Appetite 57 (2011) 483–492
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Appetite
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/appet
Research report
U.S. consumers attitudes toward farm animal cloning§
Kathleen R. Brooks a,*, Jayson L. Lusk b
a
b
Department of Agricultural Sciences, West Texas A&M University, Canyon, TX 79016, United States
Department of Agricultural Economics, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078, United States
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Article history:
Received 15 December 2010
Received in revised form 20 June 2011
Accepted 22 June 2011
In January 2008, the United States Food and Drug Administration concluded ‘‘meat and milk from cattle,
swine, and goat clones or their offspring are as safe to eat as food we eat from those species now’’ (U.S.
FDA, 2010). However, cloning remains a very controversial topic. A web-based survey administered by
Knowledge Networks was used to determine U.S. consumers’ awareness of and attitudes toward meat
and milk from cloned cattle. Findings reveal consumers do not differentiate much between products from
cloned animals and products from non-cloned animals. Overall consumers are concerned that animal
cloning is an unnatural process and that it will lead to human cloning.
ß 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Animal cloning
Ground beef
Milk
Paired comparison
Introduction
Assisted reproductive technologies have been utilized by
farmers and ranchers for decades with little controversy. For
example, commercial embryo transfers have occurred in the beef
and dairy cattle industries since the 1970s (Mapletoft & Hasler,
2005). Nevertheless, the relatively new reproductive technique of
animal cloning has sparked controversy. Animal cloning is a
complex process by which scientists copy the genetic or inherited
traits of an animal. Somatic cell nuclear transfer is the process most
often used in animal cloning (Vjata & Gjerris, 2006).
Cloning is a controversial topic. Like many assisted reproductive
technologies it is appealing to ranchers and farmers because it
enables them to more quickly breed desirable traits into their
herds (Paterson, DeSousa, Ritchie, King, & Wilmut, 2003). Genetic
improvements allow producers to potentially lower prices,
increase the quality of meat and milk products, and possibly
increase resistance to diseases (Lewis et al., 2004; Paterson et al.,
2003; Wall et al., 2005). However, many have expressed concern
over the technology and outrage over the use of meat and milk
from cloned animals and their offspring (Mellman Group, 2006;
Zhang & Jargo, 2008). These consumers and animal welfare
§
Authors are assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Sciences at
West Texas A&M University and professor and Willard Sparks Endowed Chair in the
Department of Agricultural Economics at Oklahoma State University, respectively.
The authors are grateful to the USDA-ERS who provided funding to collect the data
involved in this research and two journal reviewers for helpful comments on the
article.
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: [email protected] (K.R. Brooks).
0195-6663/$ – see front matter ß 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.appet.2011.06.014
organizations oppose the technology due to moral and ethical
objections and concerns about food safety and potential harm to
the cloned animals and their surrogate mothers (Mellman Group,
2006; Storey, 2006).
Currently in the United States there are several companies that
are selling cloning services (e.g. Viagen, and Trans Ova) and
according to the USDA (2008) there are approximately 600 animal
clones in the U.S. primarily used for breeding. In order to determine
if meat and milk products from cloned animals are safe to eat, the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National
Academy of Sciences (NAS) conducted a detailed study and
analysis. In January 2008, the FDA concluded that ‘‘meat and milk
from cattle, swine, and goat clones or their offspring are as safe to
eat as food we eat from those species now’’ (U.S. FDA, 2010).
According to the Wall Street Journal, several food manufacturers
and retailers including Kraft, Wal-Mart, and Tyson, have been
reported to pledge to refrain from selling meat and milk from
cloned animals due to reactions to opinion polls and pressures of
activist groups despite the FDA’s conclusions (Zhang & Jargo,
2008).
Some previous opinion polls have been conducted on the issue
of animal cloning. The International Food Information Council
(IFIC) conducted a study in 2008 in which they surveyed 1000 U.S.
adults and weighted the survey data against the U.S. Census. IFIC
reported that about 45% of Americans hold unfavorable impressions of cloning which has decreased from 57% in 2005 (IFIC, 2008).
However the same study showed that even with the high
unfavorable impressions, about 48% of consumers would purchase
meat, milk, or eggs from the offspring of cloned animals which
increased from only 36% in 2005. A similar survey by the Pew
Initiative on Food and Biotechnology in 2004 found that 29% of
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K.R. Brooks, J.L. Lusk / Appetite 57 (2011) 483–492
consumers indicated that they would purchase meat and milk
from the offspring of cloned animals, but 35% indicated that they
would never buy milk from the offspring of cloned animals
(Mellman Group, 2006). The Pew study also reported that about
65% of consumers had heard about animal cloning. Although these
opinion polls indicate most consumers have heard about animal
cloning, other studies have found consumers to be somewhat
uncomfortable with the technology. Storey (2006) found 32% of
consumers felt animal cloning was morally wrong and 26% were
unsure of the safety of meat and milk from clones and their
offspring. A KRC research study in 2005 found that consumers
found cloning more acceptable if it improved the overall health of
animals, improved nutrition of meat and milk, and saved rare
animal breeds (Sosin & Richards, 2005).
Most of these previous opinion polls simply asked people to
indicate purchase intentions or attitudes on a five-point scale. A
wealth of evidence indicates such data often poorly predicts actual
retail behavior (Morrison, 1979; Morwitz, 1997). Furthermore,
such scales do not force people to make trade-offs between
concerns, and as such, it is common for people to rate many issues
as ‘‘very important.’’ Bauer (2002) finds that opinion polls on
controversial topics like biotechnology are just one step in finding
out consumers preferences. The current paper utilizes ‘‘bestworst’’ or paired comparison questions to determine the relative
degree of concern for cloning and to determine which issues are
most unacceptable to consumers (see Lusk & Briggeman, 2009 for a
recent use of these methods in the agricultural economics
literature). The overall objectives of this study are to determine
consumers’ awareness of and attitudes toward meat and milk from
cloned cattle.
Data and methods
Knowledge Networks (KN) was contracted to administer a
web-based survey to their panel of respondents in the summer
of 2008.1 KN administered the survey to a sample that was
selected using random digit dialing techniques, and as, such
represents a true probability sample based on the general U.S.
population. Although KN uses a web-based platform, representativeness is ensured by providing randomly selected respondents with computers and on-line access if they do not already
have it. Thus, the panel is comprised of both Internet and nonInternet households, all of which are provided the same
equipment for participation in Internet surveys. In June 2008,
the survey was sent to 3222 individuals, 2256 of whom
completed at least a portion of the questions, implying a
response rate of 70%. This sample size implies a sampling error
of about 2.06%. That is, we can be 95% confident that the
sampled percentage of people falling in a particular category is
within 2.06% of the true percentage of people in the particular
category in population. Table 1 reports the raw (unweighted) and
weighted means for selected socio-economic and demographic
variables describing the survey respondents. After the survey was
conducted, post-stratification weights created by iterative proportional fitting techniques were used to reduce the effects of nonresponse and non-coverage bias in panel estimates. This is
primarily accomplished by comparing the geographic location
and demographic characteristics (age, race, gender, and education)
of the sample to the most recent data from the U.S. census bureau,
Current Population Survey, 2007 Annual Social and Economic
Supplement. The weights were constructed using the ‘‘raking’’
1
More information on the Knowledge Network panel, recruitment methodology,
studies comparing the KN panel to other sampling techniques, and a bibliography of
published academic papers which have employed the KN panel can be found at
http://www.knowledgenetworks.com/ganp/.
macro developed and discussed in Izrael, Hoaglin, and Battaglia
(2000, 2004). These post-stratification weights are used in all
results presented in this report. The raw sample is overall diverse
and matches up well with the U.S. population as can be seen by the
slight differences in the weighted and unweighted means.
Approximately 49% of survey respondents were female and
68.8% were the primary household shopper. The average age
was 50 years old with about 31% having a bachelor’s degree or
higher education level.
All subjects were provided information about cloning technology (the exact information statement is provided in Appendix A).
To help control for a ‘‘shock’’ effect from hearing about a
potentially new technology, one half of the sample received the
information one week prior to taking the survey and the other half
received it only at the time the survey was taken. Because we found
virtually identical results across the two treatments, the data is
pooled in all the analysis reported here except for the survey
questions relating to the awareness of animal breeding.
Awareness of animal breeding
The survey contained a series of five simple questions
designed to gauge people’s knowledge and awareness of five
assisted reproduction technologies that are sometimes used to
breed animals for meat and milk production: artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, biotechnology, embryo transfer, and
cloning. These reproductive technologies are the ones that are
used by IFIC when conducting their food biotechnology survey
each year (IFIC, 2008). People were asked, ‘‘Overall, how much
have you heard or read about each of the following assisted
reproduction technologies that are sometimes used to breed
animals for meat and milk production?’’ Response categories
were: 1 = nothing at all, 2 = a little, 3 = a moderate amount,
4 = quite a bit, and 5 = a great deal.
General questions related to animal cloning
Respondents were asked to indicate the extent to which they
agreed or disagreed with 20 statements related to animal cloning
and government involvement in animal cloning. Examples of
statements appearing in this section included: ‘‘I am willing to eat
meat from cloned animals,’’ ‘‘I am willing to consume milk
products from cloned animals,’’ and ‘‘I trust the U.S. government to
properly regulate the use of animal cloning.’’ People were asked to
respond to each statement on a five-point scale: 1 = strongly
disagree, 2 = somewhat disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree,
4 = somewhat agree, and 5 = strongly agree. Each of the 20
statements was randomly ordered across surveys.
Relative importance of competing objections to animal cloning
The survey also had a section designed to identify the
motivations behind people’s underlying concerns about animal
cloning. The idea is to identify a set of objections that relate
specifically to people’s concerns for animal cloning. A paired
comparison elicitation approach (Thurstone, 1927) popularized
through conceptual advances in best-worst scaling (Marley &
Louviere, 2005) was utilized to determine relative importance of
the competing objections to animal cloning. The advantage of this
approach (over, say, responses to simple Likert scale questions) is
that people are forced to indicate their relative degree of concern
(i.e., not all issues can be most important), making inter-personal
comparisons less problematic (i.e., there is only one way to make a
choice), and the measured levels of concern can be easily stated on
a ratio scale (Lee, Soutar, & Louviere, 2007; Marley & Louviere,
2005).
K.R. Brooks, J.L. Lusk / Appetite 57 (2011) 483–492
485
Table 1
Characteristics of survey respondents.
Variable
Definition
Mean
Weighted mean
Age
Treatmenta
Gender
Income
Internet
No HS
HS
Some college
Bachelors
White
Black
Other
Hispanic
Two-races
Northeast
Midwest
South
West
Meat: never
Meat: yearly
Meat: monthly
Meat: weekly
Meat: day
Farm
Pshopper
Child
Age in years
1 if treatment 1; 0 if treatment 2
1 if female; 0 if male
Annual household income in $1000s
1 if household internet access; 0 otherwise
1 if less than high school; 0 otherwise
1 if high school; 0 otherwise
1 if some college; 0 otherwise
1 if Bachelor’s degree or higher; 0 otherwise
1 if white, non-hispanic; 0 otherwise
1 if black, non-hispanic; 0 otherwise
1 if other non-hispanic; 0 otherwise
1 if hispanic; 0 otherwise
1 if 2+races, non-hispanic; 0 otherwise
1 if in Northeast U.S Census Region; 0 otherwise
1 if in Midwest U.S Census Region; 0 otherwise
1 if in South U.S Census Region; 0 otherwise
1 if in West U.S Census Region; 0 otherwise
1 if never purchase meat; 0 otherwise
1 if purchase meat a few times a year; 0 otherwise
1 if purchase meat about once a month; 0 otherwise
1 if purchase meat about once a week; 0 otherwise
1 if purchase meat every day; 0 otherwise
1 if own/work on ranch/farm; 0 otherwise
1 if primary shopper for food; 0 otherwise
1 if child under age of 12 in household; 0 otherwise
49.695
0.498
0.492
63.055
0.697
0.101
0.316
0.274
0.309
0.785
0.069
0.039
0.07
0.031
0.185
0.225
0.365
0.224
0.035
0.090
0.278
0.558
0.034
0.164
0.688
0.237
46.513
0.498
0.517
58.699
0.613
0.138
0.310
0.279
0.273
0.696
0.111
0.054
0.127
0.011
0.186
0.222
0.367
0.225
0.041
0.096
0.301
0.521
0.038
0.157
0.670
0.257
a
In treatment 1, respondents received an information statement about cloning one week prior to taking the survey and received the statement again while taking the
survey; in treatment 2, respondents only received the information statement while taking the survey.
To begin this section of the survey, people were told the
following.
‘‘Some people are in favor of animal cloning and some people
object to the practice. We are interested in your opinions about
a few of the objections that some people have about animal
cloning. For each of the following questions, please indicate
which of the two statements best describes your views toward
animal cloning. We recognize that, in some cases, you may not
particularly agree with either statement; however, please
choose which of the two statements best matches your views.’’
Then, people were asked eight repeated questions of the form,
‘‘Which of the following two statements best describes your views
toward animal cloning? X or Y.’’ The two statements X and Y were
randomly selected from the following list of 8 issues:
Animal cloning is morally wrong
Meat and milk from clones and their offspring is unsafe to eat
Animal cloning will lead to human cloning
Cloning will result in unhealthy farm animals
Cloning is ‘‘unnatural’’ because it is not a process that occurs in
nature
Cloning will reduce genetic diversity to an unacceptable level
Cloning results in animals being viewed as ‘‘objects’’ to be
produced as opposed to being valuable in and of themselves
The scientists and biotechnology companies who developed
cloning technology cannot be trusted to look out for my best
interest.
For example, one question might have been, ‘‘Which of the
following two statements best describes your views toward animal
cloning? ‘Animal cloning is morally wrong’ or ‘Meat and milk from
clones and their offspring is unsafe to eat.’’’
In total, there are (8 8 8)/2 = 28 possible questions that can
be created representing all possible pairs of the issues listed above.
Each person randomly received 8 of these pairings and made
discrete choices of which statement best described their view
toward animal cloning. When responding to each discrete choice
question, people can be conceptualized as choosing the item that is
highest on an underlying scale of importance. Formally, let aj
represent the location of value j on the underlying scale of
importance, and let the true or latent unobserved level of
importance for individual i be given by Iij = aj + eij, where eij is a
random error term. The probability that the consumer chooses,
say, item j over item k, as most important is the probability that Iij is
greater than Iik. If the eij are distributed logistically, then this
probability takes the familiar logit form.
In particular, in each choice set, an individual chose whether
issue j or issue k was more important. The probability that issue j is
more important than issue k is:
ebþa j
;
Prob½issue j is more important than issue k ¼ bþa
j þ ebþak
e
(1)
where aj and ak are parameters identifying the relative importance
of issue j and issue k, and b is an overall constant term that
corresponds to an order effect (i.e., the propensity to choose the
objection presented first in the pairing). In a sample of N
individuals making C choices, with each choice involving a
differing pairing of objections, the log-likelihood function is
!
N X
C
X
ebþa j
yi jc ln bþa
Log L ¼
þ ð1
j þ ebþak
e
i¼1 c¼1
!
ebþak
yi jc Þ ln bþa
(2)
;
j þ ebþak
e
where yijc = 1 if issue j is chosen by individual i as most important
in choice set c, and where yijc = 0 if issue k is chosen by individual i
as most important in choice set c. In this framework, one of the
eight parameters must be normalized to zero for identification
purposes, and as such we arbitrarily selected the value ‘‘the
scientists and biotechnology companies who developed cloning
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K.R. Brooks, J.L. Lusk / Appetite 57 (2011) 483–492
technology cannot be trusted to look out for my best interest’’ and
normalized the parameter to zero such that the estimated effect of
the other issues can be interpreted as the importance of the
particular value relative to the importance of ‘‘the scientists and
biotechnology companies who developed cloning technology
cannot be trusted to look out for my best interest.’’
To ease interpretation and to provide a measurement of the
importance of the 8 issues on a ratio scale, the parameters obtained
from Eq. (2) are substituted into the multinomial logit formula to
calculate ‘‘shares of preference’’ or ‘‘importance scores’’ which
indicate, of the 8 issues, the percentage of people that would
choose issue j as most important as shown in Eq. (3):
Importance score ¼ Share of people believing issue
ea j
is most important ¼ PJ
:
eak
k¼1
(3)
The ‘‘importance scores’’ take the form of probabilities, and thus
the sum of the estimated importance scores across all 8 issues
must equal 100. If two issues (say issues A and B) are roughly
equivalent in importance to respondents, roughly half the subjects
will say Issue A is more important and half will say Issue B is more
important. The importance score calculation will then assign an
identical number (50%) to both issues. Conversely, if Issue A is
deemed more important by 750 individuals, and Issue B deemed
more important by 250 people, the importance score calculation
will assign an importance score to Issue A of 75% and an
importance score to Issue B of 25%: thus, Issue A is three times
as important as Issue B. Therefore, the importance scores assigned
to each issue reflects the percentage of times that issue was
considered to better match people’s views than other issues.
Because these probability statements are on a ratio scale, they can
be compared proportionally. That is, if Issue A’s importance score is
two times larger than Issue B, then Issue A is twice as important as
Issue B.
The logit model described in Eq. (1) assumes that all individuals
in the sample, place the same level of importance on each issue
(i.e., there is no i subscript on aj). A random parameters logit model
(RPL) can be estimated to overcome this weakness of the logit. In
particular, let the importance parameter for individual i and issue j
be specified as ãi j ¼ ã j þ s j mi j into Eq. (1) yields a probability
statement that depends on the random term in mij. Following Train
(2003), the model was estimated via simulation rather than
attempting to explicitly integrate over these random terms. In
particular, the parameters were estimated by maximizing a
simulated log-likelihood function, evaluated at 100 pseudorandom Halton draws for mij. The random draws are individual
specific, which takes into consideration the panel nature of the
data resulting from the fact that each person answered 8 repeated
choice questions.
Results
Awareness of animal breeding
Table 2 reports people’s stated awareness of assisted reproduction technologies that are used to breed animals for meat and milk
production. Overall, respondents indicated that they have heard or
read more about cloning than any of the other techniques. For
example, in the sample that did not receive prior information,2
only 14% had never heard about animal cloning, whereas 47% had
2
Note that the information statement about animal cloning was not given in the
survey until after the questions regarding awareness of animal breeding techniques
had been completed.
never heard of embryo transfer, 36% had never heard of
biotechnology used to breed animals, 32% had never heard of in
vitro fertilization, and 25% had never heard about artificial
insemination. Not surprisingly, providing people information
about animal cloning one week prior to administration of the
survey significantly increased awareness of this and several other
reproductive technologies at the time of the survey.
Likert scale questions related to animal cloning
Tables 3–5 report the results of the Likert scale questions
related to animal cloning. Table 3 reports the extent to which
people agreed or disagreed with statements about willingness to
consume and purchase cloned meat and milk.3 There was virtually
no difference in willingness to eat meat and willingness to drink
milk from cloned animals. Approximately, 31% were willing to eat
meat and drink milk from cloned animals, whereas 43–44%
indicated that they were not. Respondents did not indicate a
difference between meat/milk from clones and the meat/milk from
the offspring of clones. A little more than 40% of respondents
indicated that they would likely alter their consumption of meat
and milk if they learned that the products came from cloned
animals while about 33% indicated they would not. Our findings
are similar to those obtained by previous opinion polls conducted
on the issue. For example, our estimate on willingness-to-eat falls
in between the findings from a KRC research study that indicated
only 35% of respondents would never buy meat from the offspring
of a cloned animal (Sosin & Richards, 2005), and an IFIC (2008)
study reported that 52% of consumers said they were either not too
likely or not at all likely to purchase meat, milk, or eggs from cloned
animals.
Table 3 also reports the result of an ‘‘indirect question.’’ In
particular, people were asked to indicate whether the ‘‘average
American’’ was willing to eat meat from cloned animals. People
indicated that they were more willing to eat meat from cloned
animals (31%) as compared to the percentage of people who
thought that the ‘‘average American’’ was willing to eat (21%). In
previous research, we have argued that differences in direct and
indirect questioning are likely a result of a type of social
desirability bias (see Lusk & Norwood, 2009a, 2009b, 2010). That
is, people answer direct survey questions in a way to make
themselves ‘‘look good,’’ but have no such motivation when
answering questions about what they think others will do. The
differences in direct and indirect questions observed here on
cloning are much smaller than the differences we have observed on
questions about organic food and animal welfare. Thus, relative to
these other issues, social desirability bias appears to be of lesser
concern for the issue of cloning. Nevertheless, results do suggest a
slight tendency for people to over-state their acceptance of cloned
meat, perhaps out of an attempt to portray themselves as more
open to new technologies.
Respondents also answered a series of agree/disagree questions
related to statements about the safety and acceptability of cloned
meat and milk. Table 4 shows that most people (57.5%) were
unsure whether meat currently sold in grocery stores is from
cloned animals, suggesting people exhibit a great deal of
uncertainty about the technologies currently being used to breed
livestock. About a quarter of the respondents thought no meat
from cloned animals or their offspring was currently being sold in
stores. Respondents were equally split on the acceptability of
animal cloning, with about a third finding the practice acceptable, a
3
Providing respondents a week to digest information on animal cloning had no
affect on stated willingness to eat cloned meat or milk. The answers given after a
week of time to contemplate the information were no different than those given ‘‘on
the spot’’ Thus, data across these two treatments is pooled.
K.R. Brooks, J.L. Lusk / Appetite 57 (2011) 483–492
487
Table 2
Knowledge of assisted reproduction technologies that are used to breed animals for meat and milk production.
Technology
Artificial insemination
In vitro fertilization
Biotechnology
Embryo transfer
Cloning
Number of observations
Pooled
2.43 (1.14)
[22.9%]c
2.20 (1.08)
[29.8%]
2.04 (1.05)
[37.1%]
1.90 (1.05)
[45.2%]
2.57 (1.03)
[10.6%]
2,256
b
Treatment 1 prior information
Treatment 2 no prior information
P-valuea
2.50 (1.15)
[21.3%]
2.25 (1.09)
[28.1%]
2.05 (1.07)
[38.2%]
1.94 (1.07)
[43.7%]
2.70 (1.03)
[7.1%]
1,123
2.37 (1.13)
[24.5%]
2.16 (1.06)
[31.5%]
2.04 (1.04)
[36.0%]
1.86 (1.04)
[46.6%]
2.45 (1.01)
[14.09%]
1,133
0.01
0.03
0.89
0.08
<0.01
Note: response to question: ‘‘Overall, how much have you heard or read about each of the following assisted reproduction technologies that are sometimes used to breed
animals for meat and milk production?’’ Response categories were: 1 = nothing at all, 2 = a little, 3 = a moderate amount, 4 = quite a bit, 5 = a great deal.
a
P-value from two-sample t-test that means are equivalent across treatments.
b
Numbers in parentheses () are standard deviations.
c
Numbers in brackets [] are the percentage of respondents indicating 1 = nothing at all.
third finding the practice unacceptable, and a third neutral. Only
about 21% believed that animal cloning would result in beneficial
outcomes for them. People were equally split on the safety of
cloned meat. About 30% agreed that meat from cloned animals was
safe to eat, whereas about 29% believed the meat to be unsafe; 41%
neither agreed nor disagreed that meat from cloned animals was
safe to eat. Despite potential concerns about the safety of meat
from cloned animals, people expressed confidence in the safety of
meat and milk typically bought in the grocery store. About 64% of
the public believed that, in general, the meat and milk they buy
from the grocery stores is safe to eat. Only 10% disagreed with this
statement.
Although people expressed confidence in the safety of meat and
milk (see Table 4), somewhat paradoxically, they expressed little
trust or confidence in the federal government to regulate food
safety or cloned meat/milk (see Table 5). For example, almost 40%
of the public did not believe the government was doing everything
it could to ensure the safety of food products (only 30% thought
they were doing all they could). Only 20% believed that animal
cloning is carefully regulated by the U.S. government. Further, only
24% of the public trust the government to properly regulate the use
of animal cloning.
Expressed levels of trust in information about cloning were also
relatively low. In order of decreasing trustworthiness, 32% trust
information about cloning from University scientists and researchers, 29.3% trust information about cloning from the USDA, 28.8%
trust information from the FDA, and only 26.1% of people trust
information from the EPA. These results suggest that the trust the
public has in the safety of the general food supply is apparently not
a result of confidence in the government regulating food safety.
One interesting question is whether responses to the agree/
disagree statements are correlated with one another. For instance
are people that believe the government is doing what it can to
ensure the safety of food products the same people that believe
meat from cloned animals is as safe to eat? Simple bi-variate
correlations between people’s agree/disagree responses to the
Likert scale questions can be used to answer this question. Table 6
reports these correlations. Results reveal high correlations, in the
range of 0.5 and higher, between (i) trust in information about
cloning from the USDA, (ii) the belief that the government is doing
all it can to ensure the safety of food products, (iii) perceptions
about the safety of cloned meat, and (iv) willingness to eat cloned
meat. People who have more trust in the information from the
USDA and believe the government is doing what it can to ensure
the safety of food are also the same people who are more convinced
of the safety of meat from cloned animals and are more willing to
eat cloned meat/milk. Consumers that are more willing to eat meat
from cloned animals are less likely to agree that animal cloning is
unacceptable. Another interesting result shown in Table 6 is that
the belief that cloned meat is already sold in grocery stores
products is positively correlated with people’s willingness to eat
cloned meat. This potentially points to a type of endowment effect
where people are supportive of what they perceive to be the status
quo: if people believe cloned meat is already being sold, they are
more willing to eat: if people believe cloned meat is not being sold,
they are less willing.
Table 3
Willingness-to-eat cloned meat and milk.a
Statement
Mean Likert
scoreb
I am willing to eat meat from cloned animals
The average American is willing to eat meat from cloned animals
I am willing to eat meat from the offspring of cloned animals
I am willing to consume milk products from cloned animals
I am willing to consume milk products from the offspring of cloned animals
If I learned that the meat products I regularly purchase came from cloned
animals, I would continue to buy the meat products as usual
If I learned that the milk products I regularly purchase came from cloned
animals, I would continue to buy the milk products as usual
2.72
2.76
2.72
2.70
2.73
2.78
a
b
c
d
e
f
Percent
disagreec
Percent neither agree
nor disagreed
Percent
agreee
(1.28)f
(0.98)
(1.29)
(1.29)
(1.29)
(1.29)
43.2%
35.1%
43.0%
44.4%
43.0%
41.4%
26.0%
44.2%
26.1%
24.8%
25.7%
25.7%
30.8%
20.7%
30.9%
30.8%
31.3%
32.9%
2.78 (1.31)
42.1%
24.6%
33.3%
No differences were found between when the respondents received an information statement about cloning therefore data was pooled across the treatments.
Mean response to question, ‘‘To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements?’’ Response categories were: 1 = strongly disagree,
2 = somewhat disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = somewhat agree, and 5 = strongly agree.
Percentage of respondents in the pooled sample indicating 1 = strongly disagree or 2 = somewhat disagree.
Percentage of respondents in the pooled sample indicating 3 = neither agree nor disagree.
Percentage of respondents in the pooled sample indicating 4 = somewhat agree or 5 = strongly agree.
Numbers in parentheses are standard deviations.
K.R. Brooks, J.L. Lusk / Appetite 57 (2011) 483–492
488
Table 4
Beliefs about safety and acceptability of cloned meat and milk.a
Statement
Mean Likert
scoreb
Percent
disagreec
Percent neither agree
nor disagreed
Percent
agreee
Some of the meat currently sold in grocery stores is from
cloned animals or their offspring
Animal cloning is unacceptable
Animal cloning will result in beneficial outcomes to me
The meat from cloned animals is safe to eat
In general, the meat and milk I buy from grocery stores is safe to eat
2.79 (0.88)f
27.4%
57.5%
15.1%
3.03
2.71
2.94
3.68
34.4%
35.8%
29.2%
10.3%
33.7%
43.6%
41.2%
26.1%
31.9%
20.6%
29.6%
63.6%
a
b
c
d
e
f
(1.26)
(1.09)
(1.12)
(0.92)
No differences were found between when the respondents received an information statement about cloning therefore data was pooled across the treatments.
Mean response to question, ‘‘To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements?’’ Response categories were: 1 = strongly disagree,
2 = somewhat disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = somewhat agree, and 5 = strongly agree.
Percentage of respondents in the pooled sample indicating 1 = strongly disagree or 2 = somewhat disagree.
Percentage of respondents in the pooled sample indicating 3 = neither agree nor disagree.
Percentage of respondents in the pooled sample indicating 4 = somewhat agree or 5 = strongly agree.
Numbers in parentheses are standard deviations.
Another interesting question is whether there are differences in
the types of people based on their responses to the animal cloning
statements. Bellows, Alcaraz, and Hallman (2010) showed consumers valued food attributes differently. To determine the
relationship between socio-economic factors and attitudes toward
cloning, several ordered probit models were estimated (see Table
7). The dependent variables are responses to the agree/disagree
Likert-scale questions. Given that the responses to these questions
fall on a 5-point scale, the ordered probit model is the appropriate
specification as it treats the dependent variable as ordinal rather
than cardinal. Table 6 revealed high correlations between these
response statements and these correlations were ignored and we
treated each model as independent. These estimates are unbiased,
but perhaps not as efficiently estimated as they would have been in
a systems regression. However due to the discrete choices, a
seemingly unrelated regression model is more complex to
estimate. The reported parameter estimates correspond to the
marginal effects on the underlying latent (unobserved) variable,
which is the propensity to agree with each statement.
Table 7 reports the results of the ordered probit regressions.
Results reveal that providing respondents with a week to digest
information on animal cloning had no effect on responses to the
agree/disagree Likert scale questions. Females are more likely to
agree that animal cloning is unacceptable than males. Likewise,
males are more likely to be willing to eat meat from cloned animals
and are more likely to believe that cloned meat is safe to eat than
females. Results also indicate that people with only a high school
diploma were more likely to believe cloning was unsafe and
believe that cloning is unacceptable than people with a bachelor’s
degree or higher. Thus, education appears to have some relationship to the acceptability of cloning.
Interestingly, and somewhat surprisingly, whether people lived
in a household with Internet access was strongly associated with
most of the dependent variables shown in Table 7. People in
households without Internet access are more likely to believe that
animal cloning is unacceptable than households with Internet
access. Similarly, people in households with Internet access are
more likely to believe meat from cloned animals is safe to eat, are
more willing to eat cloned meat, and express greater trust in
information from the USDA than non-Internet households. This
finding may be due to the fact that households with Internet access
have received more information about cloning. An alternative
explanation is that people with Internet in the household may be
more accepting of technology in general than non-Internet
households, and this general acceptance of technology may spill
over into acceptance of cloning technology.
The last few rows in Table 7 indicate that people who are the
primary shoppers of food in their household are more likely to
disagree with the statement that animal cloning is unacceptable.
Further, people that had children under the age of 12 in their
household are less likely to believe that meat from cloned animals
is safe to eat.
Relative importance of competing objections to animal cloning
Table 8 reports the model estimates for the logit and RPL models
and the calculated importance scores for each statement or issue.
Likelihood ratio tests indicate that the logit model can be rejected
Table 5
Perceptions about the federal government and cloned meat and milk.a
Statement
Mean Likert
scoreb
Percent
disagreec
Percent neither agree
nor disagreed
Percent
agreee
The U.S. government is doing everything it can to ensure the safety of food products
The U.S. government can trace the meat from cloned animals back to
the farm on which the animal lived
Animal cloning is carefully regulated by the U.S. government
I trust the U.S. government to properly regulate the use of animal cloning
I trust information about cloning from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
I trust information about cloning from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
I trust information about cloning from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
I trust information about cloning from University scientists and researchers
2.80 (1.12)f
2.98 (1.05)
40.7%
27.6%
29.7%
42.8%
29.6%
29.6%
2.71
2.60
2.76
2.74
2.70
2.89
37.3%
47.1%
40.0%
41.3%
41.7%
34.5%
42.7%
29.0%
30.7%
29.8%
32.2%
33.5%
20.0%
24.0%
29.3%
28.8%
26.1%
32.0%
a
b
c
d
e
f
(1.01)
(1.15)
(1.16)
(1.15)
(1.14)
(1.12)
No differences were found between when the respondents received an information statement about cloning therefore data was pooled across the treatments.
Mean response to question, ‘‘To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements?’’ Response categories were: 1 = strongly disagree,
2 = somewhat disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = somewhat agree, and 5 = strongly agree.
Percentage of respondents in the pooled sample indicating 1 = strongly disagree or 2 = somewhat disagree.
Percentage of respondents in the pooled sample indicating 3 = neither agree nor disagree.
Percentage of respondents in the pooled sample indicating 4 = somewhat agree or 5 = strongly agree.
Numbers in parentheses are standard deviations.
K.R. Brooks, J.L. Lusk / Appetite 57 (2011) 483–492
489
Table 6
Bivariate correlations between responses to statements related to the acceptability of cloning.
Some of the meat
currently sold in grocery
stores is from cloned
animals or their
offspring
Some of the meat currently sold in grocery stores
is from cloned animals or their offspring
The U.S. government is doing everything it can to
ensure the safety of food products
I trust information about cloning from
the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
I am willing to eat meat from cloned animals
The meat from cloned animals is safe to eat
Animal cloning is unacceptable
The U.S. government
is doing everything
it can to ensure the
safety of food products
I trust information
about cloning from
the (USDA)
I am willing to eat
meat from
cloned animals
The meat from
cloned animals is
safe to eat
1.00*
0.79*
0.55*
1.00*
0.48*
1.00*a
0.16*
1.00*
0.23*
0.66*
1.00*
0.29*
0.29*
0.07*
0.45*
0.51*
0.22*
0.62*
0.65*
0.35*
Note: statistics are correlations between responses to questions, ‘‘To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements?’’ Response categories were:
1 = strongly disagree, 2 = somewhat disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = somewhat agree, and 5 = strongly agree.
a
One asterisk implies that the parameter is statistically different than zero at the 0.05 level or lower.
in favor of the RPL model, and as such, we focus on the results from
the RPL specification. These importance scores are shown in Fig. 1.
The most popular rejection to animal cloning was the statement
‘‘cloning is ‘‘unnatural’’ because it is not a process that occurs in
nature’’ with the statement ‘‘animal cloning will lead to human
cloning’’ the second most popular rejection. These statements
match consumers views toward animal cloning about four to five
times better than the statements that ‘‘cloning will result in
unhealthy farm animals’’ and that ‘‘meat and milk from clones and
their offspring is unsafe to eat.’’ One interesting note is that the
FDA’s report was in regards to the safety of meat and milk products
from cloned animals. However, this was one of consumer’s least
concerns with unnaturalness and it leading to human cloning as
more important.
Table 7
Relationship between socio-economic characteristics and cloning concerns: ordered probit estimates.
Variable
Threshold Parameter1
Threshold Parameter2
Threshold Parameter3
Threshold Parameter4
Age
Treatment
Gender
Income
Internet
NoHSd
HSd
Some colleged
Whitee
Blacke
Othere
Hispanice
Northeastf
Midwestf
Southf
Meat: neverg
Meat: yearlyg
Meat: monthlyg
Meat: weeklyg
Farm
Pshopper
Child
Log-likelihood
Number of observations
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
Dependent variablea
I am willing to eat
meat from cloned
animals
Some of the meat
currently sold in the
grocery stores is from
cloned animals or
their offspring
The U.S. government
is doing everything
it can to ensure the
safety of food
products
The meat from
cloned animals
is safe to eat
Animal cloning is
unacceptable
I trust information
about cloning from
the (USDA)
0.618*b (0.273)c
0.511* (0.024)
1.23* (0.033)
2.198* (0.047)
0.004* (0.002)
0.018 (0.045)
0.454* (0.049)
0.002* (0.001)
0.240* (0.055)
0.023 (0.087)
0.116 (0.067)
0.037 (0.064)
0.056 (0.218)
0.220 (0.228)
0.143 (0.237)
0.15 (0.227)
0.079 (0.072)
0.014 (0.07)
0.143* (0.063)
0.304 (0.164)
0.227 (0.138)
0.025 (0.124)
0.039 (0.121)
0.022 (0.063)
0.038 (0.054)
0.072 (0.055)
3,322.4
2,216
1.049* (0.281)
0.559* (0.029)
2.237* (0.044)
3.340* (0.073)
0.003 (0.002)
0.014 (0.047)
0.157* (0.05)
0.001 (0.001)
0.187* (0.057)
0.005 (0.09)
0.113 (0.069)
0.048 (0.066)
0.108 (0.223)
0.126 (0.232)
0.133 (0.243)
0.068 (0.232)
0.235* (0.075)
0.091 (0.072)
0.136* (0.065)
0.132 (0.169)
0.037 (0.144)
0.005 (0.130)
0.073 (0.127)
0.004 (0.065)
0.046 (0.056)
0.083 (0.057)
2,613.0
2,214
0.433 (0.269)
0.790* (0.03)
1.581* (0.037)
2.713* (0.054)
0.003 (0.002)
0.017 (0.045)
0.232* (0.048)
0.001 (0.001)
0.200* (0.054)
0.199* (0.086)
0.097 (0.066)
0.083 (0.063)
0.129 (0.214)
0.030 (0.223)
0.187 (0.233)
0.152 (0.222)
0.03 (0.072)
0.027 (0.069)
0.003 (0.062)
0.200 (0.163)
0.207 (0.137)
0.148 (0.124)
0.181 (0.120)
0.016 (0.062)
0.089 (0.054)
0.006 (0.055)
3,276.8
2,219
0.800* (0.272)
0.499* (0.026)
1.653* (0.039)
2.611* (0.051)
0.006* (0.002)
0.037 (0.045)
0.363* (0.049)
0.001* (0.001)
0.250* (0.055)
0.117 (0.087)
0.214* (0.066)
0.024 (0.064)
0.009 (0.216)
0.442* (0.225)
0.362 (0.235)
0.233 (0.224)
0.070 (0.072)
0.009 (0.070)
0.123* (0.063)
0.038 (0.163)
0.132 (0.138)
0.137 (0.124)
0.197 (0.121)
0.059 (0.063)
0.086 (0.054)
0.108* (0.055)
3,118.5
2,217
1.201* (0.271)
0.662* (0.029)
1.578* (0.038)
2.076* (0.043)
0.003* (0.002)
0.003 (0.045)
0.336* (0.049)
0.001 (0.001)
0.185* (0.055)
0.045 (0.087)
0.184* (0.067)
0.037 (0.064)
0.210 (0.213)
0.283 (0.223)
0.01 (0.233)
0.049 (0.222)
0.120 (0.072)
0.122 (0.070)
0.230* (0.063)
0.067 (0.165)
0.088 (0.14)
0.223 (0.126)
0.076 (0.123)
0.111 (0.063)
0.132* (0.055)
0.105 (0.055)
3,341.7
2,200
0.511 (0.270)
0.632* (0.027)
1.462* (0.036)
2.629* (0.054)
0.000 (0.002)
0.034 (0.045)
0.276* (0.048)
0.001 (0.001)
0.252* (0.054)
0.059 (0.086)
0.034 (0.066)
0.049 (0.064)
0.112 (0.214)
0.079 (0.224)
0.006 (0.234)
0.184 (0.223)
0.091 (0.072)
0.020 (0.070)
0.069 (0.062)
0.038 (0.163)
0.075 (0.138)
0.157 (0.124)
0.220 (0.121)
0.073 (0.062)
0.123 (0.054)
0.068 (0.055)
3,259.7
2,218
Dependent variable is response to question, ‘‘To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements?’’ Response categories were: 1 = strongly
disagree, 2 = somewhat disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = somewhat agree, and 5 = strongly agree.
One asterisk indicates that the parameter is statistically different than zero at the 0.05 level or lower.
Numbers in parentheses are standard errors.
Parameter estimate compared to education of Bachelor’s degree or higher.
Parameter estimate compared to ethnicity of 2+races, non-hispanic.
Parameter estimate compared to residents in West U.S Census Region.
Parameter estimate compared to purchasing meat every day.
K.R. Brooks, J.L. Lusk / Appetite 57 (2011) 483–492
490
Table 8
Relative importance of competing objections to cloning: logit and random parameter logit estimates fit to paired comparison choices.
Econometric estimates
Variable
RPL meana
RPL St. Dev.b
Logit
RPL
0.056 (0.032)
0.543*d (0.050)
0.073 (0.059)
0.060 (0.042)
0.103* (0.034)
0.688* (0.049)
0.087 (0.060)
0.160* (0.039)
1.265*
1.759*
2.630*
1.966*
(0.072)
(0.049)
(0.047)
(0.001)
24.5%
13.2%
13.4%
23.9%
20.6%
14.9%
0.476* (0.071)
0.081 (0.045)
0
0.929* (0.074)
0.142* (0.042)
0
2.632* (0.062)
1.269* (0.057)
0
8.8%
13.1%
14.2%
13.1%
10.5%
7.7%
0.525* (0.053)
1.208* (0.066)
0.747* (0.051)
1.844* (0.072)
0.916* (0.058)
1.845* (0.069)
8.4%
4.3%
5.1%
4.2%
Logit
Intercept (order effect)
Cloning is ‘‘unnatural’’ because it is not a process that occurs in nature
Animal cloning will lead to human cloning
Cloning results in animals being viewed as ‘‘objects’’ to be produced
as opposed to being valuable in and of themselves
Animal cloning is morally wrong
Cloning will reduce genetic diversity to an unacceptable level
The scientists and biotechnology companies who developed cloning
technology cannot be trusted to look out for my best interest
Cloning will result in unhealthy farm animals
Meat and milk from clones and their offspring is unsafe to eat
Importance
scores
c
Notes: Results based on 17,434 choices made by 2231 individuals; log-likelihood function value for logit was 11052.71 and for random parameter logit was 9826.55; a
likelihood ratio test could not reject the hypothesis that the parameters were the same across the two information treatments.
a
The estimates refer to the estimated mean in the population from the random parameter logit model.
b
The estimates refers to the estimated standard deviation in the population from the random parameter logit model.
c
Numbers in parentheses are standard errors.
d
One asterisk represents parameter is statistically different than zero at the 0.05 level or lower.
Although the results presented in Table 8 provided a picture of
the relative level of concern for several issues related to animal
cloning, it is of interest to ask whether people who express a higher
overall level of concern about animal cloning find certain issues to
be more or less problematic than people who express a lower
overall level of concern.
Cloning will result in unhealthy
farm animals, 5.1%
The sciensts and
biotechnology companies who
developed cloning technology
cannot be trusted to look out
for my best interest, 7.7%
Table 9 provides some insight into this issue by reporting bivariate correlations between agree/disagree responses to selected
Likert scale questions and the individual-specific ‘‘importance
scores’’ for competing cloning concerns derived from the random
parameter logit. Results shown in Table 9 indicate that people who
are relatively more concerned about the morality of animal cloning
Meat and milk from clones and
their offspring is unsafe to eat,
4.2%
Cloning is “unnatural” because
it is not a process that occurs in
nature, 23.9%
Cloning will reduce genec
diversity to an unacceptable
level, 10.5%
Animal cloning is morally
wrong, 13.1%
Animal cloning will lead to
human cloning, 20.6%
Cloning results in animals being
viewed as “objects’ to be
produced as opposed to being
valuable in and of themselves,
14.9%
Fig. 1. Relative importance of competing objections to cloning (the percentage of respondents indicating the statement best reflects their views on animal cloning).
K.R. Brooks, J.L. Lusk / Appetite 57 (2011) 483–492
491
Table 9
Bivariate correlations between responses to statements related to the acceptability of cloning.
Relative importance of objection to cloningb
Animal cloning is morally wrong
Meat and milk from clones and their offspring
is unsafe to eat
Animal cloning will lead to human cloning
Cloning will result in unhealthy farm animals
Cloning is ‘‘unnatural’’ because it is not a process
that occurs in nature
Cloning will reduce genetic diversity to an
unacceptable level
Cloning results in animals being viewed as
‘‘objects’’ to be produced as
opposed to being valuable in and of themselves
The scientists and biotechnology companies who
developed cloning technology cannot be trusted
to look out for my best interest
Responses to agree/disagree statementsa
Some of the
meat currently
sold in grocery
stores is from
cloned animals
or their offspring
The U.S. government
I trust information
is doing everything
about cloning from
it can to ensure the
the USDA
safety of food products
I am willing The meat from Animal cloning is
to eat meat cloned animals unacceptable
from cloned is safe to eat
animals
0.07*c
0.11*
0.07*
0.12*
0.13*
0.12*
0.24*
0.16*
0.21*
0.16*
0.04
0.05*
0.06*
0.04
0.13*
0.02
0.06*
0.13*
0.01
0.09*
0.13*
0.01
0.08*
0.13*
0.00
0.04
0.03
0.01
0.02
0.03
0.01
0.04
0.02
0.06*
0.12*
0.16*
0.20*
0.18*
0.14*
0.14*
0.13*
0.10*
0.11*
0.05*
0.12*
0.00
0.21*
0.10*
a
Responses to questions, ‘‘To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements?’’.
Relative importance of competing objections to cloning determined by calculating posterior probabilities from the random parameter logit model fit to paired
comparison choice data.
c
One asterisk implies the parameter is statistically different than zero at the 0.05 level or lower.
b
are the same people who are less willing to eat meat from cloned
animals. Thus, although the morality of animal cloning only ranked
fourth on the list of competing concerns, it is an issue highly
related to willingness to eat cloned meat. Interestingly, the issue of
most concern to people – that cloning is unnatural because it is not
a process that occurs in nature – is virtually unrelated to people’s
willingness to eat cloned meat. That is, people for whom
‘‘unnaturalness’’ is a relatively big concern are just as likely to
express willingness to eat cloned meat as are people for whom
‘‘unnaturalness’’ is not as big a concern.
Conclusions
The results of this study reveal that consumers have a higher
level of awareness of animal cloning as compared to other assisted
reproductive technologies, such as artificial insemination and
biotechnology. Attitudes toward cloning are neither overwhelmingly positive nor negative. Approximately 31% of consumers are
willing to consume meat and milk products from cloned animals,
while 43% are unwilling, and 26% are neither willing nor unwilling.
Consumers do not differentiate much between products from
cloned animals and the offspring of cloned animals. Although 64%
believe that the meat and milk they buy is safe to eat, only 30%
think the U.S. government is doing everything it can to ensure the
safety of food. Less than 30% of respondents expressed trust in
information about cloning from U.S. federal agencies. People were
relatively more trusting of information from University scientists
than the USDA, the FDA, and the EPA. Furthermore, females and
those with only a high school education are less supportive of
consuming meat/milk from cloned animals than are males and
those with a bachelor’s degree or higher level of education. Overall
the main concerns for animal cloning is that it is an unnatural
process and that it may lead to human cloning.
Consumer’s preferences for animal cloning will play a large part
in the future of its use in the agriculture industry. Animal cloning
could potentially allow farmers to increase quality of meat and
milk products while maintaining or potentially decreasing prices.
The current study analyzed opinion polls which is a part of the
public opinion process but are a snap shot in time (Bauer, 2002).
Further research should be conducted to determine how consumers will react if and when products from cloned animals enter
the food supply to continue gaining knowledge of consumers’
opinions. If animal cloning is not allowed, future technology could
be reduced and research should be conducted on the effects of
these types of policies. Both policy makers and private sector
marketers need to be aware of consumers’ preferences for cloned
animals as we continue forward. Private sector marketers need to
be aware of the consumer’s preferences as well as their concerns in
order to properly market products from cloned animals. Economic
viability of cloning animals is not only driven by improvements in
the technology but by the public’s acceptance of the technology.
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Appendix A. Information on animal cloning provided to survey
participants
The next section of the survey will ask several questions
specifically about animal cloning. What follows is a brief
description of cloning.
Animal cloning is a process in which scientists can copy the
genetic or inherited traits of an animal. Clones are similar to
identical twins only born at different times. Similar to in vitro
fertilization, cloned animals begin in a laboratory, but then are
born to surrogate mothers in the usual way and grow up just like
other animals.
This reproductive breeding technique is appealing to some
ranchers and farmers because it enables them to create ‘‘identical
twins’’ of their best breeding stock – allowing them to more quickly
breed desirable traits into herds. The technique is also appealing to
some consumers because it has the potential to lower the price and
increase the quality of meat and milk.
This reproductive breeding technique is opposed by some
people on moral and ethical grounds. Other people are opposed to
animal cloning because, given current technology, only a small
percentage of attempts at cloning are successful and many of the
clones die during all stages of gestation and birth and the
procedures may carry risks for the mother. Although these
symptoms are a downside to cloning, they are not necessarily
unique to cloning in comparison to other reproductive techniques.
In January 2008, after years of detailed study and analysis, the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concluded that, ‘‘meat
and milk from clones of cattle, swine, and goats, and the offspring
of clones from any species traditionally consumed as food, are as
safe to eat as food from conventionally bred animals.’’ The FDA’s
science-based risk assessment, which was peer-reviewed by a
group of independent scientific experts in cloning and animal
health, concluded:
(1) Cloning poses no unique risks to animal health compared to the
risks found with other reproduction methods including natural
mating.
(2) The composition of food products from cattle, swine, and goat
clones, or the offspring of any animal clones, is no different
from that of conventionally bred animals.
(3) Because of the preceding two conclusions, there are no
additional risks to people eating food from cattle, swine, and
goat clones or the offspring of any animal clones traditionally
consumed as food.
A copy of FDA’s report can be found at: http://www.fda.gov/
cvm/cloning.htm.