Is That a Cloned Animal on Your Dinner Plate?

Research has found meat from cloned animals to be safe. But consumers should still have the right to know where their food comes from, and how it’s made.

Co-authored by Bonnie Klohn.

The year 1996 represented a turning point in history and was the end of a long scientific journey toward making mammalian cloning a reality. It was in this year that Dolly, a Finnish Dorset sheep, entered the world and immediately ignited a global debate on the ethics of cloning. Scientists, farmers, and large corporate interests soon capitalized upon these new techniques, and the food sector was put on notice that a new approach to breeding would soon join artificial insemination and in-vitro fertilization.

Cloning, also known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, is a form of asexual reproduction whereby an animal's DNA is inserted into an egg that has been stripped of its own DNA. The resulting embryo is implanted into a surrogate, and a genetically identical copy of the original animal is eventually born.

Proponents of cloning assert that this technique essentially produces twins that are born a generation or more apart, and that the benefits of cloning animals far outweigh any risks. Some farmers and food processors claim that cloning brings consumers a level of consistency and quality not available via conventional breeding techniques, and that cloned animals can be selected to produce perfectly marbled meat, unparalleled leanness, or even higher levels of Omega 3 (n-3). It is also argued that this technology represents a form of insurance for farmers who may want to conserve valuable dairy bulls, or who wish to make multiple copies of exceptional milk producers. Some even suggest that cloning has utility for those interested in making genetic replicas of cherished pets or valuable sporting animals like race horses, and that it should be used to protect endangered species.

Several scientific studies have concluded that meat and milk from cloned animals pose no unique risks. In 2008 Makiko Yamaguchi and her colleagues from the Research Institute for Animal Science in Biochemistry and Toxicology in Japan published a study involving a 12-month feeding trial on rats.

The rats were fed a diet supplemented with meat and milk from cloned cows. Several factors, including body weight, food consumption, and data from urinalyses, were examined. Sexually mature rats were mated to assess reproductive performance, and at the end of the study those rats were examined for organ weight and blood chemistry, and tissue necropsies were performed. Based on data from this study, the researchers concluded that rats that were fed cloned food were highly similar to rats that were fed a more traditional diet.

In 2006, Yvan Heyman and his colleagues from the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) published a three-year study involving cloned heifers.

This study showed that clones differ from animals bred conventionally. Cloned heifers involved in this study reached puberty much later (+ 62 days) and at a higher body weight (+ 56 kilograms). An analysis of differences in fatty-acid composition in milk and muscle tissue suggested that lipid metabolism in some clones were different, yet a nutritional evaluation of milk and meat did not show any statistically significant differences between clones and controls.

In 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the commercial sale of meat and milk from cloned animals. A risk assessment from the FDA concluded that products from clones posed "no additional risks relative to corresponding products from contemporary conventional comparators." Despite these reports, a growing body of literature is raising questions about the impacts that cloning has on animals. Studies have shown that cloning generates unique and significant risks to pregnant animals and their offspring, and that fetuses affected by cloning grow unusually large and are often deformed. Respiratory problems are common in cloned calves, and cloned dairy cows often experience lameness as a result of musculoskeletal abnormalities (e.g., severely contracted flexor tendons).

Meat and milk from cloned animals are considered "novel foods" under food and drug regulations in Canada, and there is an ongoing review on the safety of consuming such products. A proposal that is currently before the European Commission calls for a temporary moratorium on the commercial sale of products from cloned animals. In Canada and the EU, studies have consistently shown that consumers want cloned and genetically modified food labelled. However, this seems unlikely to happen given the fact that current regulatory approaches and international trading regimes only allow scientific evidence to play a role in such policies; ethical, social, and consumer interests are systematically ignored or downplayed.

In Canada and the U.S., the law requires that food be labelled according to what is in the final product, not the process by which it was made. Because tests done on cloned products – and on the impacts of eating cloned products – show negligible differences in most cases, labelling is not required unless there is the risk of introducing a potential allergen to a food product, or the nutritional composition or metabolic profile is significantly different. Arguments for labelling focus primarily on the notion of the “free market” as a driver, and some argue that an absence of labelling distorts market responses by giving consumers incomplete information. This is an expansion on Ludwig Elder von Mises' words (perhaps inspired by Adam Smith's The Wealth Of Nations, 1776), “The market is a democracy in which every penny gives the right to vote and voting is repeated every day.”

Mikael Klintman’s 2002 study on the issue of labelling highlighted this concept by arguing that large-scale corporate actors, who usually find themselves adhering to classical laissez-faire economic approaches, have actively lobbied governmental food regulation agencies to exclude labels from novel foods, in spite of studies showing that 80 to 90 per cent of consumers in North America want labelling to be mandatory.

Meanwhile, environmental advocates and market skeptics are hoping to take steps towards a consumer demand-driven innovation system with regards to genetically modified and cloned foods. Those who advocate for mandatory labelling might be tempted to head for the hills with the prospect of cloned meat entering the market unlabelled. But one glimmer of hope remains: meat that is “100-per-cent cloned” is logistically easier to track. Part of the reason that governments have been so hesitant to require labelling is what Klintman calls the “potential slippery slope.” Do you label eggs that have been laid by chickens that have been eating genetically modified feed? What about steak from cows that have been fed genetically modified corn? Cloned meat is relatively straightforward and could be tracked and labelled much more easily; since the genomes of cloned animals could be encoded in databases, simple and low-cost tests are available to identify them.

In all likelihood, the next major issue in this domain will come from advances in the science of tissue-engineering. Tissue-engineered meat is artificially grown from a stem-cell source. By controlling the proliferation and differentiation of cellular products within a bioreactor, we can manipulate stem cells to grow a meat-like substance. This in-vitro technique looks very promising, and it has the potential to significantly reduce the negative ecological consequences associated with animal husbandry. It may also offer consumers a less ethically-contentious source of animal protein.

Consumers of meat and dairy products deserve to know if their food is derived from cloned and genetically modified animals. Although regulators argue that such food is substantially equivalent to its non-cloned and non-modified counterparts, the ethical, social, and religious concerns that many people have about this technology should trump these scientific arguments.