However, these transgenic subjects are at risk of contracting naturally occurring animal diseases, such as BSE (or "mad cow disease-), which places humans at risk of animal diseases through their milk.
Farmers may also be able to use this technique to propagate the best of their flock. Animals with desirable traits could be cloned and then conventionally bred to produce hundreds of "perfect- animals. This could revolutionize agriculture. Though many believe this process is ethically acceptable, and simply catalyzes the processes that animal breeders apply already, others are in firm opposition. There is the danger of "commodifying- animals; it is difficult to draw the line between improving livestock for human benefit, and improving livestock for commercial production. Animals could be genetically modified to suit production timetables, with the characteristics we deem beneficial, and then mass-produced through cloning. Applying factory laws to animals would be morally dubious at best, and the genetic specificity associated with producing livestock purely for human convenience would have serious ramifications on future biodiversity. Is cloning then, treating animals as just another commodity, going one step too far in a consumer based society? .
Another area in which many biomedical scientists are extremely interested, is xenotransplantation. This is the process of growing animal organs for human transplantation. Pigs are seen as the most likely candidates, as they share a similar genetic structure to humans. In theory, genetic modification techniques could be used alongside cloning to produce transgenic pigs (animals containing both human and pig genes), which would be ideal "donors- of human livers, hearts and lungs. This could potentially save thousands of human lives and solve the worldwide problem of organ shortage. However, there may still be the problem of rejection and there is also the risk that animal to human diseases may be introduced.