It looks a typical country scene: cattle munching the tender grass of a Cambridgeshire meadow. But these are not ordinary cows; each is a surrogate mother, carrying a test-tube calf in the first field trial of a procedure called embryonic transfer (ET) that could revolutionise cattle production.
The pregnancy of these 40 cows is the culmination of years of laboratory work, and the breakthrough is as important to agriculture as was artificial insemination in the 1950s. And, surprisingly, the creator of ET is the same Dr Christopher Polge who did most to make possible the ú1 billion a year agri-business of artificial insemination (AI).
Embryo transfer is being pioneered by Animal Biotechnology Cambridge, a two-year-old venture capital start-up that grew out of a government laboratory closed by the cost-conscious Thatcher government. ABC's scientists have found a way of retrieving cattle ovaries from a cheap and plentiful source, the abattoir, then bringing them to maturity and fertilising them in a test-tube to mass-produce embryos. These are implanted, without surgery, into cows that after nine months will give birth to calves which are genetic strangers to them.
The immediate advantage of the technique will be to reverse a looming beef shortage brought about by a reduction in Britain's national dairy herd to enable farmers to comply with milk quotas. Dairy cattle must calve regularly to keep up their milk supply, but their progeny tend not to be the best for beef.
But if, for example, a Jersey is implanted with the embryo of a beef breed such as an Aberdeen Angus, the milk flow continues and the farmer gets a calf with the features favoured by the beef market. In addition, the dairy cows can be implanted with twin embryos, doubling their beef production.
Embryo transfer is already an established technology. In the traditional method, the cow is injected with hormones so that she super-ovulates and the ova flush from her. They are then fertilised in a test tube and implanted.
This is a complex and expensive process - ú150-ú200 a pregnancy - so farmers tend to use it only to produce pedigree cattle. But the mass-production system being developed by ABC costs about ú50 per pregnancy, bringing it within the grasp of every farmer. Polge, ABC's scientific director, sees embryonic transfer, with the potential for freezing embryos inseminated by elite bulls, spreading throughout the world. He also envisages other opportunities offered by large-scale production of embryos on a commercial basis.
For example, the embryos can be sexed, giving the farmer a choice between male or female calves. Again, this is important for beef producers. A bull calf grows more efficiently, adding more value per kilogram of food than a cow.
Scientists can also clone the embryos, by taking cells from one cow and placing them in the nucleus of an embryo. Commercial breeders can, therefore, go on producing carbon-copies of a top-quality beast.
Thirdly, the embryos can be genetically manipulated by injecting genes into the nucleus. This offers the cattle breeder the option of producing a bespoke calf whose genes have been selected for a particular reason - to increase its resistance to disease, for example, or to make it grow faster.
"The possibilities of manipulating the embryos in the laboratory, freezing them, and distributing them open up vast new horizons for animal production," says Polge, a world authority on embryonics and a pioneer of artificial insemination.
He set up ABC with Philip Paxman, a vet-turned-businessman, to exploit commercially research carried out by Polge at the former government laboratory, the Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetics Research.
They and a staff of 20 work from a cluster of offices, operating theatres and laboratories outside Cambridge. There is no sign on the gate to identify the premises to animal libbers or others who may disagree with the ethics of their work.
In developing countries, cheap embryos in large numbers would help to build up dairy production to feed hungry populations.
But the coming beef crisis is seen by scientists at ABC as the prime opportunity for their venture.
After their 40 cows produce calves in September, the ET system will be given much wider trials by the Milk Marketing Board, implanting embryos of three-quarter Limousin-cross Friesian cows in dairy cattle. Scientists are convinced they will produce better beef calves than would result from the same cows using AI.
Already the work has excited leading meat distributors. Buyers from large chain stores, including Marks and Spencer, are predicting what sort of beef customers will be shopping for in a few years' time, and asking the embryo producers to make sure they get it.
If all goes to plan, ABC hopes to set up embryo production centres in Scotland and the West Country, increase its staff to 100 and boost its turnover from ú1m to ú5m over the next three years.
The company started work three days after the government animal physiology institute was closed by the Agriculture and Food Research Council in August 1986. Ironically, Polge retired from the laboratory on the same day, a Friday. The following Monday, he returned to his old workplace to start a new life as an entrepreneur, not too old at 60 to initiate a new industry.
Initial funding came from Biotechnology Investments Limited, NM Rothschild's specialist venture fund, and Equity & Law, which runs a small venture fund. The investment was just under ú1m, giving the two investors about 44 per cent of the company.
Second-round funding of at least ú2m is planned for later this year. Half of the new money will go on boosting the ET business which, co-founder Paxman says, will replace artificial insemination within five years. The other half will be devoted to development of transgenics, the adding of foreign genes to animals to enhance their properties.
