Germantown, N.Y., population 1,900, lies a few miles east of the Hudson River amid rolling countryside dotted with a typical mix of apple orchards and vineyards. Its mouse-breeding factory, however, is like no other.At the main campus of Taconic Biosciences, in tidy rows of white warehouses, the company breeds hundreds of thousands of rodents each year. A standard lab mouse, known as a black-6, sells for about $30 to corporate and academic researchers. But in a building marked G0001, Taconic raises mice that sell for $480 apiece. While their genetics are the same as the $30 ones, the pricier mice have been raised in painstaking isolation, without any of the world’s germs.
