Source: Cucco
For $ 4,000 each, allergy-free cats are not cheap at all. However, the project biology company believes that owners will be happier if they have the opportunity to cuddle a cute animal without making them sneeze and have trouble breathing.
Allerca, a San Diego-based company said it created the cats using a technique called gene isolation. After identifying cat genes that are capable of producing proteins that cause less allergic reactions in humans, they give them selective breeding over several generations to produce an allergenic "super cat" product.
The company said customers can get their favorite animals in early 2007, and it is expected that by 2009 it will multiply about 10,000 animals each year. Currently, the US has about 30 million people suffering from some form of cat allergy.
However, experts also cautioned against long-term monitoring of the health of hypoallergenic cats, to ensure that the genes do not cause unforeseen side effects to them.
T. An