EU Parliament Votes To Ban Cloning of Farm Animals

sciencehabit writes: The European Parliament today voted to ban the cloning of all farm animals as well as the sale of cloned livestock, their offspring, and products derived from them. The measure, which passed by a large margin, goes beyond a directive proposed by the European Commission in 2013, which would have implemented a provisional ban on the cloning of just five species: cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, and horses. The supporters of the ban cited animal welfare concerns, claiming that only a small percentage of cloned offspring survive to term, and many die shortly after birth. The ban does not cover cloning for research purposes, nor does it prevent efforts to clone endangered species.

Comments

What about pets?

[cayenne8]

I think many folks would like to be able to clone a lost dog that was a dear pet.

Is the govt going to tell us we can do that? WTF did they get the rights to tell us we can't have a clone of our pets?

Re:What about pets?

[Fire_Wraith]

Most people also have a crazy/wrong idea about what cloning is. It's not going to give you a carbon copy of your pet, all it gives you is an identical twin. I also seem to recall hearing that with some animals a twin won't even look the same due to things like color pattern being influenced by its time in the womb, but I could be completely off in left field with that. Regardless, you're just getting another pet with the same DNA makeup.

And really, so much of the anti-cloning hysteria comes from that sort of wrong-headed thinking, that's there's something horribly unnatural or mad-science-y about cloning, when nature makes clones all the time - it just doesn't time-shift them.

Re:What about pets?

[Daniel_Staal]

Most people also have a crazy/wrong idea about what cloning is. It's not going to give you a carbon copy of your pet, all it gives you is an identical twin. I also seem to recall hearing that with some animals a twin won't even look the same due to things like color pattern being influenced by its time in the womb, but I could be completely off in left field with that. Regardless, you're just getting another pet with the same DNA makeup.

You're not off in left field. A cat may not even be the same color, technically. (The first cat cloned was a calico - it's clone was grey and white, no orange; orange is randomly activated during fetal development, and in the clone never activated, by chance.) I don't know if it'll go to that extreme in dogs, but again anything that's not a solid color tends to have color patches randomly distributed during development, so clones won't have the same pattern of colors unless the breed is single-color.

Personality is even more changeable - again the example of the first cloned cat: She was much more friendly to people she didn't know than her clone-mother was. (Probably due to being handled a lot more as a very young kitten.)

Re:What about pets?

[alvinrod]

I think it has more to do with the economical aspects of using GMO and cloning technologies than anything else. They're already killing the animals for meat and some are probably not treated humanely if we're being completely honest and if we're considering Halal or Kosher meat, it's definitely not as humane as other methods.

Once you start cloning livestock, someone will find the ideal cow or pig that grows faster and tastes better than anything else. At that point, you have to have that cow or pig in order to compete or you slowly lose out to those that have a more efficient method. Small farmers can't hope to implement their own cloning programs, so they're forced to buy from a third party, much like they do with many GMO crops. For many European countries that means some of the money is being sent overseas, unless that company is spending it back locally. With the European Union and the Euro it makes it far more likely that that money gets spent somewhere like Germany or France, and while it might slowly defuse back from there, it's probably a small net loss for the smaller countries.

Since no one wants to enact some outright protectionist policies, which would likely just be met with protectionist policies in return, these countries can ban the use of the technology on ethical grounds or for safety reasons, which essentially accomplish the same thing by not allowing the more efficient competition into the market, but without being met reciprocated protectionist policies from other countries. In the long term, I expect that they'll allow for this kind of technology to be used, especially once they have a local industry capable of supplying the clones or GMO crops, but in the short term it likely wouldn't be good for the local agriculture market, which may already have trouble competing with the subsidized U.S. farmers, unless they're also getting some agriculture subsidies of their own.

It's somewhat similar to the impoverished nations that received large amounts of food aid which tends to destroy local agricultural markets, leaving the populace dependent on either importing their food or receiving handouts if they have nothing of equal value for trade. While the EU wouldn't be hit quite as badly, it would probably cause some instability in the agriculture sector, which isn't likely worth the political fallout, so they come up with a clever way of enacting protectionist policies without calling it a protectionist policy.

What's the point of cloning a pet?

[Lead Butthead]

What would be the purpose of a clone... if consciousness does not transfer?

Re:What's the point of cloning a pet?

[Daniel_Staal]

Exactly how many people do you think you could scam out of a few thousand dollars by cloning their cat or dog before they realized that? That's your purpose.

Re:What's the point of cloning a pet?

[alvinrod]

Research on humans has found that personality is somewhat heritable, so I suspect this would also be true of animals. It's already generally accepted that certain breeds express certain personality traits more so than others, so an exact replica raised in a similar environment should theoretically be similar in temperament to the previous incarnation.

Also why not do it if for no other reason than attempting to determine how well it works or to improve techniques for carrying out cloning? If someone wants to pay to advance science, why stand in their way?

Re:What's the point of cloning a pet?

[TWX]

You know, that's always bothered me in science fiction, when they duplicate people. There's an assumption on the part of the character duplicating himself that the other iterations will do what he wants them to do or will otherwise see him as a leader. The most egregious example was an episode of the modern Doctor Who series where The Master duplicated himself over nearly everyone on earth, and despite them all being him they all followed orders, when he wouldn't be inclined to follow orders of anyone, arguably even himself. It was also a bit of an issue in the second and third Matrix films, but Smith's more singular purpose seemed to be better at not having the clones fight against each other, and possibly even simply be parallel processes of the same intelligence instead of truly forked, independent processes.

The only time I've seen it done well was in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where a long-ago duplicated Riker was discovered living in an abandoned outpost, where the issues of who could and should claim what aspects of life were debated. Both Rikers were indeed individual people at that point even if they started out as one.

Re:What's the point of cloning a pet?

[SuricouRaven]

These are pets. As long as the basic behavior traits are mostly the same, the owner will just project the details.

Re:What's the point of cloning a pet?

[Daniel_Staal]

There is a research exception. So doing it to see how it works (which has been done...) or to improve techniques is allowed.

What this law really is preventing is another situation like the collapse of the banana production in the 1950's: Bananas are seedless, so are grown from cuttings - essentially clones of single plant. In the 50's, there was a disease that spread that the then-popular type of banana was very susceptible to, which almost wiped out the entire industry. The industry switched to a different variety, but it's still just a vegetative clone, ready to be hit by one disease and wiped out again. Imagine that happening to chickens or cows, wiping out their respective industries, even for a year or two. It would be chaos.

Re:What's the point of cloning a pet?

[GrooveNeedle]

You're right of course, but I wanted to add that a decent example of this was in a Michael Keaton comedy, of all places, called Multiplicity. The basic premise was he had too much to do, got a clone of himself to handle his job (architect or something), while he spent time with the wife and kids and still did some household chores.

Eventually, the original wanted more leisure time and created a second clone for the household chores. Ultimately, the architect copy became more manly (grunting, drank beer, roughhoused, deeper voice) and the household cleaner became more feminine. After a while, neither clone wanted to do the grunt work and they made a clone of a clone...which turned out to be less intelligent than the others.

Long story short, it showed how a clone (even though it had the same memories of the original up to the point of cloning) would eventually branch off and have their own experiences that shaped their needs and wants.

Re:What's the point of cloning a pet?

[Chris Mattern]

I'd never clone myself, unless terminally ill, for this exact reason. It is all but guaranteed that I'd attempt to off other myself and assume the identity.

Stuff and nonsense. A clone of you is simply an artificially produced identical twin (with an age difference). No more, no less. It is no more you than your identical twin would be.

So they banned something that doesn't exist?

[Wycliffe]

From the summary: "only a small percentage of cloned offspring survive to term" and they didn't ban it for research.
Noone is going to clone for production until they can get a large percentage of clones to survive and there is some
cost advantage. They didn't ban researching it so basically this sounds like a feel good piece of legislation that does
very little except complicate things.

the last paragraph is under-emphasized

[Trepidity]

Representatives from parliament will now negotiate with the European Council, made up of representatives from member states, on a final version of the regulation.

This makes it sound like a done deal, but it's closer to a situation where one house of the U.S. Congress has passed a law, and the other hasn't. It might pass, or might not, depending on what the other one thinks about it.

The way European politics works, moves like this require the agreement of both the European Parliament and the European Council. The European Parliament is directly elected, with representation roughly proportional to population, and its votes are a normal majority vote, like in most legislatures. The European Council is a body representing the governments of each country directly, and uses "qualified majority voting", which is a majority vote of countries (one vote per country) but with supermajority requirements on how many people those countries represent. Specifically, to pass the European Council, a proposal needs all three of: 1) a majority of countries in favor, 2) countries representing at least 74% of "voting weights" in favor (roughly proportional to population but with small countries over-weighted), and 3) countries representing at least 62% of the EU population in favor (a straight population weighting). In practice what this means is that at least 15/28 of the EU members have to support it, and the 15 in the majority have to include most of the large countries.

EU parliament vote to ban clothing of farm animals

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Yeah, I think I need more coffee...

Where is MOOOO cows when you need him?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Where is MOOOO cows when you need him?

Re:Ludism it's not just for industry anymore

[SuricouRaven]

If you want to increase yield that much, there's a very simple way: Remove the animals. The amount of land required to grow feed for a farm animal could also be used to grow a lot more food than the animal produces in meat.

Humans need some meat to be healthy. But they don't actually need very much. The developed-world diet is very high in meat simply because it's very tasty.

Like anyone wants a European clone anyway

[NotDrWho]

Fucking cow would probably want a 4-day work week and a full month of vacation leave.

Re:Like anyone wants a European clone anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

And it would STILL be 50% more productive than an American one ...

Re:Disappointing news

[pla]

Jokes aside, I seriously suspect that as the real driving force behind this ban.

Within a decade, the bulk of the meat industry could become an effectively animal-free industry generating product in vats rather than on pastures. You know that the livestock/husbandry industry has to see that as nothing short of an existential threat.

I'd love to see where the dollars came from to promote this ban. I'd put good odds that it comes from exactly the industries it supposedly regulates.

Re:pet cemetary

[Daniel_Staal]

You are very wrong. The first cloned cat wasn't even the same official color as their genetic parent - and the researchers considered their personality differences even more pronounced, largely due to how they were raised.

How cats are raised and treated makes a very big difference in their behavior. Even such things as where they were in the womb makes a big difference.

And an identical twin isn't genetically different - that's why you clarify identical vs. fraternal twin. They are very different - both in humans and in animals - but genetically if they aren't the same they aren't an identical twin.

A good idea. Think genetic diversity.

[Anonymous Coward]

For fuck sake this isn't about some Luddite scaremongering.

If all of your livestock share the same genetic makeup they will all share the same strengths.. And weaknesses. A disease could wipe out a country's entire cattle/pig/chicken/whatever population in a week.

Industrial ranching already creates the perfect storm of disease selection pressure and communicability. We pen those four legged meatbags in to the tightest, smallest possible space, stress them out, let them wallow in their own filth, feed them garbage (including the chopped up entrails of their brothers), and hope that throwing antibiotics at them keeps them alive long enough to meet slaughter maturity/weight.

Remove what little genetic diversity that already exists by cloning? Fuck me. It's a wonder we're not all vegetarians by now.

Not by choice, but by necessity.

What happens when identical twins are born?

[Applehu Akbar]

Would the family have to emigrate?

Now consider that IVF fertility technology increases the number of multiple births. Would this become illegal under the new rules?

What are they trying to solve here?

[subanark]

If it is true and there is a low expectation of survival, then it isn't very economical to clone for non-research purposes. Is this really a wide spread problem?

As much as having genetic diversity help in disease resistance, we already heavily do cloning on plants. Pick any species of apple in the super market and you will find that all the apples there are clones of each other even if they were grew in different places.