The Edinburgh-based Roslin Institute has revealed that the current anti-GM climate in the UK has forced it to rethink its research goals.
The team behind the famous 1997 Dolly the sheep clone is recognised as including some of the world’s leading experts on farm animal genetics, but will now to switch its attention from agricultural research to cloning applications for the biomedical industry.
With the social and political climate turning its back on GM foodstuffs, Roslin has found that agricultural research has dropped from 70% of its work in the 1990s to only 20%.
From the Institute, Professor Grahame Bulfield told BBC News Online: “An institute like ours can no longer sustain itself entirely on agricultural research […] We have decided we need to build on our strengths by developing products for use in the biomedical industry.”
