Green Pigs and Ham ...

China celebrates the start of the Year of the Rat in February, drawing a close to the Year of the Pig - not before a fluorescent green Chinese pig has given birth to two piglets that share their mother’s transgenic characteristic after she mated with an ordinary pig.

Mom Pig is one of 3 successfully bred in December 2006 after researchers injected fluorescent green protein from jellyfish into pig embryos.

“The mouths, trotters and tongues of the two piglets glow green under ultraviolet light, which indicates the technology to breed transgenic pigs via cell nuclear transfer is mature,” Dr Seuss Liu Zhonghua, a professor at Northeast Agricultural University in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province, was quoted as saying.

“This technology promises to breed excellent transgenic pigs and even raise special pigs to provide organs for human transplant operations in the future,” Dr Seuss Liu was also quoted as saying.