china-swinefever-pigs-imports\/rpt-pigs-fly-in-as-china-replenishes-worlds-biggest-hog-herd-idUSL4N2BQ27A\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">import breeding pigs<\/a>, and China is now eager for its pork industry to become <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/economy\/china-economy\/article\/3160789\/china-food-security-pork-self-sufficiency-push-raise-demand\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">almost entirely self-sufficient<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A robot that automates a common technique for animal cloning has been used to produce a litter of cloned pigs in China \u2014 with a much higher success rate than human scientists. The challenge: China is both the world\u2019s biggest producer of pork and its largest consumer, so having ideal breeding stock \u2014 animals that [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":705,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,39,1506,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-economics","category-food","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/705"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}