FDA Set To Approve Products from Cloned Cows

phantomlord writes "The FDA is currently set to allow beef and milk from cloned animals onto the market. Further, the products will likely not be branded as such and there is no way to know if we're currently consuming products from cloned animals." From the article: "Farmers and companies that have been growing cloned barnyard animals from single cells in anticipation of a lucrative market say cloning will bring consumers a level of consistency and quality impossible to attain with conventional breeding, making perfectly marbled beef and reliably lean and tasty pork the norm on grocery shelves. But groups opposed to the new technology, including a coalition of powerful food companies concerned that the public will reject Dolly-the-Lamb chops and clonal cream in their coffee, have not given up."

Comments

I'm excited.

[dada21]

More producing products (cows, in this case) mean more supply of the products I use (cream, cheese and other high fat-low carb dairy products). More supply means lower prices. Lower prices means more business opportunities, which means a stronger economic outlook for those who can't afford the high barrier to entry created by the high cost to breed cattle.

I'm sure there are some health concerns (my wife prefers organic, I prefer mass produced for my daily consumption), but I'm not sure that the concerns are valid. I travel the globe and specifically like to visit previously poor countries (Ethiopia, Uganda, India, etc) and what I see is people who have better lives because of the ability to purchase their needs cheaper. If the health concern is a higher rate of disease that might knock 5 years off your life expectancy, but being able to eat or clothe yourself or keep your body mass consistant will add 20 years, this sounds like a net benefit. Beyond the health concerns, though, we also can see that cheaper dairy might mean more business opportunities in the previously poor areas -- and this also increases the standard of living and life expectancy of the person willing to get involved in the new marketplace.

I absolutely, positively do NOT want government requirements for labeling. If I am concerned with labeling, I will call the manufacturer of the product and ASK. I already do it because I don't consume trans fats (except for naturally occuring ones in beef). The government was "supposed" to regulate trans fat labels, but they haven't. Many items say 0 trans fats but contain a significant amount below 1 gram, and your government allows it to be labeled 0 grams. Nice. That's government at its finest. When I see 0 grams of trans fats, I will call the manufacturer and ask them to confirm the fact that there are zero, and most of the time they'll say "there's a negligible amount" which is the equivalent of saying "yeah, they're in there." No thanks.

Forcing companies to label properly does NOT work. "Organic" means nothing, "0 trans fats" means nothing, "low sugar" means nothing, "whole grains" means nothing. If you're worried, contact the company directly and figure it out on your own.

Cloned animals seems good to me -- if I can get marbled beef at a discount, I'll be happy. If beef jerky comes down even 20% in price, I'll be happy. If creams and cheeses can be made at the same quality for a lower price, I'll be happy. All of these items keep me healthy, slim and energized, and the cost savings means I can eat more -- making myself even healthier.

Re:I'm excited.

[dada21]

But the requirements DON'T work. The State solutions fall apart because of other State "solutions" to "fixing" tort, fraud and even definitions of legal rights/processes.

Truth in labeling can be arguably called broken. There is no way to fix it -- the laws are too complicated, the paternalism and preferential treatment of protected parties is too strong and embedded, and the consumers just don't care. I would even venture a guess that MOST "label" laws are written by the most powerful in the industry -- the costs to try to get the labeling done by an independent lab is high because those labs are limited in number and licensed by the State.

I barely read the labels anymore -- I do read the ingredients but I even take that with a grain of salt (no pun intended). For me, I have to see how my body is affected by a new product, and if I don't feel right, I'll not consume that product. I'm a very healthy individual, so eating something unhealthy tends to immediately make me feel a little weaker or a little out of whack. I'm guessing that a lot of consumers just aren't healthy to begin with, so they're not as tuned to their bodies rejection of bad things.

I still stick to the fact that the poor around the world are generally BETTER OFF because of advancing in science, and that science will keep advancing even if it takes a step back on occasion. Cheap CAN mean better, depending on what your definition of "good" is. For an Western consumer with available credit, they might feel better in buying local organic (like my wife does) from a local farm. For someone who can't eat at all because the food isn't available, making cheaper versions of the product makes a lot of sense.

Re:I'm excited.

[jimicus]

Rubbish. It may impact price, but it will have almost no impact on quality which is already uniformly low in the average supermarket.

You know how in IT, we say "good, fast, cheap: choose any two"? Much the same applies to meat. In this case, it's a trade off between lean meat, tasty, tender, length of time needed to prepare and cost.

There are a number of things which affect what comes out when the cow is shot, skinned, cut up and put onto little shrink-wrapped polystyrene trays. Sure, one of them is the breed, but two very big factors are how the animal lived and how long the meat was hung after slaughter. Neither of which is affected in the slightest by whether your cow was made by a boy and a girl cow who loved each other very much, by a man with a syringe full of bull sperm or by a farmer wearing a flat cap and an old tweed jacket working in a lab.

Re:I'm excited.

[nessus42]

If I am concerned with labeling, I will call the manufacturer of the product and ASK.

You're going to call up every company for every product that you buy? And then expect to reach someone who will know the answer? And even if they do know the answer, you expect them to give you a truthful one?

Without regulation, your hair dye would contain toxic amounts of lead. Oh, wait a minute -- it currently does! Sure, you have a point, the regulations are highly flawed. But without them, it is clear that corporations would try and succeed in getting away with murder.

To fix the regulations so that they actually work, vote your bum of a corporate lackey representative out of office and tell him or her why.

|>oug

Re:I'm excited.

[dada21]

Voting does nothing. I vote, but not for anyone you'd vote for. The best way to vote is with your dollars -- and don't tell ANYONE why you stopped buying their product, but tell your friends and family why you did. Competition rises to meet demand, so when you remove demand, other competitors have to figure out WHY. That is what makes items better. If you set a bar at a certain level, the market will try to rise to ONLY that level (this is why the State fails, because they set the bar too low). If you set a bar at a level undetermined, but higher than now, the market will try to raise the bar until you're happy. Usually in raising their bar, they find new ways to provide a better product at a higher quality in a faster period of time and at a lower price.

Voting with your dollars matters, voting at the ballot is a joke.

Re:I'm excited.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know how in IT, we say "good, fast, cheap: choose any two"?

No, but I know that little soundbite was used in reference to car mechanics long before any of us was likely born.

There are a number of things which affect what comes out when the cow is shot, skinned, cut up and put onto little shrink-wrapped polystyrene trays. Sure, one of them is the breed, but two very big factors are how the animal lived and how long the meat was hung after slaughter. Neither of which is affected in the slightest by whether your cow was made by a boy and a girl cow who loved each other very much, by a man with a syringe full of bull sperm or by a farmer wearing a flat cap and an old tweed jacket working in a lab.

While I don't doubt that this is all true, it's really not to the point. If you're buying trash at the meat counter to begin with, you're going to get trash going forward. Genetically strained crap is still crap.

If, however, you inentionally seek out quality meat, being able to consistently supply that meat from a handful of proven genetic lines will enable consistently high quality. No worries that one family's line was killed off by some sort of accident or disease and has to be replaced with an unproven genetic line, just whip up a new batch of that line to replace what was lost.

Re:I'm excited.

[Jherek Carnelian]

But without them, it is clear that corporations would try and succeed in getting away with murder.

It's generally in a company's best interests to keep it's customers alive. Something about repeat business, they tell me.

That's not how wallstreet works. Nobody cares about anything but next quarter's numbers. So if prematurely terminating your customers will help you meet this quarter's earning's forecast, that's exactly what corporate america will do.

Re:I'm excited.

[Ixne]

It's generally in a company's best interests to keep it's customers alive. Something about repeat business, they tell me.

I'd like to introduce you to this little thing we have called the Tobacco Industry...

Re:I'm excited.

[radtea]

Forcing companies to label properly does NOT work.

Shady processors adulterated fertilizers, deodorized rotten eggs, revived rancid butter, substituted glucose for honey. Farmers began to learn about such deceptions from a new breed of agriculture chemists, often trained in Germany, located in State officialdom and helped by Federal funds. These chemists could apply their scientific skills to expose the work of chemists employed by industry to depreciate food products, as the Senate Report put it, in "a greed for gain."

Anyone who is interested in the mundane world of fact, rather than fanciful flights of political ideology, knows that prior to regulation and inspection, the quality of food was much lower than it is today. The quote above describes the situation in the mid-1800's, prior the the first national pure food act in the U.S. in 1906.

The law is a powerful instrument, and it has proven to be more effective than anything else in forcing people who are selling things to not lie about what they are selling.

The issue with food labelling has nothing to do with any rational concerns about food quality, however. The only issue is that consumers have a right to know what they are buying. In practice, the only way of ensuring that right is honoured is to have legal sanctions against lieing about what is being sold, and uniform labelling standards are by far the most efficient way of doing this.

Personally, I'm not at all keen on supporting an even more uniform agricultural monoculture than we have now, so if meat from cloned animals was labelled I would tend to avoid it.

Re:I'm excited.

[nessus42]

It's generally in a company's best interests to keep it's customers alive. Something about repeat business, they tell me.

It's generally in a company's best interests to maximize its profits. If some fraction of a company's customers happen to die due to a badly designed gas tank, get sick from lead poisoning in their hair dye, or what have you, then that's just a cost of doing business. Your life means absolutely nothing to the typical corporation, other than how it affects its bottom line. I.e., kill off too many of your customers, yes, that would probably be bad for the bottom line. Kill of only enough of them so that the cost of losing those customers is less than the cost of increasing the safety of your product, then that number of deaths is the obviously correct business decision to the typical corporation.

|>oug

Re:I'm excited.

[Bodrius]

If I am selling an item and you want it, you can NOT know what my costs are, how I make it, or how much it costs me to sit on it until it sells. I can NOT know how much you have in your wallet.

That seems a different issue than the labelings in question.
In a capitalistic society, I may not know what your real costs are, but I definitely want to know what the product IS.

I see the labeling regulations, at best, as a way for government to protect itself against widespread fraud and the costs of dealing with it through other legal processes. There are basic tenets for when a contract is valid, and this makes it easier to read the contract.
People are not buying organic or mass-produced because they want to know the best bargain: they consider "organic" or kosher a completely different product, and if it is mislabeled it is like any other product misrepresentation. If I sell you pork claiming it is a vegetarian dish, for many people "caveat emptor" is not a sensible counter-argument.

As to calling the manufacturers, I generally only have to do it once. 1/2 an hour for a lifetime of consumption is a good investment.

That implies a level of trust in the manufacturer that may take more than 1/2 hour to establish. If you do not trust the labels they use in their product at government's request, trusting the first person on the phone willing to answer is knowledgeable, correct and honest seems a bit naive to me.

In essence, I agree with you that the current labels are useless and counterproductive, and I agree that governments are unlikely to implement them right. That does not mean preventing product misrepresentation was not their responsability in the first place.

The market self-correction I expect to work best is at the consumer-group and retailer level. Assuming this kind of information (product contents and source) is readily and publicly available, the accountability of identifying these products falls on the immediate providers (grocery stores, markets, etc) serving a particular community.
Consumer groups can hold them accountable by reaching and verifying the same type of information, and detecting inconsistencies. Over time, it is in the self-interest of a store to clearly label their products to meet their customer's expectations.

Current labels gives them an excuse not to make that effort, since it is now the government's and manufacturers role.
But ensuring this kind of information is readily provided by manufacturers is the kind of free information flow that is still the role of the government.
The implicit risk of business should be on the bargaining process, not in the contents of the product you buy.

Re:I'm excited.

[nessus42]

I barely read the labels anymore -- I do read the ingredients but I even take that with a grain of salt (no pun intended). For me, I have to see how my body is affected by a new product, and if I don't feel right, I'll not consume that product.

I'm having a really hard time not rolling my eyes here. Your idea of the epitomy of consumer safety is to try something and see how it makes you feel??? Do you actually know anything about science? There are plenty of things that will make you feel great today and kill you in a week or in twenty years.

|>oug

Re:I'm excited.

[Surt]

A lot of people shop at whole foods & earth fare in spite of the higher costs because of the more stringent labelling requirements. It's just that the labels they care about aren't relevant to nutrition for the most part. People care more about the means of production (apparently) than they do about being healthy.

Re:I'm excited.

[bracktra]

Good thing you're rich enough to vote with your dollars... not all people have that luxury.

Re:I'm excited.

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you believe that this will lower prices? I think a more possible scenario will be that a new group of multinationals arises delivering cattle or licensing DNA for many dollars. The DNA will be genetic engineered in the future and will be legally protected. (Just like patented DNA for all kinds of plants.) This will make farmers dependent on a small group of multinationals. Which will... lower prices you say?

Of course identical twins are born all the time, but only 2 animals with the same DNA will live for only one life time. With cloning, the same DNA can be around for a much longer time and spreading of the same DNA can happen at a much larger scale. This will have a huge impact on bio diversity.

Moreover, last time I checked, cloning is not without any problems. The DNA will 'get old'. I found this article after a quick search: http://www.cnn.com/NATURE/9905/26/dolly.clone.02/ . I am not sure if this still is a problem, though.

Re:I'm excited.

[Eravnrekaree]

The means of production does affect the foods nutritional value. If the food is grown in dead, nutrient starved soil, its not going to have as many nutrients. As well, we arent only concerned about whats in the food but whats not in it, we dont want pesticides and other nasty things in the food. I believe in both the precautionary principle, that when introducing exotic new technology, we should be safe rather than sorry and keep it off shelves until it is proven safe, by an independant party (not a corporate controlled one like the FDA which cares more about corporate profits than peoples health), and as well that humans have evolved for thousands of years to handle certian types of food. When we start adding in things that we have not eaten before, strange new chemicals, the body is not as well prepared to process these, and it may even be harmful. Technology is great in computers, but not on my plate.

Consistency

[maxwell demon]

Farmers and companies [...] say cloning will bring consumers a level of consistency and quality impossible to attain with conventional breeding [...]

I guess it will also give pathogens a level of consistency and infectability impossible to attain with conventional monoculture.

go organic

[amigabill]

The industry is pushing me more and more toward organic foods. It's more expensive, yes, but at least I know I'm not going to have a reaction to hormones and stuff that doesn't have to be in there. I don' think that cloned food is all that scary, as it's coming from DNA we'd have eaten before the cell samples were taken for the cloners. I am more concerned about genetic engineering than cloning, as with engineered DNA, we haven't been eating that for thousands of years and thus it has more potential for "side-effects" to happen than cloned stuff from a natural cow source.

If cloned and genetically engineered stuff is approved for public consumption, at least have the courtesy to require labelling so we can decide for ourselves. If the public is OK with such things, then they'll be successful in the market. If the public does not want such things, they should be allowed to choose, and that decision should not be hindered because they don't know what is or is not cloned or engineered or whatever. If the public doesn't want it, then the market for it should not florish due to devious obfuscation tactics, it should be the consumer's choice for a product to succeed, not the vendor's.

Lean == Tasteless

[RogueWarrior65]

This lean meat crap makes me want to puke. For those of you who are old enough to remember, beef and pork used to have lots of fat which is what makes it taste good.

Big deal?

[a_nonamiss]

Honestly, I don't see what the big deal is. Cloning is exactly like forcing twins. Are cows that are born as twins any less healthy than non-twin cows? All you are doing is creating a genetic copy, something which happens all the time in nature. I think people scared of cloning have watched too many Star Wars prequels. Sure, there is an evil use for cloning, but there is an evil use for almost everything.

Cloning

[Anon-Admin]

From my experience, cloning gives a better and more uniform product. I have cloned 1000's of plants and everyone of them is the same.

Next time you see some one protesting cloning, ask if they would like a good joint of Dro to puff on. Good Hydro weed is all clone. This gives a uniform response and eliminates the need to locate the males. Cloning beef is bad! Cloning Weed it good? hmmm.

Can't "vote with your dollars," then, can you?

[dpbsmith]

"the products will likely not be branded as such and there is no way to know if we're currently consuming products from cloned animals."

Right. The "it's a free-market, vote-with-your-dollars" folks never explain how you can vote with your dollars if you can't tell what you're buying.

The current administration talks a good line about a "free market," but their application of the principle is very selective.

If you don't want to eat cloned food...

[Vellmont]

Never eat another apple. Yes, every single apple is a clone of the first tree of that type of apple. Apple trees in agriculture are propogated by cuttings. The seeds inside will likely produce a tree with apples that tastes nothing like its parent.

Re:If you don't want to eat cloned food...

[dodongo]

You also can't graft a cow into soil and make it grow. There's a difference between selective breeding and cellular-level manipulation of organisms.

Re:If you don't want to eat cloned food...

[radtea]

For an even more obvious example, check out most commercially available bananas

Yes, by all means do: "The common banana found at breakfast tables all over the developed world is in peril. Both pests and disease are threatening to make it extinct. The banana most familiar to us, and most in danger, is the Nanica variety of the Cavendish cultivar group. All Nanica banana plants are more or less genetically identical. Since the cultivar is sterile and seedless, it is spread by clippings, creating clones instead of offspring. It was adopted more than 50 years ago when the previous Gros Michel variety was killed off by a blight. The chief hazards to today's banana are pests, Black (and Yellow) Sigatoka fungi, and Panama disease." (emphasis added.)

Monocultures are susceptible to disease, and the case of bananas is empirical proof that monocultures do die off from disease. Widespread use of artificial insemination in cattle production already means that most beeves in North America are the offspring of a relatively small number of bulls. There is already a concern within the veterinary community regarding inbreeding and genetic homogeneity. Cloning has the potential to make this problem worse.

Re:Why labelling is better than hiding

[Anonymous Coward]

It does cost more than the ink on the label, because if the label is to be truthful then the product must be tracked through the processing facilities -- dairy barn to cheese maker or slaughterhouse as the case may be -- and the cloned milk can't be mingled with the uncloned milk, etc.

I object to the labeling for the same reason why I wouldn't want my tax money being spent to certify kosher food or bottled holy water. There is no SCIENTIFIC way, with a mass spectromer or any other means, to tell the difference between the products. I think the FDA should stick to scientific and proven differences, not indulge the mass delusions, as long as they are spending our tax money. The kosher labeling system works just fine without government intervention, and if the anti-clonists want to, they can set up a similar system.

I participate in non-governmental labeling systems which I pick out plywood that is grown in sustainable manner, but I don't want my tax money spent to administer such a labeling system -- in fact, given the political power of big timber firms, I would not trust a government administered labeling system.

The fact of the matter is, if you buy three gallons of milk, one labeled as "organic", one with no label, and one labeled as "non-cloned", and take it to the lab, YOU CAN'T TELL IF THEY ARE LYING. That also means that one type of milk will never make a difference to your health. If they do allow a cloned/non-clones labeling system, it should carry a cigarrette style box of text: "WARNING: The Surgeon General has determined that reading the labeling on this product can lead to superstition and mass delusion."

Re:Everybody has health concerns

[Vellmont]

Everybody is saying this is bad for you, that is bad for you. Oh, don't drink milk, it causes cancer. Don't eat peanut butter at school, people have allergy's. Freakin peanut butter, I grew up on that. Something is always bad for you. You have to eat something. I'll be damned if I'm going to spend my life eating rabbit food. Screw that.

Stop listening to just anyone and everybody, and start getting information from actual scientists and not dumb journalists out to sell eyeballs. Educate yourself about your disease and how foods affect your blood sugar. Don't just simply rely on someone to tell you what to eat, find out the reasons for it.

There seems to be a belief out there that all science is just whooey because it's all influenced by politics and self interest. That's largely not true. The self interest comes from the people reporting the science. Some of them are just reporters looking to sell eyeballs. Some are people with an agenda against meat, GM food, corporations, etc. These kind of people will ignore evidence, miss-report and miss-interpret evidence, listen to pseudo-scientists as if they were real scientists, etc.

If you want to eat candy bars all day and advance yourself to insulin dependent diabetes, go blind at 50, or worse, go right ahead. But don't bundle all claims about food together in one category as if they're all equally bad (or good for that matter).

Re:Everybody has health concerns

[crabpeople]

"So they are cloning my steaks now. Sometimes I find a really good tbone at the butcher, sometimes it's not so good. I would love to find one that I like, and clone that over and over again. Give me another a1j447L2K please. Perfect every time. Whew hew"

Perhaps it is the occasional bad steak that makes the good ones taste better. Eliminate the occasional, or even regular, bad steak and the good ones will normalize out so that they wont be "really good" anymore and will end up being normal.

Explain this to me.

[Grendel Drago]

Wait, wait. Let me see if I have this straight.

Labeling laws are skirted by industry and made worthless. The solution, by you, is to get rid of labeling laws, instead of strengthening them or closing the loopholes.

"What do you know? These antipsychotic meds only make me a little less crazy. I guess I'd better just stop taking them at all."

Re:Everybody has health concerns

[MWoody]

I can't believe this shit got modded up. I'm sorry, Reckless, that you've got diabetes. But them's the breaks. And yeah, it DOES mean that you have to watch what you eat and drink. Or you die. Very simple. As you've said, given your relatives, it's in the blood; there is NO ONE to blame but yourself for not having recognized this fact and made the necessary changes to prevent this eventuality, or at least make its impact lessened.

Your little tantrum will take you right to the grave, and it might take a few of your extremities with it on the way. Maybe a little blindness thrown in. But no, you're sticking it to the man, being your own boss, living life on the edge.

Yes, of course the marketing divisions behind certain foods often skew or misreport findings to support their own products and damage others. But don't, in your attempt at rebellion, think for a second that it invalidates what you're told by a medical professional. Telling yourself the "diabetes seminars" are just there to make money for the hospital is ridiculous; what's next, you're going to not let them amputate your dead foot because they "just want the insurance money?"

Some might think I'm being a little harsh, but I'd wager that +5 post is getting thousands of views as I write these words. And a fair percentage of them are probably diabetics. And hell, some of them might decide to buy in to this self-delusion. In short: the post above is stupid and dangerous and could be hurting people. MOD IT DOWN.

Re:Enough Already

[TheMeuge]

A good analogy to what you're proposing is this:

- A new way of purifying water was invented
- The resulting liquid was analyzed by mass-spectrometry, NMR, IR and all other tools in the disposal of modern science. The study determined that the liquid that comes out of the machine is absolutely pure H2O, completely identical to all other water, and containing no additives
- You propose that we have to conduct a long-term study comparing the effects of drinking water to drinking water.