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.

[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]

I'll throw rubbish back at you. I disagree with the "good, cheap, fast" because it absolutely does NOT prove itself in reality. I've been running businesses since I was 13, and I tell you think: I always sold 2 of the 3, but I also tried to make the third better. This is how competition works.

If I was good and cheap, my competitor would try to mimic me and try to do it faster. Eventually, they would. Over time, good gets better, cheap gets cheaper, and fast gets faster. It is ridiculous to think of competition as a closed system. Actually, a State-licensed market IS a closed system only because no one has to worry about good, cheap OR fast. State-licensing makes things worse, more expensive and slower. See DMV for proof.

Re:I'm excited.

[Foobar of Borg]

There is only one reasonable response to your rambling idiocy.

MMMMMMOOOOOOOO!!!!!

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.

[perrin]

I am usually impressed by feats of intelligence. But for once, I must say that I am duly impressed by idiocy. I thought the post was satire at first. But then, of course, requiring people to phone the factory for every product they want to buy to ask what it contains and hope for someone clueful to tell you something truthful, just makes sense if you will just, I don't know, stand on your head and sing 'lalalalalala' at the same time.

I do not really know how labelling works in the US, but it works fine over here in Old Europe.

Re:I'm excited.

[Darko8472]

Does that mean we'll finally have *PROPER* buffalo wings?!

Re:I'm excited.

[ElleyKitten]

Right now, I _HAVE_ to call because the labeling laws make it difficult to know what I'm eating. In Spring I called 15 "Zero Trans Fats" producers who verified that their products contain trans fats, just levels lower than the law requires (0.5 grams per serving). You might buy those products thinking their safe -- BECAUSE OF THE LAW! I had to take a step because of the law. Ridiculous.

You didn't have to do that because of the law. If there was no law, they still wouldn't put the correct amount of trans fats, and you'd still have to call. If anything, you should be arguing that the law should be stricter and require them to put the exact amount, or at least " less than 1 gram" or something. That would at least save you some phone calls.

I don't think removing the laws would give us more or better labels. 90% of people don't read labels, so the companies would stop to save costs. But where would that leave people which obscure allegies, like whey? Not everyone with obscure allergies lives near a health food store that would continue labeling.

And MacDonald's announces

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

a buy one get one free special

I'll admit it

[smooth wombat]

When I first read the headline I thought it said, "FDA Set To Approve Products from Cloned Clowns"

Re:Eh.

[El Torico]

What's the fun in eating the exact same meal day-in, day-out?

It's the culinary equivalent of marriage.

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.

The most critical issue...

[RingDev]

is not health impact on humans consuming 'cloned' produce. Nor is it even genetically breading for improved feedstock.

The real danger here is a homogenized feed stock. If every cow in the world (or greater market region) is a clone of the same cow, they will all have the same strengths and weaknesses. A virus that may have previously only effected 5% of the feedstock population could suddenly effect 100% of the feedstock population.

I can see using cloning in two situations. 1) Immediate needs over ride the risk of losing the entire stock, and 2) as a small % of existing live breading facilities. As in a beef farmer may have a few hundred head of cattle, of those, 90% are 'normal' bread cows, the other 10% are clones. The clones would likely have a higher resale rate as you would be almost guaranteed the perfect cow. This way, even if something effects the clowned cow, you won't be out the entire food source, just a portion of "cash cow" income.

-Rick

Everybody has health concerns

[TheRecklessWanderer]

All I hear today is, don't eat this, don't eat that, don't eat the other.

I recently found I have diabetes type 2. Thats the one where you have to watch your diet and take some metformin and other drugs (maybe), and exercise. (BLAH). Boo hoo for me, my Dad has it, my Grandfather on my mom's side, I'd be a little stupid if I wasn't expecting it. In any case, I went to these "Diabetes seminars" put on by the local hospital. There is a nurse, and she talks about how to take care of yourself. Lots of fliers, and basically, she says, don't eat this don't eat that, all the stuff I like. 3 days of seminars, and I have to go visit the nurse and do this and that and the other.

Eventually I figure out that this is just go generate easy money for the hospital. They are billing the province a huge amount for each seminar and visits, so I said screw it. Now I just do it myself and everything is fine.

Where am I going with this tho? Thanks for asking. 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.

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.

Let's not forget that every time somebody says something is bad for you, there is an agenda behind it. Pepsi says Coke is bad for you. Coke says Pepsi is bad for you. Milk marketers say juice is bad for you. The government wants you to know smoking is bad for you because it is a huge burdon on the health industry. (Well, it is bad for you, duh!).

It drives me crazy everybody telling me what to eat and what to drink. I'll do what I want.

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).

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.

Deja-moo

[Rhys]

The feeling that you've eaten this beef before.

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.

Re:Really REALLY excited.

[mpapet]

More supply means lower prices. Lower prices means more business opportunities.

You mistakenly believe that the market for cattle operates efficiently. There is no reason to believe that the market for cattle would operate any differently than, say the market for desktop computer operating systems. It's exposed to the same amount of legislative influence, graft and corruption required to remain in a market that any other market for goods or services. Another example was the de-regulated power industry that California used for a while. Where was the greater supply of energy at lower prices promised? ...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.

Like most barriers to entry, they are legislated to address two needs:
1. Public perception that "something must be done!"
This is why your food supply is one of the safest in the world. Do you want more e-coli in your food supply or less?
2. Protection from competition.
This is why quickie-mart capitalism exists. It fulfills the rhetorical need to justify absurd policies.

I doubt there is any opportunity to look at the issue objectively because like most quickie-mart economic believers, it's a belief that has it's own self-satisfying logic to it. No amount of objective analysis of how a market actually works versus your imagined and largely academic concept of how it -should- work will change your postion.

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.

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."