What are the animal welfare issues of cloning of farm
animals?
In a world first, a sheep named Dolly was born in 1997. She was a clone of her mother, created
using the genetic material from a cell in the ewe’s udder. Dolly sparked an intense public debate
on cloning.
In response, a year later, a high-level report on the Implications of Cloning for the Welfare of
Farmed Livestock (http://www.fawc.org.uk/reports/clone/clonetoc.htm) made many
recommendations. The recommendations stated that, to protect animal welfare, only people who
have the necessary skills in the complex techniques, surgeries and aftercare, should be allowed
to clone animals. Importantly, the report stated that cloning, without strict controls, might result
in significant animal welfare issues, as well as changes to the nature of the animals involved.
Some of these issues are discussed below.
Only a tiny percentage of cloning attempts have successful births and very few offspring are
healthy. They can suffer and die from respiratory distress, low-blood sugar, weak immune
systems, deformities and many other problems. This means, to produce a handful of successfully
cloned animals, hundreds of other animals have their eggs harvested or are surgically implanted
with embryos. Both procedures are often done repeatedly to the same animals.
A common problem is that cloned animals are significantly bigger at birth than normal offspring.
This means painful delivery for the mother, often requiring surgery. Large offspring may also die
or suffer from abnormal organ growth, poor breathing and suckling. The causes for oversized
offspring need to be better understood so that further painful births can be avoided.
Some cloned animals may be produced so that they grow faster and can therefore be
slaughtered sooner. However, there are already serious problems with fast growth in intensive
animal production. For example, meat chickens may grow large so quickly that their immature
bones break. To promote other large, rapidly growing cloned animals would add to existing
animal welfare concerns.
Since Dolly’s birth, technology has moved on, but it is still far from producing commercially
cloned farm animals. Although studies have found that food from cloned animals is safe to eat, at
present animal welfare costs and animal wastage outweigh any benefits of cloning.
Article ID: 89
Last updated: 27 Oct, 2014
Revision: 2
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