'Cloning is not beneficial to livestock breeding'
The practice of cloning should not be regarded without scepticism, said Dr
Roel Veerkamp, researcher at the Animal Sciences Group (ASG) of Wageningen
University and Research Centre.
"Before a clone is made of a good bull three years have passed," Veerkamp
"Using the conventional route, that period of time would yield
better bulls than the original one that would be cloned. In addition, cloning is
expensive. Genetic improvement is lost when old clones are being used instead of
Debate on cloning
Veerkamp makes his comments after European
agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel
for a debate about animal cloning for food production.
She, in turn, did that
as the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently concluded that eating
meat from cloned animals is safe. The European agency for food safety (EFSA)
also concluded in a concept advice that there is no reason to assume that
products of cloned animals are essentially different than those of non-cloned
Aim of breeding
The aim of breeding is that every next
generation is better than the last one. However, when cloning, that principle is
lost, Veerkamp said. "One could say that for reasons of uniformity it would be
good to have cloned animals. However, in that case a very large group of
production animals needs to be cloned, which is expensive."
in the top of the breeding pyramid it is necessary to keep diversity and genetic
variation. Clones could possibly be used for very specific applications, e.g. in
medicine production. But that again is a different topic than food
â€¢ Animal Sciences Group (ASG)
â€¢ Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR)
â€¢ Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
â€¢ European Food Safety
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