Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
which is more funny? I dunno...
I can't wait till they can clone meat without that unnecessary nervous system, what will those vegans say then?
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.
Deja Moo?
The feeling you've eaten this steak before.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
...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 don't like the way they used indistinguisable here. I'm not sure, but I was under the impression current clonning technology left us with gimped out calfs.
Isn't it the case that all cloned animal have a shortened life-span? Although genetically the same, I don't think clones are the same developmentally. I think there are some really horrible congenital defects that happen during cloning.
I think this indistinguishable bit might be BS. Also, I would like to have a label stating "cloned meat". Many people refuse to buy knock off Rolexes, even though they can be indistinguishable from the original. It's a matter of principal to some.
I can't say I like all the tampering science does to our food supply. It's too easy for stuff to get approved and too hard for it it get banned after approval (e.g. Sodium Nitrate). But what are arguments against this? The only real problem I see is the whole patent mess.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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?
By 2008, you'll have 3 kinds of beef:
1. Certified cloned beef
2. Certified non-cloned beef
3. no-label beef - like a hot dog, you don't know what's in it.
Most people won't care but some people will pay extra to get that mmm-good taste of non-cloned beef and others will pay extra-extra to get that mmm-mmm-good-good taste only cloning provides.
Even if category #1 doesn't show up on supermarket shelves, the "green" beefeaters who fear clones will create a market for category #2.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
whch is mor funny? # dunno..
"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
Text created by Control+V deemed safe to read by MLA.
I'd appreciate it if someone who was more knowledgable in these matters that I am could comment on the premise: "is a cloned animal actually indistinguishable from its donor?"
For example: On average, do cloned animals live just as long as non-cloned animals? (i.e. same average lifespan, standard deviation, confidence level, etc.) I ask this because I remember reading that some cells can undergo only a finite number of replications and that there were some concerns about telomere and aging that figured into this.
So, are there ANY genetic differences between donor and cloned animals? That we might not have noticed a difference between the donor and the clone does not necessarily mean that there IS NO difference -- only that we HAVE NOT SEEN any difference... yet.
Indeed!
First we had the geniuses who went ahead with the money saving plan "Let's feed sheep's brains to cows!" which resulted in mad cow disease (which, when infected meat is eaten, can cause incurable and fatal neurological disease CJD in humans). Feeding meat to cows was clearly bad and wrong in ways that don't (shouldn't) need explaining to anyone and *blammo*, well what do you know, karma bites.
OT: Interestingly, Wikipedia says that in the US testing kits for BSE are banned (and presumably only conducted by the FDA then), and states "US Sixty-five nations have full or partial restrictions on importing U.S. beef products because of concerns that U.S. testing lacks sufficient rigor. As a result, exports of U.S. beef declined from $3.8 billion in 2003, before the first mad cow was detected in the US, to $1.4 billion in 2005.". Per head of population, CJD incidents in the US seem to be lower than in Europe/UK though, as US cattle seem to be typically fed on soya (which is at least vaguely sensible, it's a plant for starters - though oddities like artificial 'fish' proteins in GM soya give some cause for concern).
If feeding sheep to cows can screw people up through contamination of the food chain, there has surely got to be some grounds for being seriously concerned about the prospect of problems that might come from consuming cloned meat (specifically if it's on a regular basis - e.g. the same clone being eaten by people all over the world every time they go to a McDonald's, one nasty defect and *blammo* (again)).
As with the BSE crisis, if/when something goes wrong, I suspect the people and companies responsible for producing the goods will not even be investigated or in any way penalised (in fact, they will probably get huge subsidies as cattle farmers in the UK did to make up for the subsequent drop in the market, even though it was their own mess and it was public money that was spent cleaning it up).
Not as big a problem as if one of the clones had a cellular mutation that ended up giving it superpowers (telekinesis, invincibility, the ability to make chocolate milk, etc.) but still, I suspect This Will Not End Well.
It could of course be a much more humane way way to produce veal, dairy cows (without having to drag calves away at birth and feed them supplements) and healthily beef cows without resorting to steroids (though I suspect the industry will keep using them), so it seems not to all bad from a consumer perspective. Ultimately, it would be great to be able to produce meat without having to produce real living animals in the first place. Transmetropolitan 'human foot on a stick' anyone? I hear it's toe licking good...
If cloning was anywhere near the point of producing a genetically stable animal, this might be a fair ruling. The fact is, cloning introduces measureable defects. Most of those defects will impact the animal's health, rather than the safety of the meat. Some, and there's currently no way to know how many, will produce meat that is hazardous to humans. If geneticists aren't even sure why such defects exist at all, then you cannot ask them to quantify how many would be hazardous. How on earth could they possibly know?
Cloning might well be safe, once more of the variables have been quantified and the techniques refined to the point of being reliable. Once we are at that point, if the science showed that the risks to human health were comparable to the risks from non-cloned animals, the FDA would have a case. As it stands, this is a political decision that has zero credibility and should be reversed. You shouldn't try to run before you can crawl. (Walk? Stand up? We're nowhere close to those points.) The fact that labelling is to not require any mention of cloning is proof of that. If the market cannot overcome the objections of consumers except by lying to them, then the market has no goddamn business selling the time of day, never mind products where safety is critical.
(Personally, I'd prefer looser rules on what can be sold, tied to clearer markings on what is being sold. By play-pretending rigorous standards that really don't exist, and denying the information required to obtain any quantification of that risk, the consumer relies entirely on absolute trust in the divine wisdom of the FDA theocracy. Yes, it is a theocracy - it is driven entirely by faith, not facts from the ground or accountability from those affected. The FDA's methods are dubious - they were recently questioned with regards performing illegal human experiments on Africans - and their underlying principle seems to be one of worshipping themselves as Gods. The entire department should be closed as a hazard to human health.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The real impetus behind cloning is castration.
The majority of bulls destined to become meat are castrated well before breeding age, which means no offspring. If one of them turns out to be a prize specimen, you're SOL. With cloning, you can take a blood sample from the prize-winning bull and use it for breeding later.
Since castration is also common in race horses and working dogs, they would presumably also benefit.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Are you sure you don't mean "Protein is Protein"? Just remember, you can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor. (I wonder if anybody will get that reference).
BTW, I thought this might spawn a funny thread, but I like the serious direction it's taken.
Finally, AFAIK prions are proteins with the same basic chemistry (same exact number of atoms and linkages between atoms) as their healthy counterparts, but folded differently. Thus, "a protein folded properly is a protein folded properly". Maintaining things like that across generations of cloned copies? Do we really want to stake our lives on it? Cloned monoculture meat? Very serious issues. It's one thing when I, as a programmer, crash somebody's box. It's quite another to crash the food supply. I think we should be a lot more cautious with this stuff. We have redundant power supplies in those servers. Where's our redundantn food supply? If somebody's going to experiment with my food, I want a backup.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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".
"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.
Great point! Prions defintely show that harmless proteins can turn deadly without any mutations in the gene itself. Could be caused by an interaction with proteins from genes other than the one that expresses the prion itself... sort of like the novel interactions you may get by splicing fish genes into soy...
:)
"No, protein is NOT protein." Or maybe, "PrP-C is not PrP-Sc"...
Actually, I was going to post that the original prion/BSE post was a bit manic, but I agree, it has become interesting
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.
""Mad cow" disease is a basically a media hoax. "
While not a hoax, it was certainly hyped up by the media - but it was not the media that caused the political storm of other countries using it as an excuse to protect their markets (France in particular IIRC, though they were by no means alone) which lead to a 'collapse' of the export market (and subsequent subsidy handouts, which in the UK are greatly reshaping - for the better I think - the way we manage land).
That was a big part of the story that was hyped up (and was a big deal), as was the poor way in which the government handled the 'crisis' (which was the biggest story of all IIRC). It is true that BSE is much more common in other countries, and even seen as nothing unusual (though always a problem if it is detected in a herd) and it may well have blown over if the government hadn't handled it so oddly, though I think your right to implicate the media as bearing responsibility too.
"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."
Oh for sure. Though if they had kept at it for years and we hadn't changed the practice, it could easily have been a much bigger problem further down the line, and it's entirely possible we'd discover other long term issues too (even things we might be passing on, and that might impact over generations, for example).
It seems a slim risk, a bit like a (bad) far fetch sci-fi movie plot, but the BSE/CJD has shown weird ass stuff like that can happen, with globalised food production it could represent a greater and entirely unnecessary risk.
I don't avoid GM foods particularly (personally, I like the big, round juicy fruit sprayed with no-doubt cancer causing pesticides more than the small, knobbly Organic stuff) and I think globalisation is generally a Good Thing (for political and economic reasons), it doesn't seem prudent to get cocky about this sort of thing though.
We've been there before with so many other products (e.g. if you are pregnant be sure to (not) take some Thalidomide to help with the morning sickness and as an anti-inflammatory for your swollen ankles). It just seems crazy to rush headlong and 'assume' it will all be fine and no one will get hurt.
As far as cloning goes... you are not going to die eating a cloned animal.
If you eat one once, I'm sure it's just fine, maybe even safer than eating a random cow you don't know the history of (if the cloning process was of very high quality and all things being equal). That doesn't describe a very likely future scenario though.
If millions of people effectively eat that same cow for decades, and it turns out there is something funny about it's genetic makeup that has a knock on effect for even a small percentage of the population, then a lot of people could find themselves with some serious problems. It might be increase susceptibility to certain cancers, it could make people more prone to Alzheimer's, it could be another neurological condition, we just don't know, but we do know it can, and has happened before. And for what? To save a couple of pence on each hamburger sold (*literally*). Not worth going in for all guns blazing IMO.
I'm not try to be melodramatic about it, but think about how many screwed up two-headed, six-legged or three tailed goats get created for every decent quality clone that goes in front of the camera and even the 'good' clones don't last long - a clone is, in many ways, the age of the original PLUS it's own age (never mind the other problems under the surface due to damaged DNA).
That is, if you were to take a 35 year old human, and clone him, at 15 they'd have medical complaints (including cancers) you'd only expect to see on a 50 year old. Even with a impossibly perfect cloning process, the individual would be lucky to live to be 35 themselv
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."
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.
"Yes, what were those immigrants thinking? They should be in college instead of dallying about the meat processing plants! Why, they're to blame for the suffering of the animals we eat. The dumb brutes have an electric cattle prod and they know how to use it."
I know what *I'm* thinking. Well I'm thinking you are maybe a racist. Or, in your defence, that people where you are who do that kind of work are most immigrant workers or minorities - which is a fair enough assumption but is not so true here IME (though that has started to change in the last couple of years due to new legislation).
I've know well three people who worked in processing plants (beef,chicken and fish) none of them immigrants (or minorities) or from anything like poor families. All - every one of them - had more formal education than I have had, and I know two of them were from wealthier families (not sure about the other). They all hated it (we've talked about it) but hey they are all grown men, they are the ones responsible for their own lives and their own choices.
Those who have had equal or better chances can't still at 30 (or older, in at least one of the above cases) can't credibly continue to blame 'society' for their bad life choices (and believe me, people with no good reason seem to do that endlessly - one of the aforementioned is a good for nothing relative of mine and it's his mantra). At some point it's only fair to expect grown adults to take responsibility for themselves.
You can think it's an "incredibly arrogant, ignorant statement" if you like, I left school before my 16th birthday, started work, got my own place at 17 (later, my first mortgage at 19), always paid my own way and never claimed a day of social security, I've just worked my ass off and by and large worked a fair bit harder than my contemporaries . Damn right I'm arrogant in that regard. If you want a better job, put the hours in till you're good enough and then go looking for it. What's standing in your way?
Incidentally, I think that's an outlook that most economic migrating (who are of course genuinely at a disadvantage, or they wouldn't be migrating) historically have the least difficulty with - they are already the one's who've been willing to up sticks and move to another country to find better work. Which is not something that most us will (thankfully) ever feel we have to go through.
W d?
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
Yes, in principle, it may be just barely possible that cloning could result in a mutation that causes overproduction of a protein with no noticeable ill effects in the animal, yet survives proteolytic conditions in the stomach and digestive tract, and results in a rare neurodegenerative disease in humans.
Of course, none of this really has anything to do with cloning, which is not particularly prone to produce mutations. Such a mutation could just as well occur spontaneously and be propagated by selective breeding. For that matter, it may have already happened. Such a mutation might be naturally present in any food that we are already eating. There are a number of rare neurodegenerative diseases. It is certainly possible that some of them are due to a protein that is present in wheat or potatoes or corn (all of which have limited genetic variability). If you are really paranoid about this sort of thing, you could avoid eating any food with low genetic variability.
But wait! Who knows how big a dose of the deadly protein it takes to induce the disease? Maybe it takes only a single dose! It is certainly theoretically possible. In that case, eating foods with high genetic variability is precisely the worst thing you can do, because it would increase your risk of exposure to the deadly protein! To be safest, you should be eating only cloned foods and other foods with low genetic variability!
Of course, hardly anybody is going to worry much about the possibility that there might be a harmful prion in the foods that they already eat. It may be a theoretical possibility, but next to other food related risks, such as heart disease and food-borne infections, it is fairly obvious that prions in the diet (which in the worst known case cause human disease only very rarely) are far, far down on the worry list. But tie it to a new technology, and suddenly it is seen as horribly plausible. Fundamentally, however, it is merely another rationalization for fear of change--an unreasoning paranoia about anything that is new and different.
The nuclear reactor reference is from a clasic one-time Saturday Night Live skit. Ed Asner was hosting and played the part of a retiring nuclear engineer. His last words to the people in the plant were "just remember, you can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor". After he leaves, the reactor overheats. An argument ensues over what he meant. With lines like: "We should flood the reactor core, because hey, you can't put too much water in a reactor" being countered by "we should drain the reactor core! You can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor. There must be too much in there. That's why it's overheating."
The team is split, so they put it to a vote, and "drain the reactor" wins.
The final scene is Ed sitting on the beach, sipping a drink. A nuclear explosion appears in the distance. The waiter aks about it and he explains that it must be a test or something. His advice to the waiter? "just remember, you can't look too long at a nuclear explosion".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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
Unlike a carnivore, if you were to attempt to feed a herbivore only meat it would become very ill (typically weak, and blind) and soon after die from malnutrition. Of course, even by feeding them some meat (which they are not biologically equipped to deal with), it also makes them prone to diseases they wouldn't otherwise be at risk of - which can then be passed on to anything that in turn eats them. If cows are such herbivores, then why do they favor meat over grass when offered meat? They don't. Given a choice between a dead sheep or another dead cow and some grass, they will pick grass every time - like other sheep, they will stay well away from a dead sheep carcass in a field. They won't so much as nibble at the corpse. I'm guessing your not that familiar with cattle (I grew up in a house in the country and have seen enough dead sheep savaged by dogs).
Just as many cats will fight over chicken flavoured Quorn, they will only do so when tricked into thinking what they are eating is really something else (try getting a cat to eat a mushroom). Hardly surprising, as you can of course fool people that way too.