South Korea’s new high tech product: cloned dogs

Two South Korean labs are offering pet owners the chance to clone dogs, but for those looking to bring back a beloved beagle, be ready to wait in line and have plenty of cash on hand.

The Seoul-based labs — one affiliated to RNL Bio and the other to Sooam Biotech Research Foundation — are separated by about 30 km and bill themselves as the only places in the world where you can clone a cocker spaniel or retrieve a retriever, with costs running at about US$50,000 to US$100,000.

But the labs are turning out far more copies of working dogs and endangered breeds than pets.

Customers such as South Korea’s customs service have cloned a champion sniffer dog, seeing the option as a cost-effective way to produce candidates for expensive training programmes.

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