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 Spearheaded by a company called BGI, the technology required to clone animals isn't particularly new, but the application to mass production certainly is. In a report for the BBC, David Shukman explains what he saw when he visited the facility in China recently: 
 
 The first shed contains 90 animals in two long rows. They look perfectly normal, as one would expect, but each of them is carrying cloned embryos. Many are clones themselves. This place produces an astonishing 500 cloned pigs a year: China is exploiting science on an industrial scale. A third retrieves a small test-tube from a fridge: these are the blastocysts, early stage embryos prepared in a lab. Disturbingly, Shukman explains that the operating theater is "not air-conditioned; nor is it particularly clean. Flies buzz around the pig's head." The team can do two transplantations a days, and achiever a hit-rate of about 80 percent. "We can do cloning on a very large scale," she tells me, "30-50 people together doing cloning so that we can make a cloning factory here." But here in Shenzhen, in what was an old shoe factory, this rising power is creating a new industry. Indeed, as well as being the world's largest centre for cloning pigs, this place is also the world's largest centre for gene sequencing. It's home to 156 gene sequencers; by comparison, Europe's largest gene sequencing centre, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge, UK, has 30. According to BGI's chief executive, Wang Jun, the goal is to produce better healthcare and tastier food (the staff canteen actually serves produce created in-house).
– Remember when a cloned animal was a big deal? Welcome to the brave new world in Shenzhen, China, where the company BGI is churning out 500 cloned pigs a year, reports David Shukman at the BBC. Shukman got a tour of the facility and even watched the surgical procedure in a not-so-sanitary operating room—two sows are implanted a day, with a success rate of about 80%. "The technology involved is not particularly novel," he writes, "but what is new is the application of mass production." In fact, one company scientist uses the phrase "cloning factory" to describe what's going on. The pigs are being produced not to eat but to be the subjects of drug tests; many have had their genes modified to make them, for example, more susceptible to Alzheimer's. On the genetics front, the company has a staggering 156 gene-sequencing machines on site (Europe's largest gene-sequencing center has one-fifth that amount) and even bought a US company that makes them. What lucky animals make the cut? "If it tastes good you should sequence it," says BGI's chief executive. "You should know what's in the gene of that species." Also, "anything that looks cute: panda, polar bear, penguin, you should really sequence it." The company says it's all for the greater in good terms of food production and health care. "In many ways, that's pretty cool," writes Jamie Condliffe at Gizmodo. "This was supposed to be future, but it's happening here and now—but the sheer pace and questionable standards described by Shukman provide at least some cause for concern." (More wild cloning news: Scientists clone "unclonable" tree.)