Old McDonald's Laboratory?

These cloned piglets are part of an agricultural science study at the University of Georgia.
Erik S. Lesser / Getty Images.

Agricultural scientists are advocating the use of cows, pigs and chickens as laboratory animals for human medical research. Agricultural scientists study food production, including meat and other animal products. They claim that cows and pigs are closer to humans, biologically, than the mice and rats who are so commonly used, and that chickens are the only species that gets ovarian cancer besides humans.

Why this sudden desire to get more of these animals into use for human medical research? Money. According to the LA Times:

That money is no small matter to agricultural scientists, who have absorbed a 44% cut in federal and state research funding over the past two decades, according to a recent report. Animal science faculties at larger land grant universities are half the size they were 30 years ago, and entire breeds of livestock are disappearing from campuses as well, the report found.

"The reality is we need the money," said [animal physiologist Larry Reynolds] of North Dakota State University.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture allocated $32 million to university scientists studying livestock in fiscal year 2007. That's dwarfed by the roughly $24 billion that the NIH makes available to outside scientists for biomedical research.

Using these animals for human medical research is not a new idea. What's new is the brazen involvement of agricultural scientists who are admittedly trying to get their hands on more grant money.

This is just another example of how personal and corporate greed motivate animal exploitation. The pig cloning study in the photo above involes a partnership among the university, a private biotech company, and Smithfield Foods. Yes, the same Smithfield that owns the large hog farm in Mexico that is suspected of being ground zero for the current swine flu outbreak.