The first session of the day was a discussion about the use of cloned animals for food. The topic has been simmering for years, but finally came to a head last month when the US Food and Drug Administration declared the food from cloned animals and their progeny safe, much to the consternation of some US congressmen.

The panel issued the usual assurances: no, Dolly will not be served for dinner. At about $13,000 a head, cloned animals are far too expensive to use for their meat. They’ll be used for breeding instead. Industry reps pointed to the advantages of cloning for harvesting useful genetic traits and achieving consistency in their breeding lines, but Patrick Cunningham from the University of Dublin undercut that argument by estimating that roughly 3/4 of the variation out on the feedlot is environmentally induced, not genetic.

Cunningham brought up another point that isn’t often broached. Allowing cloned animals opens the gateway to the next step: genetically engineered animals. Industry researchers are already hard at work (and have been for years) trying to create goats, for example, engineered to produce a drug in their milk. The technology is still far from perfect, and don’t look for this to become an issue immediately. But it’s out there, sitting on the horizon.