Really? Since humans have started breeding animals for their own ends I'm not so sure the mortality rate hasn't been that low. Of course I'm speculating here (as are you for that matter) we can't possibly know how many died in the early days of farming. It started before recorded history after all. So I suppose your hyperbole could be accurate.

If in the beginings of farming and cattle breeding a 1/3 of all cattle died before reaching maturity I doubt we would have continued farming them because people would have starved to death, remember that number doesnt include the ones that were born dead or failed to be carried full term…. I used to live on a farm with beef cattle if you lost one in a hundred calves born alive you'd consider yourself unlucky.

The whole point of the cloning is to take cattle that have a really good dead carcass and then clone it to breed with those desirable genetic characteristics but can't be done naturally as it is already dead.

well clearly it was possible to produce that animal in the first place by the traditional method or am I missing something?

If it breeds deformed or weak cattle farmers will not use it.

is the whole world unable to read, when they find that perfect specimen they clone it, a 1/3 of the clones that get across the death rate before birth will die young, before they get a few healthy breeding stock. This rate will no doubt reduce as the technology improves but is the huge sufferring of those that didnt make it worth it when the original animal was made the traditional way and so can many more, its just a short cut in which loads of animals suffer.

I also was born on a beef farm and my dad and brother still have lots of beef cattle. Saying if 1 out of 1 hundred calves die would be unlucky is a funny way to look at it. My dad is not very happy when any of his calves die but I would say 1 in a 100 for deaths is low.

The current way of selecting and breeding cattle is bad by the same standards as calves produced can be too big or difficult to calve.

Personally I have no problems with cloning as I am quiet happy to eat meat so it would be a bit hypocritical. If it produces rubbish gene stock then why would anybody use it? I would be worried that the low genetic diversity in clones but then current breeds are not so genetically diverse. It will be worse when Monsanto genetically alter the genes, patent it and all the farmers have to pay to use their "genes" or use specific drugs to keep them alive.

My dad is not very happy when any of his calves die but I would say 1 in a 100 for deaths is low.

Depends on the animals for the Herefords we kept it wouldnt be unlikely for some of the bigger breeds as you say problems occur with calves being too big, especially with dairyxbeef cattle.

If it produces rubbish gene stock then why would anybody use it?

as I keep saying but no one seems to grasp its the wastage to get that 1 good animal thats the problem.

I would be worried that the low genetic diversity in clones but then current breeds are not so genetically diverse. It will be worse when Monsanto genetically alter the genes, patent it and all the farmers have to pay to use their "genes" or use specific drugs to keep them alive.

true

The death risk of calves less than 6 months of age in 2002 was 1.76% in Inverness, 5.83% in Cheshire and 4.8% in Norfolk

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17408994

not quite a third!

I heard a very interesting R4 program called "The Report" about this last night. Well worth a listen.

I think that there is a danger of this thread confusing cloning with gene manipulation. The aim of cloning, as GEDA pointed out, is to be able to recreate, many times over, a single prize winning beast. In this way when breeders produce a particularly high quality beast that single animal can be recreated many times over. The aim of this is to produce many beasts of the highest quality for consumption, not for them to be used in turn for further breading.

It was notable that the R4 program did not mention at all any issues relating to animal welfare caused by deformities. Given that it did not shy away from any of the other tough questions needed to be asked was this a journalistic failure or was it because there simply is not a problem of the scale suggested by a_a?

a_a, do you have proof that this practice does cause the animal welfare issues you suggest are likely or are you just jumping to conclusions based on the type of generic cloning info available you've quoted from the web? I'm not having a go, I'm genuinely interested to know. In this thread you've yet to back up these suggestion with hard facts or direct examples.

If in the beginings of farming and cattle breeding a 1/3 of all cattle died before reaching maturity I doubt we would have continued farming them because people would have starved to death, remember that number doesnt include the ones that were born dead or failed to be carried full term….

Oh I don't know. In the beginnings people didn't eat the same quantity of meat as we do now so higher death rates would be more acceptable. Maybe cattle were a luxury item back then, maybe there primary diet was vegetable, or game meat based. Who knows. Even so if 66% of their cattle did survive they'd hardly starve to death.

I used to live on a farm with beef cattle if you lost one in a hundred calves born alive you'd consider yourself unlucky.

Well, it's obvious you're coming at this from a more knowledgable perspective about the industry than me, naver having been involved in it.

not quite a third!

True, but that only goes back to 2002! Not exactly representative of the thousands of years that we have been messing around with cows is it?!

I think that there is a danger of this thread confusing cloning with gene manipulation. The aim of cloning, as GEDA pointed out, is to be able to recreate, many times over, a single prize winning beast. In this way when breeders produce a particularly high quality beast that single animal can be recreated many times over. The aim of this is to produce many beasts of the highest quality for consumption, not for them to be used in turn for further breading.

Ah, okay. I'm comparing apples with oranges then. My mistake.

So, this begs the question why are the death and deformity rates so high and can they be reduced? Clones should be genetically identical to their parent so why is it that these mutations are occuring? Could it be a similar mechanism to that which causes cancerous cells to mutate? If so there may well be interesting medical aspects to learn from this too. Which I suppose puts a whole new ethical/moral spin on it!

Clones should be genetically identical to their parent so why is it that these mutations are occuring?

Cloning afaik takes the cell nucelus and propogates it. There's more to DNA than just the cell nucleus however (mitochindrial DNA) and there's also more to an individual than just the DNA. DNA is the design, but the implementation can vary on a host of factors.

Seems to me there's plenty of room for complex and as yet unknown interactions between nuclear DNA, mitochondrial DNA and the developing environment.

Hi Peyote, the other part of my point is that I simply do not believe that the death and abnormality rate for calves produced by these cloning methods is anything like what a_a has suggested. I too am from a farming background and a death/deformity rate of anything like 1/3rd would be horrific and no farmer would want to be involved in it. The farmer in Scotland had a herd of 92 healthy heifers in his fields, no suggestions of high death rates or deformities. I suspect that a_a is predisposed to assume the worst of farmers and the farming industry and that a_a's arguments, whilst appearing based in fact, are in fact no more than conjecture.

Unless a_a can provide direct proof that there is actually a problem with this method of food production I'll continue to assume that a_a has put the urge to get in a froth about animal rights ahead of the facts. And please don't assume that I don't care about animal rights, I do.

I was re-reading what I'd first written and just wanted to clarify one point. I said that the clones were

not… …to be used in turn for further breading.

. I should not have suggested that they would never be used to breed from as this will definitely happen. However, I was trying to distinguish between the use of breeding to produce a better beast vs the reproduction of a single type of very high quality beast. From what I've hard it seems that the emphasis with the current use of cloning in beef is for the mass reproduction of high quality beasts.

have a look at this

FEDERATION OF VETERINARIANS OF EUROPE

At present
there are serious prenatal losses of cloned embryos and fetuses, especially in cattle and
other ruminants. Losses are still considerable during the neonatal period and serious
welfare problems can still occur up to 3?6 months. These losses will impact on the welfare
of the surrogate dam when there is a high incidence of dystocia and Caesarean section due
to ‘Large Offspring Syndrome’ in ruminants.

yep your right I got myself into a froth about nothing!!!

yum yum who's for corned beef fritters?

My understanding is that they clone top quality cattle and make the clones available for breeding. Essentially they are making more high quality breeding stock available at a lower price. So the overall quality of cattle is improved i.e. more and better milk and meat.

Arguably, this speeding up of the selection process reduces diversity in the gene-pool and makes the cattle population more vulnerable to extinctions from disease. But that's always the balance with any specialisation, whether it's evolutionary pressure, selective breeding, clones or whatever.

The farmer in Scotland had a herd of 92 healthy heifers in his fields, no suggestions of high death rates or deformities

you really dont get it do you…………..I give up

sorry cant leave it!!!

Unless a_a can provide direct proof that there is actually a problem with this method of food production I'll continue to assume that a_a has put the urge to get in a froth about animal rights ahead of the facts

FEDERATION OF VETERINARIANS OF EUROPE

At present
there are serious prenatal losses of cloned embryos and fetuses, especially in cattle and
other ruminants. Losses are still considerable during the neonatal period and serious
welfare problems can still occur up to 3?6 months. These losses will impact on the welfare
of the surrogate dam when there is a high incidence of dystocia and Caesarean section due
to ‘Large Offspring Syndrome’ in ruminants.

any response?

tyres?