Commercial pet cloning industry expanding in China despite ethical concerns

• Video report by ITV News Asia Correspondent Debi Edward

China seems to be land of innovation - and now scientists in the Far East country have taken it to the next level.

Dodo and Coco are just four months old; both are clones of another dog, Li Shu Yan.

In the months before she died, her owner, Eric, read about a company which could keep this four-legged friend living on, even after her death at the age of 17.

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The dogs are two of more than 60 born in a lab in Beijing in recent months. Sinogene is the company behind the breeding, one of only three in the world.

The science is similar to that used to create Dolly the sheep back in 1996 but in these labs in the Chinese capital they have developed and refined cloning to make it cheaper and more accessible.

To make a clone owners need to take a cell sample from their pet before it dies, it's then inserted into a donor egg and fused, before the resulting hybrid egg is transplanted into a surrogate.

"Like every technology cloning is a double-edged sword, but it's worth being commercialised if we use it to benefit people," Dr Liu Xiaojuan of Sinogene Laboratory told ITV News.

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But animal rights campaigners say the process is harmful and unethical.

Alka Chandna from PETA told ITV News: "They really don't know what they are doing and this is just tinkering with genetic material in the hopes of making a lot of money at great, great ethical expense."

Whilst a clone can look the same, personalities within pets can often differ.

The cost of a clone?

Around £40,000 - but it's a price seemingly many are happy to pay.