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.

• From: Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs
• Published: 11 April 2012

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.

Published 11 April 2012