Activists see red over stud bull cloning

GUADALIX DE LA SIERRA, Spain (CNN) -- In a mountain meadow an hour from Madrid roams an enormous stud bull who's called Alcalde. It means "the Mayor."

And he's used to having his way.

"During his life, he's produced at least 580 bulls," said his owner, bull breeder Victoriano del Rio -- an average of 40 bulls per year sired by the Mayor since he was about 3 years old.

He sensed this bull would be a great breeder after putting the young stud in a bullfight at age 2. He was stabbed with a lance but still charged at the matador, del Rio recalls. His bravura saved him from the matador's deadly final sword, and the stud was sent back to the pasture, to get busy with the cows.

Many of the Mayor's offspring have proved to be some of the toughest bulls in Spanish bullfights.

And that's a key in the huge bullfight industry, because many say it's not just the matadors but also fierce bulls that make a great fight.

The most lucrative bullfights, in big cities such as Madrid and Seville, try to attract the most daring matadors and the most tenacious bulls, and the name of the breeding ranch on the bullfight poster, like Victoriano del Rio's, give spectators a sense of what to expect.

But the Mayor is now 16 years old, and nearing his end.

So his owner has decided to clone him.

"I hope it is an identical copy of the essence of this stud bull," del Rio said, standing a respectful distance from the Mayor, on his sprawling ranch in the mountains.

He has hired ViaGen, a company in Austin, Texas, that has already cloned other livestock. Del Rio says he'll pay €30,000 (about $47,000) to clone the stud, including the company's fees, plus transportation and other costs.

ViaGen declined to comment for this story but experts say this would be one of the first fighting bulls ever cloned.

"I don't know of any others," said Barb Glenn, director for animal biotechnology at the Biotechnology Industry Organization in Washington, D.C.

Glenn said she expects that ViaGen would receive a cell from the stud bull, possibly removed from its ear. The laboratory would insert the bull's full DNA into a cow's unfertilized egg that previously had been emptied of the cow's DNA.

The egg, containing only the bull's DNA, would then be fertilized with the help of laboratory stimulation, and the resulting embryo would later be inserted into a surrogate cow for birth, Glenn said.

Some people are seeing red over the whole prospect.

"It's crazy to clone a bull in order to continue torturing and killing bulls in the rings," animal rights activist Consuelo Polo told CNN. "It seems barbaric."

Geneticists say a key issue is whether the clone will have the same temperament as the original.

"He will be able for sure to have animals with the same genetic material, but will these animals behave the same way as the original animal, is something to be seen," said Jose de Celis, a genetics researcher at the Spanish government's Center for Molecular Biology, near Madrid.

The bull breeder, del Rio, admits it might not work.

"Science advances through trial and error," he said. "If we fail, we'll leave it for the future."

But he's passionate about trying to clone the menacing Mayor, who is sleek black, with massive horns, and weighs 450 kilograms, nearly half a ton.

On the day we visited the stud bull, he paid scant attention to us. Instead, he was nuzzling up to a cow, trying to get her interested.

He may be old, but he's not done yet. E-mail to a friend