Would you be OK with eating meat from cloned animals’ offspring? An inquiry into the different aspects of cloning: animal welfare, food safety and traceability.

Animal cloning

Would you be OK  with eating cloned meat?

I don't know if you can trust it or not.  -I'm against animals suffering.

I wouldn't touch it  as we don't know enough about it.

6 out of 10 Europeans don't feel  comfortable eating cloned meat.

EuroparlTV investigates food safety,  animal welfare and traceability.

yet she is the first cow  cloned in 1998 at INRA,

the French National Institute  for Agricultural Research.

Cloning is carried out with this machine.

Cloning is the reproduction of  an individual without fertilisation.

The main aim of cloning  for the agro-alimentary industry

is to reproduce elite animals,  which have been genetically selected

or to produce meat  with specific properties.

Animals are cloned  to become elite procreators

and then reproduce naturally  with other non-cloned animals.

Eating them is out of the question even if  it's almost impossible to identify them.

The quantity of protein  and fat is the same,

In terms of the quality of the products,  there's no difference.

The FDA, the American Food and Drug  Administration concludes the same.

The European Food Safety Authority  is more cautious in its comments.

It says that there is no indication that  cloned produce is less safe to consume.

The nutritional side has been enough  to go ahead with cloning in the US,

yet Europe is concerned  by the ethical side.

We met members of the Group on  Ethics at the European Commission.

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

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

Our conclusion is there  aren't any great advantages.

The few advantages there  are quite weak,

yet there are the disadvantages  like animal welfare

and the possibility of the reduction  of biodiversity.

Ethically, one proposed solution is  to better control this new technology

through a code of conduct, respecting  the welfare of the cloned animal,

as well as that of the  animal which donates the cells.

In Europe, cloning is practised  in less than 10 labs.

Here at the INRA,  they go one step further,

by monitoring the gestation period,  the postnatal period,

and the animal's welfare  in the long term.

Infrastructure was put in place,  with an adapted veterinary service,

focusing on the higher risk of poor  placenta development during gestation.

Via ultrasound and sophisticated  imaging techniques,

we look at the development  of the foetus and placenta.

If there are abnormalities, which  currently we don't know how to treat,

we do a caesarean  and terminate the pregnancy,

so that the mother cow  and the foetus do not suffer.

As for the traceability and  systematic labelling of these products,

as demanded by the EP to guarantee  freedom of choice for consumers,

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.

Though in Europe food from cloned  animals or their descendants is still rare,

it should be noted that 2.5% of sperm  used in the reproduction of our cattle

where they don't have any traceability  requirements for cloned animals.