"After 14 years of companionship and unconditional affection, her dog Samantha passed away and she wanted to keep her with me in some way. As she explained in The New York Times in 2018, she sent Samantha's DNA to the ViaGen Pets laboratories, a Texan company and market leader in the business of pet cloning. Streisand got two puppies, Miss Violet and Miss Scarlett."
"The science of keeping them alive, ViaGen proclaims on its website to convince humans who adore their pets to pay the nearly $59,000 it costs to clone them. But the reality is that the cloning process cannot duplicate personalities. This is the paradox of an industry with an annual growth of 15% by virtue of claiming something it is unable to achieve, namely the keeping of a dead animal alive."
"In Spain, the Marbella company Ovoclone offers the cloning of pets to customers from all over the world, explains CEO Enrique Criado. But the world's leading company is ViaGen, which has just been acquired by Colossal, the controversial company behind the de-extinction of the dire wolf and which is also trying to resurrect the mammoth. None of the three companies offers business figures; nor do they say how many animals they have cloned or give customer numbers."
Celebrities including Barbra Streisand, Javier Milei and Tom Brady have used pet cloning services to produce genetic copies of deceased dogs. ViaGen Pets, a Texas laboratory and market leader now owned by Colossal, performs commercial pet cloning and markets the service widely. The procedure typically costs nearly $59,000 and appeals to owners seeking continuity with lost companions. Cloning reproduces genetic material but cannot duplicate individual personalities, creating a scientific and emotional paradox. The global pet cloning market reached about $300 million in 2024, is growing around 15% annually, and is projected to reach $1.5 billion by 2035. Several providers, including Spain's Ovoclone, offer cloning but companies do not disclose comprehensive business figures or total cloned-animal counts.
Read at english.elpais.com
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