Would You Eat Steak From A Cloned Animal?

A steak so good, you’ll want to clone it

A commercial livestock cloning facility has opened in Australia promising to copy top stud animals. The service is guaranteed and costs less than 10% of an elite animal’s value. Is this the future of farming or should we be worried about beef cloning?

The science of cloning

Cloning became news in 1996 with Dolly the sheep. She was the first successful mammalian clone. But she was not the first experiment in cloning. The earliest cloning experiments used monozygotic cloning – causing eggs to split and form twins – in 1885. Since then there have been big improvements in cloning technology, and many successful clones. Issues like shorter lifespan and birth defects have been effectively eliminated.

Who could benefit from Australian cloning?

Reinclonation, based in southern Queensland, are targeting animals with a value of over AUD$30,000. This is not the kind of service that a small commercial beef farmers are likely to be able to afford.

Not the first time Australians have cloned top stock

Dr Gábor Vajta, Reinclonation’s lab team leader, is a medical doctor, human pathologist and embryologist with ties to universities in Australia and China. Eve, a clone of Nevile and Megan Hansen’s prize cow, was born four years ago with his help. The Hansens are impressed with the clone’s likeness to the original – including its gentle temperament. Vajita was forced to discontinue his work at the time due to patent restrictions. He’s back now with his own ‘Handmade Cloning (HMC)’ method.

Cloning becoming part of everyday life

On their website, Reinclonation calls cloning ‘twins born at different times’. You can see why they would want to keep things simple. Cloning beef cattle could be a disaster if the public rejects the product. Other countries have embraced cloning already. China opened a giant cloning facility despite strong concerns in 2016, and Korea is cloning pets. With our Asian neighbours so interested in cloning can Australia afford to ignore this emerging technology and be left behind? The American Red Angus magazine raised an interesting point in 2006 saying, “Owners of extremely valuable domestic livestock now carry a responsibility that their forefathers did not. They can choose to preserve the genotype of a great animal … or, literally, let it become dust.”

How will Australians react?

In 2014 we saw the effect that a lobby campaign can have on the Australian beef market. When Animals Australia partnered with the ABC’s Four Corners to produce a special on live exports to Indonesia the effects of the public’s outrage were felt for quite some time.

Risks and rewards

Emotions aside, cloning could improve birth rates and herd quality for Australian farmers. Reinclonation Managing Director, Steve Daly, says that cloned animals have been in our food chain for two decades already. Cloning will make it possible to replace valuable animals that are lost unexpectedly. The attraction of this kind of security may ultimately outweigh the risks in public perception for Australia’s top producers.

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