ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: Advances in Animal Biotechnology for Food Safety and Nutrition: Cloning in the U.S. Dairy Industry
Author: Butler Leslie, Wolf Marianne
ADVANCES IN ANIMAL BIOTECHNOLOGY FOR FOOD SAFETY AND NUTRITION: CLONING IN THE U.S. DAIRY INDUSTRY Authors: Leslie (Bees) Butler, University of California, Davis, USA, and Marianne McGarry Wolf, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, USA While the main focus of the economics of agricultural biotechnology has been on improvements and enhancements to plants, the genetic engineering of animals is now poised to break into the biotechnology world. The development of genetic engineering in animals is now showing potential for enhancing human health, improving food production and quality, mitigating environmental problems, optimizing animal health and welfare and producing high-value industrial products for medical and human health uses. This paper outlines the path to, and some of the economic impacts that genetic engineering (cloning) can, and probably will have, on the dairy industry in the future. We look at the economic feasibility of adopting these new reproductive technologies at the farm level, at the national level, and the factors that may/will influence consumer and market acceptance. While the potential for cloning animals has been realized for at least the last 25 years (Van Vleck, 1981, Nicholas and Smith, 1983, Seidel, 1983), it is only recently that sufficient advances have been made to allow the technology to advance to a stage where it is possible that widespread commercial applications of cloning may become a reality in the next few years. But much has yet to be accomplished before the farming of cloned animals and their offspring become as familiar as genetically modified plants are today because there are still a number of technological difficulties and problems to overcome. However, there are also a number of technologies being developed to overcome these problems. Cloning is one of a number of assisted reproductive technologies, many of which are in various stages of development, that are technological solutions to problems associated with the declining reproductive efficiency of dairy cattle and declining genetic diversity while simultaneously enhancing food production, quality and nutrition, and improved genetic superiority of dairy cattle. The further development of transgenics could enhance each of these functions and also increase the ability to produce specialized bio-products for use in medicine, pharmaceuticals and many other industries. Contact author: Leslie Butler (ljbutler@ucdavis.edu)
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