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A Montana farmer has been charged with illegally selling offspring from cloned sheep across state lines.
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The retail value of the animals transported is $250,000 to $550,000, according to court documents.
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The hybrid offspring were sold to game farms, possibly for hunting.
80-year-old Montana farmer Arthur “Jack” Schubarth had a lucrative business until the authorities took him down.
For the past five years or so, Schubarth has been selling sheep for thousands of dollars.
There is nothing illegal about selling sheep at exorbitant prices – unless those animals are Marco Polo argali sheep, or in Schubarth’s case, Marco Polo argali sheep hybrids.
Marco Polo argali sheep are native to Central Asia and are considered threatened under the US Endangered Species Act. Montana law prohibits their importation, possession and sale.
On Tuesday, Schubarth pleaded guilty to charges in a scheme involving the three.
His sentencing is scheduled for July and he faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for each of the two felony counts against him.
The US has wildlife protection laws
It all started in 2013 when an unnamed party illegally imported Marco Polo argali sheep parts into the US from Kyrgyzstan, according to court documents.
Shortly thereafter, Schubarth allegedly got his hands on some of those sheep parts and, in 2015, paid a deposit of $4,200 to produce cloned sheep embryos from the dead argali’s remains.
In May 2017, a pure argali berry was born from one of those cloned embryos. Schubarth called him Montana Mountain King.
Mountain King would be Schubarth’s golden goose in a lucrative business scheme to create bigger, more attractive sheep for (mostly) Texan game ranches, according to court documents.
In 2018, Schubarth harvested Mountain King sperm, which he used to artificially inseminate bighorn sheep (female sheep) on his farm to create hybrid offspring.
Over the next few years, Schubarth, along with several unnamed parties, transported dozens of sheep and their hybrid offspring across state lines.
In the process, they are accused of forging veterinarian inspection certificates and making them believe the sheep were a legally permitted species, according to court documents.
Sheep worth thousands of dollars
Marco Polo, a subspecies of argali sheep, prized by trophy hunters for its large spiral horns, is an “almost mythical animal,” naturalist George Schaller told NPR in 2006.
The Schubarth hybrids were a mix of the Marco Polo and other bighorn sheep. Their large horns and huge antlers fetch higher prices on the game farms than other species. In 2020, Schubarth sold 24 hybrids for $46,200, according to the Justice Department statement.
Cloning the dead sheep is not where Schubarth broke the law since there is no regulation of animal cloning in the United States, Joyce Tischler, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School’s Center for Animal Legal Studies, told Business Insider.
It was all that illegal behavior across state lines (and lying and forging official documents).
On March 12, Schubarth pleaded guilty to conspiracy and trafficking in violation of the Lacey Act, according to the DOJ statement. The Act prohibits the trade of illegally obtained wildlife.
The retail value of the wildlife transported was between $250,000 and $550,000, according to court documents.
“What I see as a danger is that if this becomes popular, other people will try to illegally import argali sheep to make money off them,” Joyce Tischler, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School’s Center for Animal Law Studies. , said Business Insider.
How to clone sheep
Although none of the Justice Department’s charges relate to the cloning of illegally imported sheep parts, the process remains controversial in some countries.
In 2015, the European Union banned the cloning of farm animals, citing animal welfare concerns. One of the biggest concerns was that cloning mammals has a low success rate. It’s unclear what Schubarth’s success rate was, although court documents mention only one cloned animal – the Montana Mountain King.
Some improvements have been made since Dolly the sheep, the world’s first cloned mammal, was born in 1996. However, it is still an involved process that requires veterinary expertise and a surgical procedure for sheep.
The hardest part is getting the cloned embryos into a live fetus to carry to term, Alison Van Eenennaam, a biotechnologist at the University of California, Davis who was not involved in the case, told Business Insider.
An expert will make an incision, implant the embryo in the uterus, and sew the fetus back up. “It’s a real sight,” Van Eennaam said. “That’s not trivial to do.”
The ewes would have to be at the right stage of their reproductive cycle to maintain the pregnancy, Van Eenennaam said.
Once Schubarth had the male clone, Mountain King, it was an easier process from there to raise a family of hybrids. He could only use the King’s semen to artificially inseminate sheep, with no surgical implantation required.
Cloning is not the real concern here
The plea agreement requires Schubarth to quarantine any clones and offspring. The US Fish and Wildlife Service may also decide to neuter the animals, according to court documents.
Gregory Kaebnick, a senior research scholar at The Hastings Center who studies bioethics, is not worried that cloned sheep could affect wild species or change ecosystems since they seem to be game bread. But he said it could be a concern in the future.
“Some of this technology is coming down to the DIY level or the garage level sometimes,” he said. “People are sort of trying to hack genomes in their basements.”
It’s not entirely unreasonable to start thinking about how this could one day affect wild genomes, Kaebnick said.
Van Eenennaam agreed that the genetic component of this case is not of particular concern. Livestock cloning still has a relatively low success rate.
However, she noted that introducing disease-carrying tissue from any non-native species could pose a biosecurity risk.
“It’s a nightmare for you,” she said, “that stuff is being moved around without the proper clearances just because of the potential threat to the agriculture industry.”
Schubarth’s lawyers did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Read the original article on Business Insider
