Fancy a cloned steak? Blink investigates how and why animals are cloned and asks the experts if we really know what is on our plates.

A-Z: C for Cloning

Cloning allows us to create a copy  of a living thing from one of its cells.

It aims to improve  the quality of animals used for breeding.

Six out of ten Europeans  would not eat food produced from clones.

They're reproducing animals,  not humans or robots.

Let's investigate  from the clones to our plates.

In theory, to produce a calf,  a cow must be impregnated by a bull.

Marguerite, for example,  was conceived at the INRA,

the French National Institute  for Agricultural Research.

It took place in this machine, in the world  of all things tiny. I'll show you.

Let's take two cows:  Burger and Cheese.

To clone Burger,  a cow with very special qualities,

we first have to get all the information  about its makeup.

This is found in the genes,  in a cell's nucleus.

We also need a reproductive cell:  one of Cheese's eggs.

The nucleus is removed  from Cheese's egg

and then Cheese's egg is fused  to the cell from Burger

The new cell starts to divide all by itself.  It's now an embryo.

When it is sufficiently developed,  it is placed inside Cheese.

Several months later, a calf is born.  It's Burger No 2 and not Cheese Burger.

In Europe, the cloning of farm animals  takes place in less than 10 laboratories.

The food industry is interested  in the research

that would allow it to pick  the animals with the best genes:

Animals which produce more milk  or top-quality meat.

They could be copied  to create better livestock.

The idea is to create exemplary  cloned parents, like our Burger No 2,

which will only be bred  with non-cloned animals.

There's no way  we'd eat the cloned animals.

The goal is to produce  the best livestock.

The future generations are ready  for consumption.

But how do we distinguish  a clone from an original?

The quantities of protein and fat  are the same.

The quality of the fat content  is the same.

So in terms of product quality,  there's no difference.

The US has therefore given the go-ahead  for the consumption of cloned animals.

The US Food and Drug Administration  thinks there's no risk in eating clones.

Stop! You're not allowed to clone me.  I'm not an animal.

As for the Europeans,  they seem more cautious.

It's not harmful,  there's no point in banning it

or saying it will cause problems  for consumers, as it won't.

So in the EU, eating cloned food  isn't recommended but not banned either.

The EP wants these products  to be traceable and clearly labelled.

The aim is to let us choose whether  to eat them or not, but it's not that simple.

Cloned animals will unlikely end up  at the butcher's, but their little ones might.

In practice, it's possible to trace clones  and even their descendants.

In theory, it's possible to trace  the second, third and fourth generations

but in practice it's much more difficult,  so better forget about that.

The EU doesn't produce  any cloned steak.

But it imports thousands of tons of meat  from the US, Canada and Argentina.

In these countries there is no traceability  system for the young of cloned animals.

But remember,  cloning humans is strictly prohibited.