The piglets are on display at the Shenzhen International Biotech Summit on Sept 23, 2015. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

Cloned piglets on sale not of 'hero pig'

The cloned piglets that went on sale recently and caused a splash online turned out not to be from the famous strong-willed pig nicknamed "Zhu Jianqiang", Chengdu Commercial Daily reported on Friday.

Media reports about cloned piglets from the "hero pig", which became famous when it survived 36 days after the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 before rescuers found it, circulated on the Internet in the past two days. The weight of the pet piglets will be less than 15 kg during their whole lifetime and the price of each piglet reached 10,000 yuan ($1568).

Following the reports, Jianchuan Museum, the place where "Zhu Jianqiang" lives, issued a statement on Sina Weibo on Thursday, claiming that its contract with BGI Ark Biotechnology Co, the company behind the cloned piglets, forbade any commercial sales of clones of the "hero pig".

Also on the same day, a senior manager Wei Qiang from the BGI Ark Biotechnology claimed that these piglets on sale are actually from another breed of pigs than "Zhu Jianqiang's".

Six piglets were cloned from the "hero pig" in 2011, and two of them were given to Jianchuan museum, another two to the biotechonology company and the rest to the third group involved in the contract.

The two cloned pigs in the museum died in 2014. One of the two in BGI Ark Biotechnology also died and the other one now has grown to weigh more than 100 kg, according to Wei Qiang.

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