Hypoallergenic cats for sale

[nminusone]

anmorata posted about Allerca, a company that sells hypoallergenic "Lifestyle Pets", specifically cats. There's a NY Times article here. (Search their site for "Allerca" if that link dies.)

Comments

[epilady]

If the wikepedia stub on the company is correct, they aim to breed 10,000 hypoallergenic cats by 2009. I find this rather horrifying on many levels, but especially given the already out of control overbreeding of domestic animals. Shame!

[nminusone]

Eeek! I haven't followed up on them yet so I missed that scary tidbit. :(

As much as the scientist and mildly allergic cat lover in me are fascinated by this, I'm also pretty uneasy with it on a few levels.

I don't know how feasible it is but I'd much rather see them use their technology to do something like creating tests to see how allergenic a cat is and how sensitive a person is. I think cat lovers who are more allergic than I am would be more likely to adopt a cat if they could tell beforehand how allergic they'd be. Unless the tests were very cheap, though, they wouldn't be used much by shelters and rescue leagues.

[epilady]

Also, why is the burden on the cat? Why not breed non-allergic people?

[vvalkyri]

Mostly because the people already exist. Interestingly, the protein variant is a dominant, so it's fairly easy for them to breed these cats.

Also, since they spay/neuter, that's 10K pets that won't be left to randomly breed, and the market for them (at $4000 each) is a similar market to the purebreds out there, rather than people who'd otherwise adopt a homeless animal.

Marketing a way to find out how allergenic the prospective homeless adoptee is . . . that would be pretty cool.