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Bill Would Require Labels on Cloned Food
ComeBack writes "Steaks, pork chops, milk and other products from cloned livestock would have to be clearly labeled on grocers' shelves under a bill pending in the California Legislature.
If passed, the requirement could be more stringent than federal rules. The Food and Drug Administration is poised to give final approval to meat and milk from cloned animals without any special labeling, though a bill introduced in Congress would require it."
Mini-Me: Are you a clone of an angel?
Foxxy Cleopatra: Ohhh how sweet. No, my mini-man, I'm not.
Mini-Me: Are you sure you don't have a little clone in you?
Foxxy Cleopatra: Yes I'm sure.
Mini-Me: Would you like to?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
What is the point of the label without any information regarding the risks?
Let me guess... this will be just about as useless as the "found in laboratory animals" label...
Just recently, the FDA has quietly changed the labeling requirements on using irradiation to package food with. Now, It is called pasteurization. Yup, just like Milk's process (which simply flash heats and cools the milk).
Do not get me wrong. I have no qualm about eating irradiated food. But I do believe that I should get to know what I am eating. As it is, it bother me that the markets are required to show that a fish comes from china (as it should), but a dog food with imported products such as Wheat Glutin can be labeled as made in America/Canada.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
No, I wouldn't thanks. I cant taste the onions in moms stew if you don't point it out, and I cant taste the genetic residue from molly the cloned sheep in my lamb chops if you don't point that out either so be quiet and let me eat in peace.
What exactly does a somatic cell nuclear transfer event taste like anyway? Chicken?
"Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to account for the accomplishments of genius." -Heinlein
...because just about everything in the whole store would have a sticker on it.
Apples? Cloned. Potatos? Cloned. Bannanas? Cloned.
Most commercial strawberries are propagated via runners.
Corn is a freak hybrid. Always has been.
And yet a bunch of kook Californians are trying to use cloning to stoke fear in consumers.
Never say the hard left isn't as anti-scientific as the hard right.
I'm not for markets, but I do know how they work. They require the consumer to have full knowledge of the products they might buy.
As such I think that in this present society, all modified organisms (genetically modified via the addition or removal of genes or whatever) should be clearly labelled. Treatments (such as irradiation) should be clearly labelled and so on.
Sure they can ring the company, but do you really think the company will tell the truth, or if they do say it such a manner that the consumer can understand?
This is (one) why capitalism needs government, because consumers cannot get information without government regulation.
Yes labelling might cause consumer backlash, but isn't that what the market is about? Providing what the consumer wants?
I wank in the shower.
...why aren't people complaining about the originals? After all, a clone is (literally) exactly the same.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
All the following is IMHO.
I think labels are a good thing; consumers can educate themselves if they want to and they have all the relevant info available.
I think having food labeled whether it's genetically modified is also helpful.
I'm always looking for food that has been obtained using fair trade practices.
I also look for food that has been obtained using sustainable and eco-friendly practices.
My only choices now are to go to the local organic/natural food store and internet stores, not only for food but for environmentally friendly household products (and others).
cloning an unmodified strain of cattle, while not wise in terms of failsafing your herds, will at least produce the exact same natural cows.
research has been showing genetically modified foods may be detrimental to your health, and yet no label for them.
i guess government "concern for safety" only applies when the industry to be targetted doesnt have billions in revenues.
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Personally, if I were a dairy farmer, I'd start up a brand with cloning as a gimmick. Maybe even make a witty commercial with a uneducated-looking farmer talking about the intricacies of selecting only the best dairy cows that naturally produce the best milk, and then cloning the hell out of them.
"That there's Bessy. She's the best cow we've ever had. Produces the best milk you've ever tasted, and lots of it too. So we had her cloned. That whole barn there is full of Bessys. Heck, it's better 'n pumpin' 'em all full a hormones and whatnot. We got the technology. It's just smart business sense, y'know?"
Really, the milk probably wouldn't taste better than any other brand, but it's a neat little gimmick to squeeze some product differentiation out of such a profitless, commodity market. Plus, it really is genuinely better than pumping all your cows full of shitty hormones that end up in people.
I could swear that i read this article on slashdot before ... i just can't find the link ...
Untill they figure out that we're not only killing the animals, we're killing them over & over again.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I can't really see a reason against this except cost and regulation. Honestly I wouldn't care.
Really it's not for you (unless you want it) it's for the people who are morally opposed to certain things. You can do it for Kosher food, why not have it for cloned food (and possibly genetically enhanced food). The fact is there's going to be people against cloned food, and those people will choose not to buy cloned food, why not make it easier so they don't have to bitch. Let them go be elitists.
Personally I'm interested in a chicken that doesn't taste like chicken, hell find me a way to get lettuce that tastes like bacon and I'll start eating healthy. But that's a different story (as well as meat that automatically regenerates what ever portion I eat of it).
My thoughts are that consumers SHOULD be aware of what they are eating, and they should be able to choose what to eat themselves. It may be that while not worried about the health impact of cloned meat, a consumer may have ethical concerns about scientists tinkering to produce cloned animals.
What I want to know though, is what happens to the offspring of cloned animals? Is their meat also labelled? If the offspring were the result of a pairing of two cloned animals, then presumably they also have cloned genes floating through their bodies. If the parents are unhealthy, then presumably the offspring are too.
What about the pairing of a cloned animal with an uncloned one? What do you do about their offspring?
If an animals is just 1/4 or 1/8 or 1/256th cloned, does it still get a warning?
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
If enough* people are concerned about it, then it makes sense to label accordingly. If I weren't a vegetarian, then I'd have no problem paying less for cloned meat, as I think it's highly unlikely that cloning could result in any danger to the consumer. If you feel differently, then you should be allowed to opt out - which is what labeling allows.
* enough should be a pretty low bar as labeling isn't that expensive. Maybe 1% = "enough", but I'm just making up numbers here.Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Now I KNOW I should lay off the /. for a little while. The first thought that came to mind when I saw the title was "What the heck does Microsoft have to do with the food industry??????" :-P
As an agrologist that grew up in the dairy industry, I can tell you right now this is one of the most laughable initiatives to come along in a long time. Too bad the people proposing this don't have half a clue about how we use genetics in the production of livestock products. THERE WILL BE NO MEAT OR MILK COMING FROM ANY CLONED ANIMALS FOR A LONG TIME. These people are wasting everyone's time.
Even though the original and cloned are geneticly identical! Talk about picky!
And who is he, to "require" anything?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Genetically insert the label into the fruits DNA? Saves a lot of time.
It'll be useless once I get my 3D fruit photocopier anyway.
Task Mangler
They've been smoking cloned dope for well over 20 years, without much protest or concern. Essentially all, or nearly all, marijuana is grown from cloned stock. You'd think that would assuage their fears somewhat.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
There are a lot of people with moral objections to cloning of any kind. They believe it is playing God. Whether you or I agree is neither here nor there. While I might disagree with many veiws of, say, a conservative Christian, I think they have as much right to know whether the food they buy conflicts with their beliefs as anyone else. Jews and Muslims don't eat pork, Hindus don't eat beef. This generally gets respected. Anyone remember McDonald's getting in trouble for not making it known they were using beef lard to fry their fries? I can't imagine how horrible it would feel to be Hindu and find out that your potatoes containted literal sacred cow. I think many people would feel the same about their meat being cloned, and they should have the choice not to eat it.
I was more or less hinting that we could keep track of good batches of steaks, but to each their own.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
for some reason, this reminds me of playing Yuri's Revenge. hehe, taking the guys that come out of the cloning vats and sending them to the grinders... Mmmm... soylent green is my kind of people
Whoops, sorry, I thought this was to the other reply I made.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
This form of reproduction is not natural for animals (except maybe geeks). Cloning should be labelled because there are a bunch of unknowns and unnatural processes involved. Apart from potential health issues there are also ethical ones. As a consumer I might choose to not support cloning.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
A cloned cow is genetically the same as the first cow.
So I guess it would depend on how the first cow tasted.
I guess the worst that could happen is I eat some retarded inbred cow or something, but I'm sure plenty of cows are retarded and I've eaten 'em.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
How does a cloned animal's meat differ from a non cloned animals? Plants are cloned all the time, why not meat?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
There's a scientific consensus that GM foods are safe.
We should listen to a "scientific consensus" when they say climate change will kill us all, but we shouldn't listen to them when they say GM foods are safe?
Okay so we ignore it, in 10 years time we find out cloned meat increases your chances of prostate cancer. Then what?
We label shit because people may wish to avoid it, maybe you should check out people's allergy diets and see just difficult it is for people like that. We already have to work out why the hell ham (yes ham, like pig cooked and cut up) contains 12 types of chemicals and still uses milk protien for some unknown reason, so maybe we'd like to know if that ham had cloned meat in it which may cause us problems too.
I like muppets.
Eventually, of course, we'll discover a way to genetically engineer an animal that wants to be eaten, and can express said desire clearly and eloquently, at which point we can finally put all the "cruelty to animals" arguments behind us for good.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
And why's he always telling me what to do?
One man's constant is another man's variable.
I rest my case, they should require labeling.
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Clones are, when all is said and done, nothing else but a time-shifted identical twin.
Except, as several people have pointed out, the clones tend to have shorter life spans and weaker immune systems. They might have identical genes, but something else is going on that is not identical. There's apparently more to the genes in a cell than simply the GATC spelling of the DNA.
Until it's worked out, I'd rather have a label telling me that the food may be from a compromised animal.
This post reminds me of pseudo-intellectuals who are very proud of themselves, but don't have jobs.
It's been a long time.
As long as it tastes good and doesn't kill me (right away).
Victory shall be mine!
Rather than banning cloned food altogether, they're simply informing consumers which is cloned and which is not. It's entirely possible that in the next 10, maybe 15 years, eating non-cloned food will be relegated to the same type of people who eat organic food today.
Then if you bought a particularly tasty steak you could remember to look out for others from copies of the same cow in future.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Can someone tell me what I as a consumer am supposed to think when I see the label? I know one should do some research but what is the gist of it? Should I prefer or avoid the clones? Are the clones supposed to be cheaper or more expensive? Do I really care?
I love finding weird fruits. I've eaten quite a few ugly's in my time.
It seems the US is remarkably homogenous in their fruit tastes. I found target had lychees once and the checkout clerk didn't know what to do with them.
The US badly needs more passionfruit. It seems odd that in colorado they are usually about 4 times the price that they are in the UK when you can grow them in florida.
I can look at the prices of Kosher hot dogs when compared with others and see the Kosher ones cost more. Now, I think Kosher hot dogs are a lot better, but they cost more. If the difference was the difference between skipping a meal or not, I might not want the extra cost.
What a government mandated label, inspection, certification and all that goes with it means is that all products have the added expense. You see, whether or not some product is from a cloned animal, it would still need to be certified one way or the other. These costs are going to be passed on to the consumer, and not just consumers in California. So this is California passing a law that affects everyone.
And, the whole point of this is to bring to light a rather unscientific paranoia. If this is really the point, why not just a label that says all such products may be unsafe for consumption and have unknown, possibly cancer-causing effects? I know it keeps people out of stores when they see these new California labels.
Clarus? What's that? I know of Claris though.
Labelling genetically altered foods would certainly be nice, but it seems a bit beside the point considering that it is currently illegal in the United States to test beef for Mad Cow disease.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Yes when it's the twin brother that is doing the work that you want to get paid for.
Being a consumer is very difficult now with all the misdirections presented in labels. Not just for food but almost everything. The elections are right around the corner, do you feel you are getting truth in labels?
So labeling is certainly not only welcomed but badly needed. Truth in labeling is essential for consumer confidence. It is also needed to be able to make a purchase as an informed consumer.
Otherwise why label meat as anything else but meat? I mean what difference does it make if it is cow's meat or lamb's meat or pig's or horse's? Why bother with Kosher cow meat vs non-kosher cow meat?
Although I can see non-cloned meat will be the one that is labeled as such, and will sell for higher, similar to organic foods now.
The number of food allergies increased after we had genetic engineering of food, think what it will increase to after we allow cloned meat.
I already have some bad food allergies, I don't need any more. Eating meat used to be a lot safer than eating genetically engineered fruit and vegetables for me, but now with cloned meat I might have allergies to cloned meat, after you genetically engineer food and clone meat, we people with food allergies won't have anything left to eat. What is there to eat that isn't genetically engineered or cloned these days, rocks, dirt, water, seaweed? They're killing me, with science!
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Cow meat is different from lamb meat is different from pigs meat, etc.
There is, however, no difference between the meat of one lamb and its clone. At least no more difference than there would be between any two different lambs that happen to be monozygotic.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The clone is not arrived at by the same means as the original. Various genes in the inserted dna need to get switched on/off to trick the cell into thinking it's brand new because those genes regulate production of key chemicals in the early stages of growth. They are figuring this stuff out by trial and error. It's entirely possible this can have unintended effects (not to mention the electric shock to trick the cell into thinking it's been fertilized).
Why worry about cloned meat. You've been eating cloned fruit all your life. You have to be an agricultural scientist to have ever eaten an orange that wasn't cloned. Every apple in the markets is cloned. So are a lot of the other fruits. All the giant strawberries are cloned. Why single out meat?
I could understand if the problem was geneticly modified meats. The geneticly modified fruits, vegetables and meats most of us eat have been modified over thousands of years, so there has been extensive product testing. Newer GM's haven't been through such rigorous tests. In a hundred years, the bad ones will be gone, and what's left will be safe. We need that safety testing. But a clone is the same as the origional. If the origional cow or chicken was good to eat, so is the clone. There may be some real worry about future genetic diversity, but for the meat on your plate, it's too late for that to be a real problem. The only unmodified natural food most people ever eat or even see is seafood. We're running out of that.
Only hunters and gatherers eat anything that hasn't been modified from it's origional form. We can't all be Bushmen. Without modified foods, the Earth would only support a couple of million inhabitants. So, why complain? Your about 6,000 years too late.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
i'll be somewhat surprised if this bill passes since a federal bill last year here in the states made it so that foods can be up to 75% genetically engineered/modified and they still can be labeled organic! (lobbyists were/are cashing in on the "organic" boom as a marketing ploy for making more money).
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/ Ron Paul for President 2008 http://www.infowars.com/
They're different animals but they're not different when you compare meat to meat (just muscle made up of amino acids).
But as already established cloned animals are also different since they have weaker immune systems and shorter life spans.
If it's a clone it's a normal animal, if the procedure to do the cloning works correctly... with the same dna as it's older sibling, like somehow having twins that were born months or years apart. How that dna is expressed as genes and proteins, etc is not predetemined... so a cow cloned from a white cow with a big black patch over it's eye will probably have a black patch or patches somewhere but not necessarily over the eye. A clone is not a mutant or genetically engineered... just genetically replicated (same as invitro or regular sexual reproduction).
So if you pair up two clones from the same dna parent... well it's the same as pairing up two siblings... could be a problem. Pair up two clones from separate dna parents... no problems.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Protein (including any DNA, unless you're swallowing a. pylori bacteria) is broken down in the stomach under the action of acid and pepsin, into constituent amino acids. At this point, the specific genotype of the cow becomes a moot question. It's gone. The only health question post-breakdown is whether a toxin is present in the meat.
The diseases you describe occurring in cloned animals, due to abnormalities in their genomes as a result of cloning, are genetic in nature. The are not communicable any more than I could give you Multiple Sclerosis or Sickle-Cell Anemia by breathing on your neck. To suggest cloned meat poses some kind of nebulous danger to humans when it is passing inspection is utter foolishness. Show us how; come up with a theory and evidence of transmission. Otherwise, kindly shut up.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
I'm always looking for food that has been obtained using fair trade practices.
So you look for the fair trade label on foods. But do you actually know what standards a company has to follow in order for its food to be 'fair'. Or do you just assume all of the requirements are things that you support?
If you just look for a label (or the absence of a label) without actually understanding what that label means you're not really an informed consumer.
PS: I don't mean you specifically. I'm only bringing this up because I know that very few people actually know what the fair trade standards are, but a lot of people only by fair trade coffee.
Animal cloning involves remove genetic material from 1 cell and discarding, removing genetic material from another cell and inserting into first cell. In addition, using various methods, gene expression is altered to trick the genetic material into thinking it is at this initial stage of development when i reality it came from a mature cell. This altering of gene expression is critical because otherwise it will not produce the correct chemicals for development, it thinks it's already done that once (which it had). They are learning this process by trial and error.
This is far more complex than what has been going on for centuries in plants.
Please take this the right way when I say go do some research and understand the topic. The clone is not exactly the same, not by a wide margin. The scientists are hard at work trying to figure out why not.
will at least produce the exact same natural cows.
Google is your friend, read up, they are not the same.
imagine labeling your petry dish (or something more advanced) beef as a "murderless beef" this could make a LOT of hippie vegans to change to your thing
It may or may not be a good idea to label foods from cloned animals; but if so, isn't there more reason to label transgenic foods? I may be wrong, but I under the impression that food from genetically modified plants and animals is not labeled in the States, and there is more reason to be worried about those, IMO.
you have no idea what you are currently eating. So why the double standard?
GMO foods, irradiated foods, cloned foods...there is no significant reason to believe any of them are unsafe. These issues are like global warming with the political parties reversed, with the left now being the ones who just can't stand the fact that the science keeps coming up against their pre-conceived wishes.
Cloned meat sources simply aren't economically viable. Clonal populations are more susceptible to epidemics as they have no genetic diversity, are expensive to produce (and would still be even if the process could be done on a factory line) and can produce only slight advantages over current breeding methods (e.g. artificial insemination, traditional breeding techniques). Keeping a sample of cells from each animal slaughtered and selecting which to clone and use for breeding based on factors measured after death such as tenderness of the meat, shelf life and such could be useful but I can't think of any other practical use for cloning in food supply. This wouldn't involve eating cloned animals as the clones would be breeding stock only. This whole debate is pointless!
The folks pushing this don't want the labels so that they can avoid cloned meat. Anyone who really cares about it can buy from sources that target them (fx. the Trader Joe's chain). What they are interested in is making the average non-caring consumer think that there's something wrong with cloned meat, since there's what appears to be a warning label on it, and thus deter producers from using cloning.
That the FDA is set to allow sale of cloned meat without special labelling means that they've determined that it's not a distinction pertinent to anyone's health. That makes it the secular equivalent of a religious dietary restriction. The costs associated with making sure that the meat in a package isn't cloned should fall on those who care about it, not those who don't. If enough people do want badly enough to avoid cloned meat, specialty stores and sections within stores will cater to that. But it's not a health concern, so it shouldn't be depicted as such on the label. There are "contains nuts" labels because people can have serious allergic reactions to them. But there aren't big red "Warning! Not Kosher!" and "Not Halal!" labels on ham, nor "Contains Beef!" or "Contains Caffeine!" stickers on sausages and energy drinks despite devout Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Mormons not wanting to consume those things. Orthodox Jews pay a premium for kosher products, since they're the ones to whom it matters. So do people who want organic produce or "fair trade" coffee. And so should people wanting to avoid cloned meat, for the same reason: they're the ones wanting something different from the norm for other than objective health reasons.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
"Meat certified to contain not more than .005% human content."
Think of it as a 21st century extension of "Product created in a facility that processes peanuts and other nuts."
Check out this article on Cultured Meat
Very interesting. Wouldn't mind a "meat locker" in the house full of ribeye and strip steak.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
(It's a joke. Laugh. I'm referring to the kashrut's 1:60 accidental mixture rule)
Or does any headline starting with "Bill would require..." make me - by reflex - think Gates is up to his old world domination tricks again?
"Soylent Green is made of cloned people! It's made of cloned people!"
oh marmalade.
Are there really people who are morally opposed to kosher food?
Isn't the idea of requiring labels for cloned food more akin to requiring labels for all non-kosher food?
Isn't kosher-labelling more of an allowance than a requirement?
Aren't all of the non-clone producers (who pushing this legislation) already free to label their products as "Clone-Free", just like `Cage-Free' eggs or `Organic' foods?
They could even form a `Clone-Free Consortium' to buy a "Clone-Free" trademark, just like the kosher-authorities have done.
Requiring clone-labelling seems much more like requiring that...:
* all non-kosher foods must be labelled
* all non-organic foods must be labelled as such
* cage-raised eggs must be labelled as such
-rozzin.
Why should cloned food be more dangerous than the original? It's of course not. It's exactly the same.
However, with genetically modified food the story is different. There you really don't know what you get. And you would think they considered to label this? Nah. Not in the USA.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
How can BILL require this? Aren't Vista's licensing policies strict enough? Argh! I can't believe the government would let anyone get away with this.
In Soviet Russia, Cloned food eats you!
Sorry, I've been dying to do a Soviet Russia joke, and I had to get it out of my system, I feel...better now. It was worth the -15 "Retarded Buttmunch" mods
-
Shock the Monkey wasn't a song, it was a proverbial statement about Michael Jackson's lifestyle...
A news clip from the company that started this controversy....
e _press_mar2007.html
http://www.creekstonefarmspremiumbeef.com/news_bs
ARKANSAS CITY, KS (March 29, 2007) - Creekstone Farms Premium Beef ("Creekstone") announced today that the U.S. Department of Agriculture ("USDA") must allow private industry to test cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("BSE" or "mad cow disease").
According to a ruling from U.S. District Judge James Robertson of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, the USDA's "prohibition of the private use of rapid test kits to screen cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy is unlawful." (Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, LLC v. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, et al., Civil Action No. 06-0544).
"We are very pleased with the ruling handed down by the Court and we stand ready to work with the USDA," stated Dennis Buhlke, Creekstone's President and CEO, "This decision confirms the position Creekstone has taken for over three years that the USDA should not prevent businesses from responding to their customers' demands for more information about their products, such as BSE testing."
The Court stayed the effective date of its ruling until June 1, 2007, to allow USDA time to determine whether to appeal. Creekstone already has built, with the advice of BSE-testing experts, a state-of-the-art laboratory and is positioned at this time to implement its stated plans for BSE testing of some or all of the cattle it processes at its Arkansas City, Kansas plant.
The ruling held that USDA has authority to regulate the use of diagnostic tests in general, but that it lacks authority to prohibit the private use of BSE test kits, which are not used in the treatment of BSE, but are used on cattle that are already dead to see if they had significant levels of BSE infection. Noting that many other countries test large numbers of healthy-appearing cattle for BSE at slaughter, Judge Robertson suggested that USDA's stated concerns about the conclusions consumers might draw from private BSE testing were not within USDA's statutory areas of responsibility.
The truth is that "cloned beef" is not from cloned animals! Cloned animals are far too expensive to eat. What is called "cloned beef" is from the offspring of cloned bulls. A prize bull's semen fetches a fortune, and his cloned offspring are worth even more. Once you've paid $15,000 for such a clone, you certainly wouldn't want to eat him. You eat his children, and their meat is called "cloned beef".
m ar04,1,6731897.story?coll=la-news-science
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-clone4
i'm planning a "Cloned Stinky Meat" field experiment for summer '07.
oh marmalade.
So, let's say you're a breeder of prized Belgian Blue bulls. You have your best bull, with the lowest amount of myostatin cloned, not for eating, but for breeding purposes.
So now our intrepid cattle rancher has a breeding facility with 5 or 10 or 20 or more nearly (but not exact I know, I know) identical bulls, just waiting for the parade of willing cows.
Say the rancher mates this bull's clones with cows produced through (more) normal means. Will the direct progeny from that bull's clones (not exact, I know) have to be labled as 1/2 clone? What about their indirect progeny 2, 3, 4 or more generations down the road. Does having even one clone in your heriditary tree make your succulent and ever so lean flesh forever suspect?
Man, now I'm hungry for a burger!Your post reminds me of someone who has nothing better to do than criticize people for making the joke before they could.
Lets face it, most Americans are more likely to take damage from Fat and Sugar than from clone food ( the former has passed smoking as cause of death I believe). Instead of pushing for labelling cloned food, stick a priminent energy-content label on each product. Now I don't mean the tiny 8pt font ones that are already there. Make it half the packaging, on the front side. People will still ignore it, but it might encourage producers to keep the fat levels down so they can have lower number on the front of their product.
Why bother with the whole animal, when you can produce only the edible parts, with none of the hassle and hazard of the digestive system and its contents (mmm E. coli), the nervous system and it's ethics and morality complications, gristle, bone, hoof, hair or snout?
Clonal meat should just be meat: lean and well toned, yet tender and tasty. A matrix with a consistent arrangement of adipose cells and muscle cells and gaps for nutrient solution to flow through (maybe some RBCs for juice colour and iron content) does not seem like an impossible engineering challenge.
"Texturized animal protein" (to adapt the meat substitute crowd's term) does not need to be attached to an actual brain-equipped animal, willing or otherwise.
Just so you know, I agree with you, presuming they can overcome the development issues. (You can't just clone meat; it has to actually be used to have the right taste and texture. They're working on simulating that but it's a difficult thing to get right.)
I was trying to avoid making the Douglas Adams / "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" reference too obvious for fear of spoiling the joke, although I see from the replies that I need not have bothered. The bit about the Restaurant at the End of the Universe includes an animal similar to what I described, one that desired nothing more than to be eaten and enjoyed and which could -- and did -- explain this wish to the customers. I had thought that on Slashdot of all places someone would recognize it.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat