Proponents of livestock cloning see it benefiting consumers, producers, animals and the environment.

"The consumer is looking for a nutritious and wholesome product provided to them in a repeatable and reliable manner and produced in a humane and ethical way," says Coover, who also owns and manages SEK Genetics Inc., a beef cattle semen distribution company. "If a consumer spends $30 on a steak dinner at a restaurant, they expect a great steak, but don't always get it."

For farmers whose livelihoods depend on selling high-quality meat and dairy products, cloning can offer a tremendous advantage, says Coover. It gives them the ability to preserve and extend proven, superior genetics. They can select and propagate the best animals — beef cattle that are fast-growing, have lean but tender meat, and are disease-resistant; dairy cows and goats that give lots of milk; and sheep that produce high-quality wool. Through cloning, it would be possible to predict the characteristics of each animal, rather than taking the chance that sexual reproduction and its gene reshuffling provide.

Coover compares the process of identifying a superior animal to spinning a giant roulette wheel. "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes you hit the jackpot." But a producer cannot tell if he's hit the jackpot with a young animal. "It's like trying to identify the school kid in the second grade who is going to grow up to solve the riddle of cancer," says Coover. "A rancher may think he has a good bull, but that bull has to sire calves, the calves have to mature and produce calves of their own, and this has to occur for several generations to know that it's not a fluke. By that time, the bull is dead and gone, and its genetics are lost to the industry." Through SCNT cloning, even deceased animals can be cloned if a tissue sample is preserved in life or within a short time after death.

Cloning has the potential to improve the welfare of farm animals by eliminating pain and suffering from disease. "From time to time, in nature, you find a naturally disease-resistant animal," says Rudenko. "You can expand that genome through cloning, and then breed that resistance into the overall population and help eliminate major diseases in livestock."

Cloning can reduce the number of unwanted animals, such as veal calves, says Ray Page, chief scientific officer and biomedical engineer at Cyagra, a livestock cloning company. Veal calves are commonly surplus male offspring from dairy cows. Since the males don't produce milk, they are not as useful to the dairy industry and are turned into veal calves. Cloning can ensure the creation of more female offspring for dairy production.

An environmental benefit could result from cloning grass-fed instead of grain-fed animals. Grain-fed animals are known to be better tasting and more tender, but once in a while, a high-quality grass-fed animal comes along. "If we can move our cattle-raising from a grain economy to a grass-fed economy, we can make food more efficiently and there are benefits to us as a society," says John Matheson, a toxicologist and environmentalist who serves as a senior regulatory review scientist for biotechnology in CVM. Grass is a soil-building crop. In addition to reducing erosion, grass does not need the quantities of fertilizers and pesticides required by grain. And because forage is cheaper than grain, production savings can be passed on to consumers.

"Cloning can help spread the best genetics over larger populations of animals," says Stice. When farm animals are cloned, genetic diversity may be reduced, but cloning can also be a tool to preserve rare genetics in livestock and, potentially, wild animals. Stice encourages zoos and wildlife refuges to preserve the tissue of endangered species in the hopes that technology in the theoretical stage today can be developed to regenerate these species in the future.

Cloning Concerns and the FDA's Role

While cloning proponents see enormous capabilities for the technology, cloning critics have concerns on a number of levels. Social, ethical and religious convictions all weigh in to make people wary of cloning. Some find it hard to separate animal cloning from human cloning. But cloning scientists view animal cloning on a continuum of reproductive technology. Improving breeding practices in the hopes that offspring will be improved has been going on for thousands of years. Arab chieftains were using artificial insemination in horse breeding as early as the 14th century, according to historians.

"There's always been a fear of new technology," says Matheson, who notes that cloning animals is not a precursor to cloning humans. "We already know more about reproduction in humans than in any other species, so there's no learning curve to be gained in cloning cows."

Matheson explains that the FDA's role is to look at the safety aspects of cloning based on the best available science. The FDA needs to answer an important question to help it develop its regulatory approach to animal cloning, he says. "Is this risky new technology that endangers animals and our food supply, or is this just another small step in the evolution of food production technology?" To answer this question, the FDA is gathering more data.

The FDA commissioned the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to identify and prioritize any safety concerns that bioengineered and cloned animals might present to food, animals and the environment.

After consulting with pioneers in the field of cloning and holding a public workshop, the NAS published its report, Animal Biotechnology: Science-Based Concerns, in August 2002. According to the report, "There is no current evidence that food products derived from adult somatic cell clones or their progeny present a food safety concern." The report recommends collecting additional information about food composition to confirm that these food products are, in fact, safe. Food should be analyzed for such essential ingredients as amino acids, vitamins and minerals and to make sure cloned animal products don't differ from those of normal animals in ways that might affect human health.

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FDA is A United States government body that oversees medical devices, including contact lenses, intraocular lenses, excimer lasers and eyedrops. In the US, these products must be approved by the FDA before they can be marketed.