The press release’s headline bellowed, “World’s First Cloned Winery Dog, Puppy Arrives in Sonoma County This Week.”
I don’t doubt that “Stella,” the family dog and ambassador for Flambeaux Winery in Healdsburg, is well-loved—most Americans love their dogs.
However, unlike most Americans, the winery’s owners, the Murray family, decided to clone Stella, an Italian Maremma, after learning the dog’s breeder shut down operations, “making her lineage unavailable.”
To that, I say, so what?
In 2023, animal shelters across the United States euthanized 359,000 homeless dogs—from mutts to purebreds and pups to seniors—according to data from the nonprofit Shelter Animals Count.
Still, the Murrays plunked down a mere $50,000 to clone Stella. Then, like magic, seven-week-old Mella arrived at the winery last week from Texas’s Via Gen, the only dog cloning company in the country.
Cute pup. Looks just like Stella. But the process used to clone her presents serious ethical and moral issues.
“There are literally thousands of dogs in California shelters needing homes, so the concept of paying $50,000 to clone one seems especially egregious,” Marin Humane communications director Lisa Bloch explains. “In addition, cloning a dog in no way guarantees that the dog will be like the one he/she is cloned from. Dogs are individuals, and the notion you can simply produce a copy of one reduces them to mere objects produced in a factory.”
Did the Murrays consider that besides Stella, two other dogs were involved in providing her clone? It’s difficult to fathom how one could love their own dog yet condone invasive surgery to procure eggs from an involuntary “donor” dog for an unnecessary procedure.
Furthermore, to produce the Mella clone, Via Gen also operated on a surrogate mother dog, forcing her to carry the donor dog’s eggs, inserted with Stella’s genetic material, through the gestation period.
But let’s forget about that ethical nonsense. Mella, an adorable pup less than two months old, has arrived at the winery and is being trotted out at publicity events. That makes it all worthwhile, right?
Wrong. Don’t clone. Adopt. And if you want that $50,000 burning a hole in your pocket put to good use, contact your local animal shelter.
Nikki Silverstein is the writer-at-large for the Pacific Sun.
