What are the concerns with animal cloning?
While cheaper, ‘healthier’ food may sound like a good thing, the important question to ask is, how should it be accomplished? The answer is not by cloning animals. Animal cloning raises concerns on numerous levels and there is simply no need to clone animals for food. The remarkable inefficiency of cloning poses serious threats to animal welfare, as does engineering these animals for ever more intensive production, which is already associated with great animal cruelty and suffering. The poor health of cloned animals, combined with the instability and unpredictability of the genetic manipulations, leads to important concerns about the safety of consuming food products from cloned animals. The effects of creating uniform herds of animals, and the resulting loss of biodiversity, have significant implications for the environment and the ability of cloned herds to withstand diseases. In addition, the majority of Americans have strong ethical objections to cloning animals, and are concerned
