Courtesy of Danielle Langloism, Wikipedia CCLSVF Foundation
NEWPORT, R.I. — An heir to the Campbell Soup fortune has dedicated her estate to conserving rare heritage breeds, such as this Tennessee fainting goat.
Dorrance Hill Hamilton, 82, known as Dodo, funds the SVF Foundation — a 45-acre biofacility where about 45,000 semen and embryo samples from 20 breeds of rare goats, cattle and sheep are preserved in liquid nitrogen — essentially a frozen ark.
Hamilton’s $2 milllion-a-year venture insures genetic diversity at a time when modern livestock breeds have become weak and inbred, said Dr. George Saperstein of the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University.
“Think of this as a safety-valve program,” Saperstein told The New York Times in this story. “If there was a disaster, if something like the potato famine of livestock ever hit, these frozen embryos would be made available, and in one generation we would be back in business.”
The foundation also is on the cutting edge of the culinary phenomenon of goat meat, The Times reported, noting goat meat once relegated to Caribbean, Hispanic and Middle Eastern communities is now readily available at farmers’ markets and served in some of the nation’s finest restaurants.
