Two decades after Scotland's Dolly the sheep became the first cloned mammal, consumers may well wonder whether they are drinking milk or eating meat from cookie-cutter cows or their offspring. The simple answer: "probably". The fact is, there is no way to know for sure, say the experts, even in Europe, which has come closer to banning livestock cloning than anywhere else in the world.
With the possible exception of the ram sacrificed by Abraham in the Bible, Dolly must be the world's most famous sheep. The ewe's birth in an Edinburgh laboratory on July 5, was front-page news, provoking hype and hand-wringing in equal parts.
But there is one sector in which Dolly's legacy is alive and well: the duplication of prize breeding animals. How aggressively the private sector has developed this niche market has depended in large part on national or regional regulations, with key differences between the United States, China and the European Union.
In , the US Food and Drug Administration concluded that "food from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as food from any other cattle, swine or goat. Not even scientists can distinguish a healthy clone from a conventionally bred animal, the regulatory agency said.
There are no requirements to label meat or milk from a cloned animal or its offspring, whether sold domestically or abroad. So the focus, instead, is on copying genetically outstanding specimens so they may naturally sire exceptional progeny.
The Boyalife Group's cloning new factory near the northern coastal city of Tianjin in China, however, is aiming for an annual output of , cows this year, scaling up to a million by Also in the pipeline are thoroughbred racehorses, pets and police dogs specialised in searching and sniffing.
Boyalife has said it is working with South Korean partner Sooam and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to improve primate cloning technology, to create better test animals for human disease research. And in December, Boyalife's lead scientist and chief executive Xu Xiaochun, said he would not shy away from cloning humans if regulations allowed it.
Faced with strong public opinion against cloning of any kind, the European Union does not allow the practice in animal husbandry. But officials acknowledge that meat or milk derived from cows with a cloned ancestor may very well have made its way onto the market, whether directly imported, obtained from a live imported animal, or one bred domestically from genetic material brought into the EU. In September, the European Parliament called by a large majority not only for a ban on cloned animals, but also on products derived from them.
The final decision rests with the European Commission, which has taken a less hard-line position. Argentina, Brazil, Canada, and Australia are among the other countries which clone livestock.
Yeast-derived milk is likely to be classified as a non-dairy product under Jewish law, similar to soy milk and other milk replacements, which can be consumed with meat and poultry, he adds. Loike said. Touro is a system of non-profit institutions of higher and professional education. Touro College was chartered in primarily to enrich the Jewish heritage, and to serve the larger American and global community.
It's impossible for us to stand by each animal and watch what happens to it throughout its life cycle. Since the injecting of cloning technology into commercial farming over the last decade, it cannot be certain that the gradual dissemination of DNA material produced by cloning can be prevented, or even monitored. It has been proposed of keeping a database to record the whereabouts of cloned farm animals. By law companies do not have to declare or label produce linked to clones. The scientists and entrepreneurs who are on the frontiers of this technology dislike the phrase cloned food, finding it too reminiscent perhaps of the words used by opponents to genetically modified crops such as "Frankenfood".
They prefer the phrase "agricultural genomics. Bovance embody the frontline in the battle between Science and consumer ethics over the way we produce food, similar in many respects to the uproar that erupted over genetically modified crops. We are all now familiar with genetically modified- Transgenic crops, fruit, vegetables, gains etc - meaning it has been altered through the transfer of genes from other breeds, this has now spread throughout the world like a spider's web.
Will consumer resistance to animal cloning be similarly be accepted and overcome? The floodgates are already open. Cloned animals and their offspring infiltrate our food supply and consumers are none the wiser.
How can we trust what we go into shops to buy and not be in doubt? Subscribe to our emails and get exclusive first access to new products, promotions, articles, and events. We'll also give you free delivery on your first order! These include artificial insemination, embryo transfer, and in vitro fertilization a process by which egg and sperm are united outside the body. Artificial insemination was first documented in the breeding of horses in the 14th century.
The first successful embryo transfer of a cow was in , and the first in vitro fertilization IVF -derived animal was a rabbit born in Livestock production in the United States now uses all these methods regularly.
The frozen semen can come from a bull many miles, or even many states, away. Cloning is a more advanced form of these assisted reproductive technologies. Much of the public perception of cloning likely comes from science fiction books and movies. Some people incorrectly believe that clones spring forth fully formed, or are grown in test tubes. This is just not the case.
Clones are born just like other animals. They are similar to identical twins, only born at different times. Just as twins share the same DNA, clones have the same genes as the donor animal. A clone is not a mutant, nor is it a weaker version of the original animal. In all of the other assisted reproductive technologies, the male and female parents each contribute half of their genes to their offspring. Farmers have worked for years to choose animals with the best traits and breed them together.
This increases the chance these good traits will be passed on and become more common in livestock herds. Thus, a farmer who clones an especially desirable but aging or injured animal knows in advance that the clone will have the genetic potential to be an especially good, younger animal.
He can then use that animal to further reproduce by traditional mating or other ARTs. Most cloning today uses a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer SCNT. Just as with in vitro fertilization, scientists take an immature egg, or oocytes, from a female animal often from ovaries obtained at the slaughterhouse.
This leaves behind the other components necessary for the initial stages of embryo development. Scientists then add the nucleus or cell from the donor animal that has the desirable traits the farmer wishes to copy. After a few other steps, the donor nucleus fuses with the ooplast the oocytes whose nucleus has been removed , and if all goes well, starts dividing, and an embryo begins to form.
The embryo is then implanted in the uterus of a surrogate dam again the same as with in vitro fertilization , which carries it to term. The clone is delivered just like any other baby animal. There are no complications that are unique to cloning. The problems seen in clones are also seen in animals born from natural mating or ARTs.
They seem to happen more often in clones for a number of reasons that probably have to do with parts of the procedure that occur outside the body. The embryo may fail to develop properly during the in vitro stage or early on after transfer to the surrogate and may be flushed out of the uterus. If it does develop, the embryo may not implant properly into the uterus of the surrogate dam. With LOS, the fetus grows too large in the uterus, making problems for the animal and its surrogate dam.
LOS has not been observed in goats and swine. Most clones that are normal at birth become as strong and healthy as any other young animals.
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