A Compassionate World

Consumers are increasingly concerned about where their food comes from, and rightly so. Successive food scares and fears over animal welfare standards, for example, have made us hungry to know more about the origins of the food on our plate. This applies perhaps even more so to imported products. About half of the food we eat in the UK is imported. Locally produced food has become a big selling point, with supermarkets often keen to trumpet it if their meat or milk comes from Britain. The new coalition Government has thrown its weight behind honesty in the food chain, calling for ‘honest labelling’, something that is wholly supportable. The import of cloned embryos, and the subsequent way that meat and milk then slipped into our food chain, has therefore really struck a raw nerve.

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With the news that meat, as well as milk, from the offspring of cloned animals has entered the food chain in the UK, we should take a hard look at where this issue is heading. Cloning is about creating genetic carbon-copies of an animal and growing them inside surrogate mothers. It is a way of multiplying the genetics of favoured animals, most likely high yielding cows or fast growing pigs.

The serious health and welfare problems from the over-zealous use of more traditional selective breeding techniques are now well recognised. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), for example, sees genetic selection for high milk yield as “the major factor causing poor welfare” in dairy cows. Similarly, pigs bred for overly rapid growth often suffer leg, heart and lung disorders. In other words, the animals are being pushed to their physical limits and are often breaking down as a result. They are genetically selected to suffer.

The likelihood is that cloning will be used to produce multiple carbon-copies of the highest yielding cows and fastest growing pigs. It therefore threatens to accelerate the use of highly intensive genetics in farm animals, causing greater suffering to animals and perpetuating industrial farming.

This is on top of the serious animal welfare problems associated with the cloning technique itself. Most cloned embryos die during pregnancy and those that are born often suffer raised risk of mortality, problems with their heart, lungs and major organs, deformities or lowered immune systems. The suite of health and welfare issues has led the European Group on Ethics (EGE) to doubt whether cloning animals for food is ethically justified.

Cloning could also be a food quality issue. Increasingly, consumers and food companies are recognising that the way animals are bred and reared affects the quality of the food. For example, I was speaking to a farmer earlier this week adamant that keeping chickens in higher welfare conditions improved the taste of the meat. Research has shown that consumers increasingly perceive better welfare to equate to better quality food. I think we should seriously question whether the use of intensive genetics, producing food derived from cloning, is what we want to see as the future of our food.

That is why Compassion agrees with the recent vote in the European Parliament which called for a ban on the marketing of meat and dairy derived from cloning. You can help us stop ‘clone’ meat and milk becoming commonplace by signing up to our new campaign today.