[seafarer]

Actually, no, their maternal genetic code has not been changed at all. And the adult clone is mated in the, usual, way. So the offspring are in fact genetically different by the mere fact that they are the product of a natural mating with the normal course of genetic mixing that any mammalian sexual being is the product of.

The clone itself does not have an "altered" genome - it has an exact duplicate of it's mother's adult genome. Cloning, by the process that the famous dolly was produced by, does not alter the genetic makeup. That's the very point - it preserves the genetic makeup of an animal with desired traits.

There are mechanisms that can allow the insertion (or deletion) of genetic material into a clone, but that is not the process that is being talked about by these food producers.

I think you are thinking of the process of say, making a cow (or pig or whatever) that produces some chemical that gets concentrated in their milk. Sure, those kinds of animals can be "made" too, and do use a form of cloning technology in their production. But that is not what the meat marketing producers are talking about.

As I say, there is a tremendous amount of mis-understanding about cloning, what it is, what it can be used for and so forth. But, just looking at the pure technology of cloning a mammal - that process DOES NOT alter the genetic material.

The process of altering the genetic material uses recombinant DNA technology, which then goes on to make a clone using the altered genome to propogate it.

Recombinant DNA technology is then dependent on making a clone to propogate the modified genome, but cloning can be done in the absence of any recombinant DNA manipulation.