Lawsuit Over Quarter Horse's Clone May Redefine Animal Breeding

schwit1 sends this report from the LA Times: "Lynx Melody Too, a clone of a renowned quarter horse, is at the center of a lawsuit that could change the world of animal breeding and competition. Texas horse breeder Jason Abraham and veterinarian Gregg Veneklasen sued the American Quarter Horse Assn., claiming that Lynx Melody Too should be allowed to register as an official quarter horse. A Texas jury decided in their favor in 2013, but a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling in January, saying there was 'insufficient' evidence of wrongdoing by the association.

The suit is among the first to deal with the status of clones in breeding and competition, and its outcome could impact a number of fields, including thoroughbred horse racing and dog breeding. The quarter horse association is adamant that clones and their offspring have no place in its registry. "It's what AQHA was founded on — tracking and preserving the pedigrees of these American quarter horses," said Tom Persechino, executive director of marketing for the association. "When a person buys an American quarter horse, they want to know that my quarter horse has the blood of these horses running through it, not copies of it."

Comments

Weak, sentimental, nonsense.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"they want to know that my quarter horse has the blood of these horses running through it, not copies of it"

Unless American quarter horses are sinister equine vampires of some kind, I'm fairly sure that no quarter horse has the blood of any other quarter horse, let alone multiple quarter horses, running through it. That's just not this 'heredity' stuff works.

Re:Weak, sentimental, nonsense.

[khchung]

In this case wouldn't the clone be more valuable, since it actually has the blood of an other quarter horse running through it?

Obviously, logical thinking is unacceptable when one's income is threatened by it.

Re:Weak, sentimental, nonsense.

[ShanghaiBill]

Obviously, logical thinking is unacceptable when one's income is threatened by it.

Well, that is the real issue. Cloning could totally disrupt horse breeding. Why bother with lots of trial and error, when you can just clone a hundred copies of Secretariat? Barriers to entry would be far lower, stud fees would disappear, and horse racing attendance may drop from lack of interest in watching identical horses compete. For thoroughbreds, not only is cloning banned, but they don't even allow artificial insemination or embryo transfer. The whole industry is predicated on artificial scarcity.

of course they are worried

[Anonymous Coward]

If they can clone 1/4 horse today, it won't be long until they can clone an entire horse.

Clone != exact copy

[goombah99]

As we saw with Dolly the Sheep, a clone is not an exact copy of an animal. It may contain nearly all the DNA information but first this DNA may be damaged (if nothing else, shortened telomers) and second it may not contain all the exact matrilineal content. This include both midocondral DNA as well as an epigenetic controls the mother's cell line places on its DNA. It is possible someone could have take those into account and made the best possible approximation to those. But it also possible that the crucial developmental characteristics of a quarter horse are in those missing elements.

Thus at a minimum the Quarter horse association could reasonably say that unless the donor cell line is from a quarter horse, it is not a quarter horse. It would also be someone reasonable to say that even with that precaution the shortened telomers mean this is a genetically damaged quarter horse and they want to exclude it from breeding with genetically healthy quarter horses.