Independent report

FAWC advice on the cloning of farm animals

Farm Animal Welfare Committee update on the evidence and animal welfare issues surrounding the cloning of farm animals.

Documents

FAWC advice on the cloning of farm animals

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Details

Cloning is not currently carried out in the UK, other than in research, so the impact on commercial farm species is not a current issue.

Following a review of the current evidence FAWC concluded that:

  • the operations involved with ovum pickup should be carefully monitored
  • late gestational losses, dystocia and large offspring are likely to compromise the welfare of surrogate dams
  • due to low efficiency of cloning a high number of surrogate dams suffer pregnancy failure
  • the welfare of a significant proportion of clones themselves is adversely affected

You can read more about the work of the Farm Animal Welfare Committee.

Updates to this page

Published 11 April 2012

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