Having your clone and eating it two
Eating cloned animals is safe – still. But that doesn’t mean we will want to eat it.
By Jason Major
TechNyou
The European Food Safety Authority has just release a statement on animal cloning saying that none of the new scientific information on animal cloning has changed their position on the matter.
Their position remains as follows:
- Mortality rates and the number of animals born with developmental abnormalities are higher in animal clones than in conventionally bred animals.
- In relation to food safety, there is no indication that differences exist for meat and milk of clones and their progeny compared with those from conventionally bred animals.
- There is still limited information available on cloning of species other than cattle and pigs, therefore at the moment risk assessment can be carried out only for these two species.
The US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has also approved cloned animals and their products as safe.
Cloning in Australia
There was a review on animal cloning done in 2003. It cited six groups with active livestock cloning programs in Australia and New Zealand (AgResearch, Hamilton, NZ; Dairy CRC, Vic.; CSIRO, NSW; SARDI, SA; BresaGen, SA, and Clone International, Vic.), and these have so far produced a total of 32 cattle, 11 sheep and 2 pig clones by NT from a variety of cells of embryonic, fetal and somatic (adult) origin. The animals targeted for cloning were and still are mostly of scientific value and many are genetically modified.
Report here Cloning_Review_Final_June 2003
The numbers will have changed a bit since 2003, but it will give you an idea. Since this report actual cloning research in Australia has been put on the backburner a bit, at least at CSIRO and SARDI, and the Dairy CRC no longer exists.
There are a couple of stories on Australian cloning research in Biotechnology in animals.
Regulating animal cloning in Australia
Following other regulators, Food Standards Australia New Zealand has also declared that meat and milk from cloned animals is safe to eat. I guess the issue for some people may be that although it is illegal to throw something on the market that is unsafe, we don’t have any legislation that specifically regulates the sale of cloned animals or their products. It has been deemed safe, therefore it is allowed to be sold regardless of how it is produced. FSANZ’s fact sheet gives a partial insight into what is happening
At the moment there is an informal agreement between the research groups and companies that have developed cloned livestock to ensure that none of the clones or their progeny enter the food chain. It remains to be seen how long this will last, or if there is an accidental breach of this agreement.
Street talk
There is plenty of talk on the blogs about the possible dangers of eating a cloned animal or its offspring, but intuitively and scientifically there is no justification at this stage anyway, to think that meat or milk from a cloned animal would be any different from your regular animal.
The question is, do we need to regulate the development and sale of cloned animals, their progeny and their products (milk, eggs, etc), and what are we trying to regulate? It is unlikely that we will be regulating cloned animals because consumption of them or their products is unsafe for human health. If for some reason the call is to regulate for safety, the level of technical expertise required to clone an animal should, I would have thought, make it relatively easy to regulate and police. That is, it requires somewhat more expertise than a strong, lubricated arm and a straw of frozen semen. It will require, at least initially, specialised labs with the necessary expertise. This should make it easier to monitor the progeny and products of clones entering the food chain. The expense of a producing a cloned animal means that you are highly unlikely to be eating it. You would only eat its offspring, or products such as milk or eggs, or use products such as the wool or hides. The tagging process of livestock today allows any animal sold on the market, in most cases, to be tracked back to the farm, and any decent farmer keeps accurate breeding records. The exception might be rangeland cattle and sheep in outback Australia, though I am prepared to be corrected on that.
Ethics and animal welfare
The real issue I see is the animal welfare issue. There is still a low success rate for cloning. According to the EFSA report about 10% for cattle and 6% for pigs. Among those that don’t make it are many sick or malformed creatures, which is what is driving the animal welfare issue. There is probably a good dose of “we are playing God” argument, as well. I tend to disregard this “playing God” as a legitimate ethical argument, but I do question the necessity of animal cloning, or cloning of anything.
But then the scientist in me comes out, and I wonder about all this useful knowledge that is being generated in trying to perfect the animal cloning process, knowledge that may have important implication in treatment of human diseases, even animal health which could lead to better animal husbandry. The question for us, as it is often is, at what cost are we getting this knowledge?
The animal welfare concern is a legitimate one and it raises other questions such as, how desperate are we for good breeding stock that we need to clone an animal? I guess if there is a demand there will be someone ready to meet that demand and others prepared to pay.
And based on the popularity among a select few to clone their prized beasts, it seems only inevitable that we will soon be eating their offspring.
Is it just another reproductive technology we will get used to?
Leaving the question aside of whether we should or not, or if such products should be labeled, what happens when, as I think is inevitable, that the technology improves to the point where malformed and sick cloned offspring appear at a similar rate to those from natural conception? Does the welfare issue go away for people, or are there other underlying factors contributing to a person’s opposition?
I would be interested to hear from people that wouldn’t eat a cloned animal and why. What are the key factors driving our perceptions about the production and consumption of cloned livestock?
How much of the Yuck factor is present? What I call the Yuck factor is that intuitive abhorrence of something that you can’t explain or understand.
SBS ran a program last month asking would you eat a cloned animal. The responses give a bit of insight, but then as I have pointed out in previous blogs, I suspect the people who feel most passionate about the topic are those more likely to respond.
Do we have the same perception about the use of the technology to clone endangered species – ie where there is no thought of eating them, only to prevent extinction? Why or why not?