Do all GE animals pass their new traits on to their offspring?
In general, most GE animals are developed so that they will pass their new “GE” traits on to their offspring. Such traits are called heritable. The initial GE animal and all of its descendants that have inherited the GE trait are called GE animals. This guidance specifically addresses only GE animals that have heritable GE traits. In general, most GE animals contain an rDNA construct that was introduced into early embryos or cells that go on to make embryos that develop into the GE animal. These constructs are heritable because they will be in every cell of the resulting animal, including those that are responsible for making sperm and egg for the next generation. The term “GE animal” thus includes all the animals descended from the initial GE animal that have inherited the rDNA construct. This is different from the term “animal clone,” which does not include the sexually-derived offspring of animal clones. In other cases, GE animals contain rDNA constructs that are not intended to be
