Cloning...again?

Question

I already asked this, but the answers I recieved weren't satisfying enough.

Are there any economic benefits to cloning (animals)

Considering that it takes around 15,000 dollars to clone a cow

Answer 1

Sokia, There is no economic benefit to cloning at this time.  Cloning is in the research stage. It may turn out to be very economically valuable or it may not. That is the way research goes, a few years ago embryo transfer was very expensive and wasn't economically advantageous. Now it is carried out as standard procedure. We will just have to wait to see if cloning pays off in the long run.

Answer 2

Not that I know of.

Humans will always be spending their money to prove who can clone the most. It's just like the race to the Moon.

Answer 3

Benefits from cloning is a difficult question to answer, since that is open to personal ideas of what a "benefit" is.

Some people may see doing cloning research, and being able to take a huge tax write off as a benefit.  For others the only benefit will be if the animal actually puts money in the pocketbook.

I want to address something mentioned by one of your other posters however.  It is already illegal (per the laws laid down by the horse racing industry) to clone race horses.  Indeed Thouroghbred mares may ONLY bed bred by live cover, and not A.I., or with another mares eggs, if you want the resulting foal to be allowed to race.  No clones, no A.I., no embrio trasfers, ect.  

There has been a cloned racing mule created already.  The clone mule is named Idaho Gem.  He has won some races, but not proven to be signifigantly better than any other racing mule bred naturally.

Here's a link to Idaho Gem:

http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/article...

Cloned animals are not going to be sold for food.  Cloned animals are going to be used to breed to other cloned animals.  They hope to be able to signifigantly and rapidly improve certain desired traits in livestock that way.

So for dairy cows it would be that the offspring of the cloned cow and cloned bull would ALL produce more milk, on less fed, and have higher disease resistance.

Cloned beef cattle, they would probably be looking for cattle that tolerate the high corn diets, and put on weight/muscle quickly.  

Of course eventually the cost of cloning will come down, and they will simply be able to clone entire herds all the same.

Cloning has the potential for short term financial profitability, since the resulting animals with probably produce more/higher quality/less disease/less feed needed, ect.

The problem is cloning is a dangerous dead end.  It missleads people to believe that bigger, better, fast, ect animals can be bred at reduced cost.  What people fail (repetedly) to take into account is that all the animals will be genetically identical.  WHEN a disease hits the animals it will kill them 100%.  "When" is the correct word...not "if," but rather "when" a disease hits.  A disease will happen, no question about it.  When it does whatever the breed of livestock it will all have exactly the same immunities.  That will allow a disease to be a 100% killer.

Eating a cloned animal (or it's offspring) in itself is not dangerous.  The flesh is the same as all the other naturally concieved livestock.  However as far as I'm concerned it is NOT an industry to support.  The possibility of catastrophic failure is far too great.  Can you imagine what kind of tailspin it would send any country into if an entire segment (like all dairy cows) suddenly died?

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming ove 20 years

Answer 4

Well, if you had a really good race horse, you'd try to breed it to get other good race horses, but if you could clone it, chances are really good that you'd have another good race horse.

Mules (cross breed between horses and donkeys) are sterile.  They cannot breed.  They do race mules.  If you get a good racing mule, you can't breed it to get another good racing mule.  But they have cloned mules for this very purpose.

The costs of cloning do not make it cost effective to clone them for meat, etc. (which is what I think you are asking).

Answer 5

there could be when/if the price goes down. That's how we get the seedless clementine and watermelon trees. and those special kind of apples (like honeycrisps) they clone them (they call it grafting). if you breeded a cow that was very very valuable (good beef or milk or something) you would want to clone it so the characteristics are exactly the same. i still dont think you are going to get 15000 dollars worth of goods out of a single cow, though.