Attack of the clones

[Editor's note: The following story originally appeared in the February/March issue of Pro Bull Rider. Pro Bull Rider  is the award-winning magazine available to PBR Posse members. For information about joining PBR Posse, go here.]

FORT WORTH, Texas - A casual fan could have been confused.

There was Panhandle Slim, 1997 World Champion Bull, taking Stormy Wing to a less-than-stellar 79.5 points at the 2011 World Finals.

Well, it had to be age.

But there he was again, this time with Douglas Ferreira.

And again. Silvano Alves.

In the same round.

He'd show up once more, this time with Harve Stewart in Round 5.

Hell of a bull, would run the thought. Didn't think they lived that long.

They don't. Panhandle Slim's been dead for years.

At the 2011 PBR World Finals, shades of the ill-tempered bucker were there, just the same. They looked just like him. They were him, in a way.

They were clones.

They were born - made, created - five years ago, the project of a Stephenville, Texas, contractor named Scott Accomazzo.

Accomazzo had bought the retired Panhandle Slim as an investment.

But five months after the purchase, it became clear that Panhandle Slim was fading. He wouldn't live long, and the return on Accomazzo's investment - Slim's valuable semen - would soon be six feet under.

Accomazzo pushed the "panic button" to protect himself.

"I've never been faced with that situation... for somebody to question my Christianity. That hurt me."

At the time Accomazzo purchased Slim, a straw of the bull's semen sold for $200. Through marketing and the promise of a limited supply, Accomazoo drove the price up to as much as $1,600 per straw - a common practice among breeders.

He still hoped to live-breed Panhandle Slim, but the bull passed away before he had the opportunity.

That's when he was approached by George Owen.

At that point, Houdini, Kung Fu and other bulls had already been cloned. ViaGen, which has since been bought out by Bovance, "wanted to clone a bull that bucked." None of the previously cloned bulls had been considered great buckers. Panhandle Slim was a World Champion.

The rest is history. Repeating itself.

'PLAYING GOD'

"We caught a lot of hell for doing it," Accomazzo said. "If I could go back, I wouldn't do it. Even though we were successful and we sold those bulls for a lot of money, I probably wouldn't do it. It wouldn't have been worth the headache knowing what I know now."

Since "the experiment," Accomazzo has been called greedy. Veteran contractors questioned his ability to breed and raise top-ranked bucking bulls.

Two-time World Champion Chris Shivers takes on Panhandle Slim in 2001.

And worse.

"I'm not a guy who enjoys that part of it," he said. "I was stressed out over it because I've never been faced with that situation, you know, for somebody to question my Christianity. That hurt me. They said I was playing God, and said I was greedy, and asked how I can call myself a Christian."

At a Touring Pro Division event in Fort Worth, Texas, earlier this year, Accomazzo spoke candidly about his regret for becoming involved in an industry that has been humming since at least the 1980s.

"We were scientifically recreating something that God had already created, so were we playing God?" he asked rhetorically. "Obviously, there were some people who were pretty dead-set: Yeah, we did."

TIGHT FITTIN' GENES 

What exactly is a clone?

Dr. Joe Abels, whose Brazil-based company is involved with cloning, said that cloning is enabled by scientifically manipulating an embryo.

He explained that nuclei of donor cells are placed into egg cells without nuclei. A series of biochemical events reactivates the embryo, which undergoes an incubation process for a period of seven or eight days before then being implanted in the uterus of the recipient cow.

From that point, the clone undergoes regular development until the cow gives birth. She has no maternal input in the calf's genetics.

The genetic makeup is known as the genotype, and is comparable to the same chromosome lineup in twins.

"The best way to describe it," Accomazzo said, "is a clone is a genetically-put-together identical twin. That's what they are, and all we've done is use science and put together a twin of the original."

The phenotype - physical appearance - can vary from one clone to another.

The Slim clones all have a slightly different yet recognizable color pattern, and subtle differences in their personalities and bucking patterns. For instance, two-time reigning Stock Contractor of the Year Jeff Robinson, who purchased the clones from Accomazzo, said that Panhandle Slim was undoubtedly meaner than the clones.

Robinson said one of the four is decidedly friendlier than the other three, and one has been more standoffish than the other three. All four are similar in size and have nearly the same bucking pattern.

"A clone is a genetically-put-together identical twin. That's what they are."

Abels said it wouldn't be uncommon for clones to have environmentally-caused differences.

One distinct differentiator can be the difference between the mother cow being either a Jersey or Holstein. One produces more milk than the other, or as Abels pointed out, "bottle-raised calves never get as big." The key is reaching what he referred to as "maximum genetic growth."

He also added that despite being a genetic match, one clone can be more disease-tolerant than others.

"It would be like [PBR co-founders] Gilbert and Adam Carrillo," Accomazzo explained. "Gilbert and Adam look alike, and if you didn't know them, you would think they were each other. They're twins and they ride a little bit different, but they have the same talent and both started with the same genetics, obviously, and one went one way and the other went another way.

"Now you look at them, one is still trim and does a lot and the other is a little heavier because his diet changed. That would be the same for the clones. Some of them are lighter, but the general picture - they all have the same inherent traits and they all started off acting the exact same way."

FALLOUT

"When the rumor got out that we had cloned him," explained Accomazzo, "all the people that had invested or had straws … started to get nervous, and badmouthing the process, because we were going to flood the market with clone semen and make the product worth less."

Much of the naysaying was on religious and moral grounds. But Accomazzo said the truth of the matter was that it was financially motivated. He pointed out that no one had had any issues with Houdini being cloned, because a straw of semen sold for $100.

"When people saw it might affect them, that's when the wrath came down," Accomazzo said.

He contends that if investors trusted that he would never pull more semen from Panhandle Slim, then they should have trusted him not to flood the market with semen from the clones.

Accomazzo said most people understand his position, but that he did lose one friend - Bob Wilfong - because of hard feelings that he would rather not talk about publicly.

"I tried to explain it," he said of his decision to go through with the cloning of Panhandle Slim, "but it fell on deaf ears.

"People had made up their minds about Scott Accomazzo and why it was done, and didn't open their ears and listen to my side of the story. If anybody picked up the phone and called me, they understood where I was coming from."

He added, "I apologize."

SUCCESS (?)

"It was an experiment," Accomazzo said.

"Will they be as good? Who knows? When we bucked them for the first time we knew, but up until that point we had no idea what was going to happen."

Accomazzo paid a fraction of what it normally cost to develop a clone. Originally, he and his partner, Superior Genetics, wanted three clones for $5,000 for each. But in what he called a "freak deal," they wound up with six on the ground.

Abels said that the typical success rate isn't very high. He estimated that on average, labs end up with three or four out of 100 attempts, with five to 10 on the extreme high end of the spectrum. In the case of Panhandle Slim, they got six out of 25.

One clone broke his neck and had to be put down, and another was so mean in the arena Accomazzo decided to have him put down as well. The remaining four, who have been hauled by Jeff Robinson, regularly compete in short rounds.

All four qualified for last year's World Finals.

"Our deal was just trying to put the best bulls on the truck," said Robinson, who acknowledged he was aware of the controversy over cloning. "The clone deal is just a novelty. To me, they're just four really good bulls. It was about putting bulls on our trailer.

"I don't have a problem with it, but I know some people have a moral issue with it. I don't really think about it, to tell you the truth."

Plenty of other animals have been cloned, including Scamper, a barrel-racing horse. Accomazzo estimates there are as many as several hundred clones in existence.

American Bucking Bull Inc., the premier registry for bucking bulls, does not allow clones or the offspring of clones to be registered, though, so he has no means of verifying his opinion.

In the years since Panhandle Slim was cloned, other bulls have been duplicated, including Doctor Proctor, Yellow Jacket, Little Yellow Jacket, Blueberry Wine, Moody Blues, White Magic and Big Bucks.

Only one of those clones - a clone of Big Bucks - is thought to be good enough to perhaps one day compete at a BFTS event.

Accomazzo said the Slim clones were successful because of the genetics from both his father and mother, who were also cloned. Panhandle Slim and Rooster are full brothers, and according to Accomazzo, an argument could be made about which was the better bull.

"The Slim clones are consistently better per se than the Little Yellow Jacket clones or the Big Bucks clones because of the breeding of Panhandle Slim," he said.

"For instance, I think if you wanted to clone Rooster, you would have the same situation as you had with the Slim clones, where if I wanted to clone Dillinger or a bull that just learned how to buck and turned into a great bucker, then I don't think your chances will be as good."

DEAD ENDS AND MOVING FORWARD

Not only would Accomazzo decline to clone again, but Abels, who worked at a lab that was involved with cloning, has chosen not to pursue it in his own veterinary practice based in Decatur, Texas.

"Science can be cool, but cloning is based on greed."

Abels said it's not the technology he's worried about. It's the people using it.

He considers himself a conscientious man, and a deeply religious man. Although he tends to give most people the benefit of the doubt, he admitted, "I guess you could corrupt the technology like you could any other technology."

Abels and Accomazzo agreed that it would be possible to steal the DNA of a bull a contractor has no interest in cloning, freeze it and then use the sample to create a clone, without anyone knowing where the sample came from.

"There are a lot of questions to ask before you even start doing it," said Abels. "If you do it more and more and more, you're going to get away from natural selection.

"I believe in people, so it worries me that there will be some corrupt people out there who could create the worst-case scenario indirectly without me knowing and perpetuate a problem in the future that I don't see as a problem right now."

Because clones can't be registered, Robinson called the clone "a dead end" and noted that he is not interested in either breeding his clones or cloning any of his prized bulls. He said it goes against the foundation of his program, in which success is measured by marketability.

"Cody (Lambert) said he'll always bring the best bulls, and when he said it wasn't an issue, that's when we kind of moved forward on the deal," Robinson said. "I can't market them, their semen or their future offspring."

"Past their bucking, what are they?" Accomazzo asked. "They're pasture ornaments."

He's said Mr. Slim is his "buddy," and he's hopeful that once the bull's career in the PBR is over, he might return to Texas and live out his life on Accomazzo's ranch outside of Stephenville. Mr. Slim was tougher to break in the chute, and Accomazzo spent more time working with him, developing a sentimental attachment.

Contractor Tino Martinez has expressed interest in having one as "a conversation piece" at his ranch in Mesquite, Texas.

As for the future of the industry, Abels said it remains a question of ethics.

"I like the science of it and the application of what you can use it for," he said, "but beyond that, when people start using it for business only - should we restore life for business?"

For PBR Livestock Director Cody Lambert, the Slim clones were good enough to make last year's Finals, and Another One and I'm Back appeared in New York in January. But he was clear when he said, "Panhandle Slim should be a once-in-a-lifetime bull.

"Science can be cool, but cloning is based on greed."

Follow Keith Ryan Cartwright on Twitter @PBR_KRC.