China has cloned 3 'super cows' that produce more milk than average

5 cows lined up at feeding trough.
(Image credit: Johnny Greig/Getty Images)

Chinese scientists have successfully cloned three "super cows" capable of producing large amounts of milk, state media has said. To make the calves, scientists "made 120 cloned embryos from the ear cells of the highly productive cows and placed them in surrogate cows," CNN summarizes, per the state-run Technology Daily.

The "highly-productive" source cows can produce 18 tons of milk per year, nearly 1.7 times the amount of milk an average cow in the U.S. produced in 2021. But according to the Chinese newspaper Global Times, only five in 10,000 cows in China can produce that much milk, and 70 percent of the country's dairy cows are imported from overseas.

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Devika Rao, The Week US

 Devika Rao has worked as a staff writer at The Week since 2022, covering science, the environment, climate and business. She previously worked as a policy associate for a nonprofit organization advocating for environmental action from a business perspective.