Lawsuit over quarter horse's clone may redefine animal breeding
Lawsuit over quarter horse's clone may redefine animal
breeding
The horse breeder and veterinarian who cloned Lynx Melody
Too are suing to have her included in the quarter horse registry. The American
Quarter Horse Assn. has banned clones since 2004.
Cloning 'is nothing more than an assisted reproductive
technique' in animal breeding, Texas lawsuit says
Outcome of lawsuit over cloned quarter horse could
transform animal breeding and competition
By Samantha Masunaga
March 14, 2015, 6:00 AM
Lynx Melody Too, a clone of a renowned quarter horse, is
at the center of a lawsuit that could change the world of animal breeding and
competition..
Texas horse breeder Jason Abraham and veterinarian Gregg
Veneklasen sued the American Quarter Horse Assn., claiming that Lynx Melody Too
should be allowed to register as an official quarter horse.
A Texas jury decided in their favor in 2013, but a
three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling
in January, saying there was "insufficient" evidence of wrongdoing by
the association.
Abraham and Veneklasen are now seeking a rehearing before
the full 15-judge circuit panel.
The suit is among the first to deal with the status of
clones in breeding and competition, and its outcome could impact a number of
fields, including thoroughbred horse racing and dog breeding.
The quarter horse association is adamant that clones and
their offspring have no place in its registry.
"It's what AQHA was founded on — tracking and
preserving the pedigrees of these American quarter horses," said Tom
Persechino, executive director of marketing for the association. "When a
person buys an American quarter horse, they want to know that my quarter horse
has the blood of these horses running through it, not copies of it."
But Abraham and Veneklasen say that cloning follows a
long tradition of using the latest technology to improve and maintain the
breed.
Cloning "is nothing more than an assisted
reproductive technique, similar to in vitro fertilization and artificial
insemination," the plaintiffs wrote in their suit. "A clone is simply
the genetic twin of the original animal separated in time."
Ever since Dolly the sheep was cloned in 1996 in
Scotland, the use of clones as food, resurrected pets or competitive animals
has been hotly discussed.
Horses were first cloned in 2003, and various breeding
groups have taken different stances. The Jockey Club, which registers
thoroughbreds, has banned them from racing. But clones are allowed in other
competitions, such as dressage and rodeo.
There is little uniformity among other animal groups. The
American Kennel Club has banned clones; the Cat Fanciers' Assn. has no policy
yet since no one has tried to register a cloned cat.
Abraham and Veneklasen started a partnership to clone
horses, with Abraham providing the surrogate mother mares and Veneklasen in
charge of the cloning process.
One of their projects was the cloning of Lynx Melody. Nicknamed
"Little Bitty," the horse stood only 13.3 hands, or about 4 1/2 feet.
Despite her size, she won the prestigious National Cutting Horse Assn. Futurity
competition for 3-year-olds.
Her offspring were successful too — 16 of 17 were
substantial money-earners. In 2008, Lynx Melody was posthumously inducted into
the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame.
Abraham and Veneklasen applied to have Lynx Melody Too
included in the quarter horse registry, although the association had banned
clones since 2004.
The pair, who did not respond to interview requests, sued
the association, claiming the group violated federal antitrust laws.
They contend that members of the association's Stud Book
and Registration Committee, which reviews and recommends changes to the rules,
conspired with the group to keep cloned horses out because of greater competition
in both breeding and racing.
The association denies there is any conspiracy or
monopoly and says it is in step with other purebred animal registry groups.
Registration rules have always required that "only
horses resulting from the breeding of a mother and a father (the joining of an
egg and a sperm) are eligible for registration."
"There were a lot of unknowns, in that the
technology was so new," Persechino said. "We received overwhelming
support to defend the current rules from the membership."
He said the association sees breeding as "part
science and part art" and has loosened its rules to allow artificial
insemination and embryo transfers.
Persechino said cloning offered little to the craft of
horse breeding. "It wasn't going to do anything to expand the breed,"
he said. "It was just going to go back and copy what was already
done."
Several animal breeding groups, including the Arabian
Horse Assn., the Cat Fanciers' Assn. and the U.S. Trotting Assn., have filed
briefs with the court in support of the quarter horse group.
Katrin Hinrichs, a professor at Texas A&M University
whose lab has cloned nine horses and published more on horse cloning than any
other lab in the world, said the association's rule was reasonable.
"You don't really know what the effect will be on
how people breed horses, on the whole horse industry," she said, noting
that clones could have some health issues, such as crooked legs, that weren't
present in the original. "I think the AQHA was very prudent."
But health issues eventually seem to work themselves out
in the second generation, "kind of like a reset button," Hinrichs
said.
She added that she saw a specific role for cloning.
"Cloning, to me, is a way to preserve genetics," she said. "If
you geld a horse and ... he becomes a champion in the field, you've lost those
genes."
She also said cloning could be misunderstood.
"From the first time that man or humankind took a
seed from where it would have fallen on the ground below where a plant was and
took that seed and planted it instead in another place, that's interfering with
God's plan, as it were," she said.
"In cloning, if you look at what we're doing, we're
taking a nucleus from one cell, and we're putting it in another cell. We're not
fooling around with the DNA, we're not changing the DNA in any way."
samantha.masunaga@latimes.com
Twitter: @smasunaga
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times
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