Thursday, 16th December 2010
Dolly’s legacy is a cloning muddle
[An abridged version of this article was published in The Scotsman, 16 December 2010]
Practically everyone in Scotland remembers when, in 1997, it was announced that a ewe – dubbed ‘Dolly the Sheep’ – had been successfully cloned from a fertilised embryo at Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute.
Back then, it was the stuff of science fiction come true, a huge leap forward that seemed to demonstrate that the study of genetics had truly come of age.
Fast forward 13 years and Scotland’s reputation as a centre for cloning was again big news. In August, it was widely reported that two bulls had been bred on a farm near Nairn from cloned embryos imported from America.
These bulls had gone on to sire around 100 cows at the farm of Stephen Innes and his father Callum and their meat and milk later entered the food chain.
The case highlighted just how far commercial cloning has come in the intervening years – and how easy it is for produce ultimately derived from clones to end up on our plates.
Many countries in the world – including some such as the US, Canada and Brazil from where the EU imports vast amounts of meat, embryos and semen for fertilisation – have already gone a long way down the cloning route.
So far, the EU has decided not to allow cloning for commercial purposes, but the direction of travel is clear. The European Commissioner in charge of cloning issues, John Dalli, has stated that products from the offspring of clones are considered conventional foods. At the same time, the Commission is proposing a five-year ban on cloning for food production within the EU as a way of breaking the deadlock with the European Parliament over its new Novel Foods Directive.
This mixed message effectively means Europe will turn a blind eye to the import of produce from clone-offspring, while stopping European farmers competing on a level playing field with producers abroad.
At a recent conference on animal welfare I organised in Brussels, we heard from Professor Keith Campbell, one of the co-creators of Dolly the Sheep. He spoke about the great advances in cloning technology which had increased the success rate of the technique and cut health problems in the animals produced.
But the opposing view was put forward by Peter Stevenson from welfare charity Compassion in World Farming. He cited statements from the European Food Standards Agency that cloning resulted in increased health problems in animals, due to a preference for larger animals which went on to develop chronic conditions.
What became clear to me was that cloned foods’ safety for human consumption is only part of the issue. In the grand scheme of things, this is still a young technology and legitimate questions still remain. What is the long-term impact on the gene pool of domesticated animals? Should we be concerned about alleged health risks to clones themselves?
Perhaps most importantly, do European consumers have a right to know whether their food comes from a clone or its offspring? I believe that, while the jury is still out on certain ethical aspects of cloning technology, the answer to this last question must be an emphatic yes.
