ISIS Report 16/03/11
Cloned Meat & Milk Coming
Be Very Afraid
Cloning by nuclear transplant is completely
different from cloning by splitting embryos, and is closely associated with
genetic modification of livestock to produce drugs in their milk; in
deregulating cloned meat and milk, the European Commission will be approving
the sale of highly unethical and unsafe products that are also illegal Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
Please circulate widely and forward to
your political representatives
Cloned meat and milk to be unregulated
Milk and meat from ‘cloned’ animals’ offspring
could soon be on sale without any labels, the European consumer group BEUC
warns [1]. The European Commission (EC) is threatening to force through the proposal
backed by the British Government.
It is currently illegal
to sell meat or milk from cloned animals or their offspring in the UK; and anyone wishing to do so must apply for permission from the Food Standards Agency.
The EC wants to
allow food from the offspring of clones into the market without any labels or
the need for approval; but opposes the sale of food from clones themselves. The
UK government has no objection to selling meat and milk from clones.
The EC argues
that any ban on food from clone offspring risks triggering a trade war with the
US, where most cloning is done. It says that as the US does not have an official tracing system to identify which animals are the offspring of
clones, it would be impossible to label the resulting food.
There are
currently just over 100 offspring of cloned animals on British farms, but this
will rise dramatically if the EC gets its way. The proposal is backed by
Caroline Spelman, UK Secretary of State for the Department for Enivironment,
Food and Rural Affairs.
According to
BEUC, an overwhelming majority of EU consumers do not want cloning to be used
for food production purposes. Some 84 per cent are concerned about the
long-term health and safety impacts.
The first clone
offspring calf, Dundee Paradise, was born on a farm in Shropshire, UK, in 2006. She and her siblings have produced more than 100 offspring; though most of these Holstein milking cows are still too young to produce milk.
All clones are not equal
There is a history of obfuscation over the
precise nature of ‘cloning’ that began with the US Food and Drugs Administration
(FDA) [2] (Is FDA
Promoting or Regulating Cloned Meat and Milk? SiS 33). All clones
are not equal. Very few people would object to cloning by splitting the embryo
at the two-cell or four-cell stage when the separated cells would each develop
into an embryo, resulting in twins or quadruplets not dissimilar from those
that would naturally arise from time to time.
At issue is
cloning by nuclear transplant (NT), an entirely different procedure in which the nucleus of a cell from an adult animal or developing
embryo is transferred into a mature egg that had its original nucleus removed. The reconstituted eggs are then activated to develop and the
resultant embryos implanted in the uterus of surrogate mothers hormonally
treated to receive them and carry them to term. Proponents
and regulators alike have created the impression that NT cloning is simply the
latest development in a “continuum” of assisted reproduction technologies
beginning with artificial insemination, multiple
ovulation/embryo transfer, in vitro fertilization, embryo
cryopreservation, cloning by splitting embryos, and since the 1980s, by nuclear
transfer [2].
After a notional
public consultation, the FDA issued its guidance, which concluded that [3]:
“Meat and milk from clones of cattle, swine, and goats, and the offspring of
clones of any species traditionally consumed as food, are as safe to eat as
food from conventionally bred animals.”
However, the
“voluntary moratorium” that was in place on cloned meat and milk remained in
place at the behest of the US Department of Agriculture, though the moratorium
on meat and milk from offspring of clones was lifted. So, as far as the US is concerned, there is effectively total deregulation on the sale of cloned meat and
milk.
NT cloning does not produce
identical copies
Why clone by NT? The procedure allows the
rapid duplication of an ‘elite’ animal, in contrast to the conventional lengthy
process of reproduction that never produces identical copies in any
case. Unfortunately, duplication by NT is far from identical.
First, cells
accumulate mutations in the course of development so each cell in an organism
has the potential to have a genome (totality of genetic material in the nucleus)
that’s different substantially from the original germline genome the organism
inherited from its parents, as well as to be different from other cells in the
organism [4] (Death Sentence on
Cloning, SiS 19). The recent practice of cloning from cultured cells
(both stem cells and other types of cells) makes it even less likely to achieve
identical copies [5] (Unacceptable Death Rates End
Cloning Trials in New Zealand, SiS 50), as cultured cells
accumulate both mutations and chromosomal abnormalities at much higher rates.
Mutations and chromosomal abnormalities in the donor nuclei may account for the
high failure rates of cloned embryos, quite apart from the generally recognized
errors/failures of ‘reprogrammable’ initiated by the egg cytoplasm, which
removes epigenetic marks in the DNA of the donor nucleus and resets it to the ‘totipotent
state’, that has the ability to give rise to all cells in the developing
embryo.
Second, a
substantial part of the individual animal’s genetic inheritance is in the
mitochondria (little powerhouses of the cell), which is not transferred
with the nucleus, but is contributed by the recipient egg. This potentially
introduces incompatibility between mitochondrial and nuclear genetic material
that may also contribute to the high rates of abnormalities and deaths among
clones. Again, this aspect has not been considered or investigated by
proponents and practitioners. NT is therefore not strictly cloning; and
it is illegal to claim it as such for commercial release [6] (‘Cloned’ Food
Animals Not True Clones, SiS 48).
NT cloning and genetic modification go
together
Another major reason for NT cloning is to
facilitate the creation of genetically modified (GM) animals for the food and
especially pharmaceutical industries, a dream that has motivated NT cloning in
the first place (see Chapter 11 in [7] Genetic Engineering Dream or Nightmare,
ISIS publication). And indeed, the close association between NT cloning and GM
continues [4] [8] (Cloned BSE-Free Cows,
Not Safe Nor Proper Science. SiS 33). The ability to clone a genetically modified animal by NT greatly
speeds up the production of an ‘elite herd’ that would guarantee an
inexhaustible supply of “super milk”, or “super drugs” in its milk, turning the
animals into living pharmaceutical factories. Unfortunately, that dream soon
turned into a nightmare of deaths and “gallery of horrors” in deformed animals
that led Ian Wilmut, the pioneer who created the first NT cloned sheep, Dolly, to
pass the death sentence on NT animal cloning after 6 years [4]; the company
involved, PPL Therapeutics, collapsed at the same time [9] (Animal Pharm Folds, SiS 19).
However, the New
Zealand Government agency AgResearch has continued with the endeavour. But it
too, announced an ‘end’ to cloning trials in February 2011 from “unacceptable
death rates” [5]. The NT technology has hardly improved since 2003 when Wilmut
abandoned it.
AgResearch said
it will continue to develop transgenic animals using [5] “new technology” with embryonic
stem cells “unlikely to cause the same death rates as cloning” in order to
produce valuable pharmaceuticals. Continuing with developing GM animals almost
certainly means continuing with NT cloning, particularly as new ways of turning
ordinary cells into stem cells seem to promise better and better cells that
need only minimum reprogramming to the totipotent state [10].
Grave dangers from deregulation
Deregulation effectively condones the
practice of NT cloning that the vast majority of the public and scientists find
unacceptable in the animal suffering caused. Worse, it is clear that the
practice is continuing solely in the hope of creating herds of transgenic
animals, another procedure that’s also highly inefficient as well as dangerous.
Hence NT cloning effectively combines the harmful consequences of both NT and
GM on animal welfare and health hazards to consumers. And deregulating cloning
may mean deregulating GM at the same time.
The potential source of health
hazards from NT cloning that has been investigated is the failure of
‘epigenetic reprogramming’, in which the egg cytoplasm initiates a series of
processes to erase epigenetic marks on the DNA and to make the egg ‘totipotent’,
in being able to give rise to all the cells in the developing embryo. A decade
of investigation has revealed a handful of genes required for totipotency, but
yielded no major insight into how abnormalities and deaths of clones could be
avoided [10]. Even clones that survive to adulthood, such as Dolly, suffer from
more subtle defects that cause illnesses and premature deaths later in life [4].
The heritability of epigenetic/reprogramming defects of clones has yet to be
studied. So it is rather astonishing for the USDA [3] and the European
Commission to assume meat and milk from offpring of clones are safe for the
food market.
The other defects arising from
mutations and chromosomal rearrangements in somatic cells and cultured cells
are uncontrollable and unpredictable, as are those due to mismatch between
mitochondrial and nuclear genomes (see above). These have not been investigated
at all.
The health and environmental
hazards of GM animals are legion, as detailed in our submission to US FDA on
the safety of foods derived from transgenic animals [11] (GM Food Animals Coming, SiS
32). Foods derived from GM animals are likely to be contaminated by potent
vaccines, immune regulators and growth hormones as well as nucleic acids,
viruses, and bacteria that have the potential to create pathogens and to
trigger cancer. Among the categories of transgenic animals are those with
“non-heritable” modifications that could well be deregulated or not considered
transgenic animals. Meat and milk from these transgenic animals are even more
hazardous than those with heritable modifications. What guarantee can the
EC and the UK Government provide to ensure that transgenic meat and milk will
not be sold in the market as unregulated clone offspring produce? For
example, a clone of a GM animal that has failed to express the required drug
could be regarded as a simple clone and non-GM. So unwittingly, the public
could be eating failed transgenic experimental animals.
To conclude
The deregulation of meat and milk from
clone offspring should be strenuously opposed for being highly unethical and
unsafe. Worst of all, in case of harm, it would be impossible to identify the
source, provide appropriate remedy, and seek proper redress.
References
1.
“Clone food could be sold without warning labels
as Eurocrats force change in the law”, Sean Poulter, Day Mail, 4 March
2010, http://bit.ly/gK8pFN
2.
Ho MW and Cummins J. Is FDA promoting or
regulating cloned meat and milk? Science in Society 33,24-27,
2007.
3.
“USA – eating cloned meat and drinking cloned
milk”, Meat Trade News Daily, 7 August 2010, http://www.meattradenewsdaily.co.uk/news/050810/usa___eating_cloned_meat_and_drinking_cloned_milk_.aspx
4.
Ho MW and Cummins J. Death sentence on cloning. Science in Society 19,
46-47, 2003.to
5.
Ho MW. Unacceptable death rates end cloning
trials in New Zealand. Science in Society 50
(to appear).
6.
Cummins J and Ho MW. ‘Cloned’ food anismals not
true clones. Science in
Society 48, 48-50, 2010.
7.
Ho MW. Genetic Engineering Dream of
Nightmare? The Brave New World of Bad Science and Big Business, Third World
Network, Gateway Books, MacMillan, Continuum, Penang, Malaysia, Bath, UK,
Dublin, Ireland, New York, USA, 1998, 1999, 2007 (reprint with extended
Introduction). http://www.i-sis.org.uk/genet.php
8.
Ho MW and Cummins J. Cloned BSE-Free cows, not
safe nor proper science. Science
in Society 33, 28-31, 2007.
9.
Ho MW. Animal pharm folds. Science in Society 19,
43, 2003.
10. Oback B. Cloning from stem cells: different lineages, different
species, same story. Reproduction, Fertility and Development 2009, 21,
83-94.
11. Cummins J and Ho MW. GM food animals coming.
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