Cloning – unsafe or just misunderstood?

Cloning has always been a controversial issue and it’s been thrust into the limelight again recently after the New York Times revealed a British farmer was selling milk from the offspring of a cloned cow for human consumption. It also emerged that meat from three offspring of a cloned cow entered the meat market – but what’s wrong with that?

Scientists say that clones are similar to identical twins just born at different times, and since this is the case– if the ‘sibling’ is healthy, the clone will be healthy. Surely this also means that the offspring of a clone – since the clone is genetically identical to its healthy ‘sibling’ – is going to be healthy. If the meat or milk from the cloned ‘sibling’ is acceptable for human consumption, it follows that produce from the clone and its offspring should also be acceptable.

I think the issue is really about what is understood by the term cloning. Cloning is considered to be inherently bad – but is that because people don’t know the difference between genetic engineering   and cloning? Some people see cloning as taking the best bit from one animal and the best bit from a different animal, to create a something unnatural and frightening – more like Frankenstein’s monster than Dolly the sheep – when really cloning is a fast-tracked way of selective breeding. It’s highly unlikely that we would ever consume cloned animals in the future – it’s too expensive – but the clones are used in selective breeding by farmers that can afford it to steer their cattle in certain directions, perhaps to produce more milk, or less fatty meat.

This most recent cloning debate doesn’t even relate to the clones themselves, but rather produce of their offspring – either meat or milk. The firm at the centre of the controversy – family-owned outfit Callum Innes & Son’s in Scotland – have bred a herd of 96 dairy cows from two clone offspring bulls, and face the prospect of having to slaughter each and every one as it will be illegal for their milk to enter the food chain.

The FSA state that meat and milk from cloned animals is a novel food according to the European commission’s novel food regulations. They say that there is no scientific evidence that meat and milk from cloned animals or their offspring poses any risk to human health, but because there have been no official safety tests to confirm this, food suppliers need authorisation before selling novel produce.

In 2008, following a five-year study, the US Food and Drink Administration approved the sale of milk and meat from cloned cattle. The study compared the produce from two beef and four dairy clones with normal animals of similar age and breed, and concluded that – although the meat was slightly higher in fat and fatty acids – that there were no significant differences and the produce was safe for human consumption.

Professor Grahame Bulfield, former director of the Roslin Institute famed for cloning Dolly the sheep said the FSA are making themselves look foolish. “The FSA cannot produce any evidence that meat from clones or their offspring is novel in any way or is different to other meat,” he said, “There is none, because it must be exactly the same.”

But this is not the only reason the FSA are beginning to appear foolish over this; tight regulations exist to keep tabs on all cattle following the BSE crisis, but they recently admitted that they didn’t keep an eye on eight cattle which were bred in the UK from embryos harvested from a cloned cow in the US. They have since managed to trace the four cows and four bulls; two of the bulls were at the Innes’ farm and the FSA are still trying to establish if milk from two of the cows has been sold for human consumption.

Steven Innes maintains that before his farm purchased the bulls they fully investigated the legal issues and we told by regulatory body Holstein UK that it was safe to do so. They have been open about the bulls’ heritage – even listing them with the government’s cattle registration scheme as being from clones. The local abattoir accepted the cows as being healthy and fit for human consumption.

"I think there has been a severe cock-up," Innes said. "There has been a breakdown in communications between all the different departments. I can't point the finger at anybody. I don't think anyone on their own is to blame."

I think he’s got it spot on.