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FDA Decides Cloned Animals Safe to Eat
friedo writes "After five years of research, the Food and Drug Administration has decided that meat and milk from cloned animals is safe to eat. From the article: 'The government believes meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as the food we eat every day, said Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine. Meat and milk from the offspring of clones is also safe, the agency concluded. Officials said they did not have enough information to decide whether food from sheep clones is safe. If food from clones is indistinguishable, FDA doesn't have the authority to require labels, Sundlof said. Companies trying to distance themselves from cloning must be careful with their wording, he added.'"
Well isn't it kind of obvious? I mean.. if the original is safe to eat and the clone isn't, doesn't that make it not a clone?
:D
I also wonder if there is much of a benefit to cloning meat anyway. I'm by no means an expert on clones but don't they take just as long as the "real thing" to reach maturity? I suppose they could only clone high quality animals for the best hauls of meat.. maybe I answered my own question. Any other ideas would be pretty cool though
It's amazing! Cloned meat is just as healthy for you to eat as meat from the adult that had been cloned. Wow.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
Imagine a single cow that has favorable qualities for cloning - grows faster, has better meat yield.
Imagine that cow also has a hereditary problem that, when eaten, causes health problems in humans.
The cow by itself would affect a very small portion of the population.
Cloned, and undetected, it will affect many many more people.
This scares me a lot.
...is why this is even an issue.
A clone is an identical twin. The cow/sheep/dog/cat is still a cow/sheep/dog/cat, whether twinned or cloned.
The only difference is the method, with some methods being more successful at creating viable embryos than others.
An human grown from an in-vitro fertilized egg is no less human, is he/she?
A twinned human is no less human, is he/she?
A cloned human is no less human, is he/she?
The only stupidity surrounding this stems from bad science-fiction. George Lucas Must Die (hey, that sounds like a good schlock movie title)
If anyone disputes the above, I will have to ask you to step outside.
--
BMO
From the article: 'The government believes meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as the food we eat every day, said Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine.
So, is that the 'every day' beef with the dioxins in it, the tacos with the e. coli, or the mad cow patties?
I've adopted my mom's hippie ways and regularly pay a little extra for organic, local food products.
And if your nice, long-haired organic-minded local farmer happens, after decades of work, to produce a bull that happens to routinely produce offspring that are efficient eaters, have strong immune systems, etc., you can bet that he'd be very happy to lengthen that bull's career by hatching out a couple of twin brothers to share the work. Cloning a stellar animal so that you can produce more later has nothing, whatsoever, to do with how organically (or not) you feed, keep, and eventually render the meat.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
What 'hereditary health problem that is harmful to humans'. I defy you to name a single hereditary, undetectable health problem in cattle that is the slightest bit dangerous. Wait! Wouldn't a defect that hurts humans also hurt/kill the cow? Because we have very similar biologies?
I don't know who is funnier.. you, unable to distinguish higher orders of animal life from an earthworm
Who made YOU God, that you can sit in judgment over our poor earthworms so? Where I come from, earthworms are what recycle all that vegetable matter back into the food chain. Without them, you wouldn't exist. Who is the higher life form NOW, Mr. Smarty-pants?
Remember, your worm is your friend!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"Meat and poultry will now have no variance at all. "
Ordinary "animal husbandry" has been going in that direction for decades (centuries? millennia?).
Given the choice, I'm sure the owner of the Springbank Snow Countess would have cloned her. Cloning is a shortcut.
What cloning *doesn't* do is introduce randomness. This can be a bad thing, because suppose Holsteins of the Springbank Snow Countess line were found to be vulnerable to a certain virus that targets the line, the only recourse would be to begin regular breeding again, but by that time, many other lines may have already died out through simple neglect.
An example is the Banana Crisis. The bananas you get in the supermarket are clones, every last one of them, though not in the bad science-fiction movie sense. But since every banana plant is reproduced asexually from a distinct line, diseases like Panama disease can run through entire populations, devastating farms and ultimately ending lines like the Gros Michel as a viable plant for which the Cavendish has been a suitable replacement.
Though, there isn't much of a replacement for the Cavendish at last check, except the FHIA-17, which tastes different (and both taste different than the Gros Michel).
There's nothing wrong with cloning for the end user/customer, but cloning sets up for some interesting economic effects should disease strike.
--
BMO
For the record, not everyone that is vegetarian or the smaller subset vegan is against killing animals. You can call it PETA logic if you want because that's more accurate, but still not quite right.
I'm a vegetarian, but not a vegan. I don't care if you eat a big steak or a pound of bacon. In fact I used to enjoy both of those things until my doctor told me to cut cholesterol and suggested my current diet. I am a lacto ovo vegetarian meaning I eat dairy and eggs.
Further, while we're on this topic do NOT consider a person who eats fish or poultry to be vegetarian. There are terms for that too.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
I know you're half joking, but from my experience, the most common argument against eating meat is health related and not ethics. I've you've seen the way we "manufacture" our farm animals, you might agree with them too.
You can graze animals on ground that is rocky and hilly. You can not operate modern farm equipment there.
The best land usage is that we use the hilly areas for free-range grazing, the nice flat areas for growing plants, and various crummy areas for houses.
Of course, we do: use the nicest farmland for houses, ignore the hilly areas, and use the crummy-yet-flat areas to grow food for feedlot animals. Our usage of the best farmland for houses is probably the biggest environmental error we make; we are bound to this error by economic factors related to the "tragedy of the commons".
A friend of mine notes that it seems that what defines what a vegan/vegetarian won't eat is whether or not is has cute babies.
(Note: This applies to the style of vegan/vegetarian living in the West, where it's primarily a [political|personal style|fad|social] statement. It does not apply to those who live that lifestyle for religious or who must for health reasons.)
"Mad cow" disease is a basically a media hoax. How many people in this world have died to mad cow disease? Less the a hundred? You have a better chance of dying in a swimming pool, driving a car, riding a bike, or being struck by lightening. Seriously, you are far more likely to be eaten by a shark then killed by mad cow disease. People's sense of danger has been completely fucked over by mass media. The stuff that you should worry about is ignored, while stupid shit that isn't even worth noticing is treated like a sign of the apocalypses. Get a grip. If safety is what you really are worried about, you should be far more terrified of crossing the street, riding a bike, or taking a swim in a swimming pool, then worries about feeding sheep brains to cows.
As far as cloning goes... you are not going to die eating a cloned animal. It is going to taste delicious and tasty just like all the other cows. It is like eating a twin. "Unnatural"? Eh, maybe. Tender and delicious? Absolutely.
I'm not debating weather or not this sickness is rare, but I do happen to know as a fact that within the next 4 months I will not be at risk of drowning in a pool or being eaten by a shark. However, I think my mom is planning to make hamburgers for dinner tomorrow night.
To your other point about "As far as cloning goes" you said "you are not going to die eating a cloned animal". You say this, but people die eating NORMAL ANIMALS. We rarely build something better than the original, and when we do, it's after years of hit and miss testing. As far as I know no one has died from eating a cloned sheep yet, so unless this is the first time in history we did this perfect (and I will happily admit I am wrong while eating a fake cow), I think this is only the start and nothing can be said with such assurance yet.
:3 rawr.
Actually, I was going to post that the original prion/BSE post was a bit manic
:-)
It is a bit, but then I keep thinking about it and it gets *worse*.
I think GM is in principle great, and I don't think that wizzend looking organic food tastes better than super-hyped pesticide food or those odd screwed-with strawberries (the ones that are insanely huge AND taste really sweet). In a blind test I can't tell the difference between an organic potato or a non-organic one (though in a non-blind test it's easy to spot the small organic one with big pits in - that still cost more per lbs - a mile off). My mother disagrees strongly, but then she collects "healing crystals" and likes tarot cards. God damn hippies.
I am still worried about how much in it's infancy this stuff all is though - I'm not personally worried I'm going to get Brain Cancer from eating too many GM Oranges, but on a global scale. It reminds me of mass produced medication was handled in the 50's, when it was a fledgling industry. Though it's not like we have all the answers now, clearly things have improved and we have at least some processes in place which (as hinted at in the summary) we largely don't have for food (GM or cloned), yet.
Alternately, as long as we're tossing around impossible-to-implement solutions, how about one where people just stop churning out children quite so often, and then we wouldn't have problems feeding everyone? If there weren't so many mouths to feed, the relative inefficiency and land requirements of a carnivorous lifestyle wouldn't be nearly as damaging. It's only when you start trying to scale it to billions and billions of people that it becomes a problem.
I'd rather have fewer people eating and living what and where they want, than more people fighting over the scraps.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I have exactly squat in the way of qualifications or higher education, and left home at 17 (no endless moochy moochy from parents syndrome here), I'm not a rocket scientist nor have I had inherited money to fall back on so I tend do be less than sympathetic to 'hard luck' stories from people old enough to be masters of their own destiny. Mostly people don't care. If you think that, try brutally kicking a dog in front of them or try and get them to watch a video of a slaughter house (cows, pigs, chickens) in action.
I bet good money they care and find it quite distressing, but as I've said, that they try not to think about it too much. So, while virtually everyone know what slaughterhouses are really like, great effort goes into not thinking about it and into justifying it that it's okay because they are "just animals" (who do that sort of thing to each other anyway) and that's somehow they are all totally divorced from exclusively humans feelings (like pain, fear, suffering). You see the same arguments over and over.
A while back, a TV station showed a country cook (a bit of a twat, by all accounts) taking in a "normal" family out for a weekend for some traditional country life, which included him trapping, skinning, cooking and eating a rabbit. The family on the screen (all lardy burger munchers) all accused him of being 'an animal' for being so barbaric, and the program generated record complaints, even though he wasn't the least bit inhumane about it. It was seen as unacceptably barbaric to *show* (even though far worse goes on behind closed doors).
I quite accept you might not care what happens to animals or even possibly other people - I've met several people with that attitude to animals and other people - it is sociopathic behaviour however (and generally frowned upon in western society). "I don't think anyone is claiming to be able to quantify life in a practical way (as if 1000 worms were equal to a single cow), but that doesn't invalidate choosing to be less, rather than more destructive" Where do you draw that line? You do realize the destruction caused in making your house, computer, clothes, etc. Wouldn't it be less destructive to just live on a farm and grow your own food? The answer is right there!
It might equally be phrased as:
"Just because you are not the re-incarnation of Jebus himself should not be taken as license to spend your entire life being a complete cunt to the rest of the Universe."
As a working example of the principle in action:
When faced with a scenario like "Do you want to order (a) the veal (b) the free range game bird or the (c) vegetable bake?"
(a) The answer Jason Voorhees would pick (this is only slightly better than "Just bring me a live baby and I'll drink blood straight from it's neck").
(b) A reasonable answer.
(c) Extra credit.
No.
...when organically grown crops could not possibly support the entire world.
GE crops have not been engineered to produce a higher yield or a to thrive in less fertile soil. GE crops have primarily been engineered to withstand the pesticide that--surprise--is sold by the same company that sells the GE seeds (e.g. Roundup Ready soybeans). Companies are creating GE crops for one purpose: profit.
In practice, organic farming is more sustainable, does not introduce the danger of cross-pollination, and while it produces slightly lower yields (approximately 10% less), it is actually just as (if not more) cost-effective than GE crops, due to not having to pay for proprietary pesticides.
While it's definitely necessary for us to be careful when genetically engineering crops
The problem is that we're not being careful. Not one bit. Furthermore, the FDA has been incredibly lax in its oversight of this incredibly dangerous and far-reaching field.
Most of the grain we produce goes to feeding livestock. It's a far more efficient use of land to grow food for humans, not livestock. If we didn't eat so much meat--mind you, I'm not calling for an eradication of meat from our diets--then we could feed more of the world's hungry.
If genetic engineering was a precise science (not the trial and error it is today), and if crops were being modified for public good (not profit), then I might be more accepting of GE crops. Sadly, this is not the case.
"Cows eat around 100 lbs a day, that's a lot of feed and consequently requires intensive farming"
I think something is screwy with the number. I had two steers, and when we penned them to fatten them up, together they were only eating about 15 pounds of non-drugged feed and maybe 20-30 pounds of hay per day. They ended up being much fatter than I like.
"Typically, people say to themselves 'animals don't feel pain or fear like we do', while there is no denying that cows are not exactly equipped with the sharpest tools in the box, anyone who has had a cat or dog (or even say, a horse) knows they can be happy, bored, confused, in a bad mood and dream in a way that's instantly recognizable to us (and of course, people can and do eat cats and dogs too)."
The same is true of cattle. They apparently have moods and feelings like we do. They even show tender, mostly non-sexual affection to each other. Actually I'm convinced the smaller steer was gay, but the bigger one wasn't into being a bottom, or even a top. The big steer did show platonic affection to the smaller one though.
They are stupid, but they aren't the unfeeling vegetables most people seem to assume they are. It is uncomfortably similar, imo, especially in hindsight, to eating infants or very retarded people.
I went along with the slaughter because I couldn't afford to buy out my partners. The beef was tender and delicious but I gave away most of it. Now, I avoid mammalian meat, turkey too, they are much brighter and human-like than rumor has it.
http://www.marxist.com/
And gee, look! We have lots and lots of fat people today with heart problems. Go figure. --Not that I'm suggesting that the Food Pyramid now playing on a school library wall near you is the cause of all those hamburgers, but it sure doesn't help, nor does it cast the FDA in a favorable light.
Anybody who trusts the FDA in any matter at all is asking to get sick. They serve big business, not the people. I don't know if a cloned chicken is going to kill me or not, and I don't care. I made the choice and went to the trouble to get to know personally the organic farmers who raise and care for the living things that I eat.
It's a contract with life you make when you are born. You will take life in order to live. Since that's the only viable option, other than death, it's important to treat the lives you are taking with love and respect.
-FL