The foot-and-mouth virus sweeping through Britain's livestock could threaten Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal, a spokesman for her creators has said.
Long-term experiments in cattle breeding carried out by the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh in Scotland could also fall victim to the virus that has forced the destruction of some 160,000 farm animals throughout Britain.
The institute was currently five years into a 10-year experiment and it would cost millions of pounds if the livestock had to be slaughtered, according to its assistant director, Dr Harry Griffin.
When foot-and-mouth broke out, Dolly was quarantined in special accommodation and the crowds who have come to visit her since she was created in 1996 have been banned. "She is being kept apart," he said, but that would not protect her if the farm was hit by foot-and-mouth and its animals had to be slaughtered. "She would have to go too," he said.