EQUINE fertility, I acknowledged to ministers, may not be their most pressing political problem at the moment. However, during a visit to the US a few months ago I attended the Kentucky Derby in Louisville. I learned from the racing fraternity there that the bet is on for racehorses to be cloned by 2104. There is nothing in the US to disallow the cloning of horses, or to stop cloned horses competing in races there. So why has the British government refused to give William Twink Allen, at the University of Cambridge Equine Fertility Unit, permission to clone horses in the UK (快猫短视频, 15 May, p 9)? Step forward Caroline Flint, the Home Office minister with responsibilities for the licensing of animal procedures. I asked her why Allen鈥檚 request was being blocked.
Flint said she decided to refuse Allen鈥檚 application under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, in the light of the material that he put forward. She took expert advice from the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Inspectorate, the Animal Procedures Committee and various independent external assessors. Horses are among the species afforded special protection by the act, and Flint was not satisfied with the merit of the proposed experiments, as she is required to be before granting a licence under the act. The likely benefits of equine cloning seemed insufficient to justify the expected welfare costs for the animals concerned.
She added that it is not the government鈥檚 policy to oppose the cloning of animals for scientific purposes. Such work has been licensed, but each case has to be considered against the criteria laid down by Parliament. 鈥淎llen has the right to appeal against the decision to a person independently appointed for the purpose,鈥� the minister added.
Advertisement
Assuming he does appeal, many race-goers will surely be eager to learn how Allen gets on.
FARMERS are wont to blame badgers for passing tuberculosis to their cattle. However, government advisers cannot agree whether badgers should be culled as a broad safeguard (17 April, p 4). I asked Ben Bradshaw, the minister for conservation and fisheries at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), if there was any hope of resolving the quandary.
He replied that on 6 April, DEFRA announced the publication of a report by an independent scientific group (ISG) reviewing the progress of the randomised badger culling trial and associated DEFRA research as part of a wider assessment. Charles Godfray, director of the Natural Environment Research Council鈥檚 Centre for Population Biology at Imperial College London, chaired a separate audit panel, which consisted of experts on veterinary science, wildlife epidemiology, applied statistics and population biology and reviewed the ISG鈥檚 procedures.
One of its recommendations was that policy-makers should have access to interim results from the treatment areas. However, the ISG鈥檚 view is that this might compromise the trial itself and lead to flawed policies based on incomplete data. The ISG reckoned that the trial would be completed in 2006.
Bradshaw went on to say that the review group acknowledged that disclosing interim results is a difficult decision for ministers. 鈥淲e are considering the implications that early release of trial data to policy officials might have for TB policy development,鈥� he said.
I am told that the 鈥渃onsideration鈥� is likely to go on for some time. But farmers just want a decision one way or the other.
