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US FDA Deems Cloned Animals Edible
Coldeagle sends us the news that the US Food and Drug Administration has declared that meat from cloned animals is safe to eat. The agency decided that no labeling is necessary for meat or milk from cloned cows, pigs, or goats or their offspring. (Ironically the FDA didn't include cloned sheep in the announcement, claiming a lack of data, though the very first cloned animal was a sheep named Dolly.) The article notes that a couple of major food suppliers have already decided not to use any products of cloning, and that the groups opposed to cloning in the food chain will now concentrate their efforts on convincing more suppliers to boycott the business of cloning. The FDA noted that their focus groups and other public input indicated that about 1/3 of US citizens do not want food from cloned animals under any circumstances; another 1/3 have no objections; and another 1/3 fall somewhere in between.
And don't think you veggiesaurs are exempt. Have you ever eaten anything grown from a clipping of a plant? That's a clone.
And don't get me started on the beer drinkers who are quaffing yeast pee...
UTF-8: There and Back Again
... such that there are no degeneration of copies, then there are better things we can eat like HFCS filled foods..
Seriously there are worse things to eat that the FDA has approved. But still, considering gene therapy is at hand, it does make me hold caution to ingesting something that may contain genetic issues.
...it's just that like most people, you don't understand how "cloned" meat is produced. A cow clone can cost upwards of $5,000, but no one eats that cow. A highly productive cow is cloned, then used as breed stock, just like any other animal with good attributes. It's the offspring that are used to produce meat and milk. Really, the entire argument looks puerile and pointless when people flap their mouths without knowing even the basic information.
Animals bred for food don't procreate anyway. They get cut from the herd, moved into feed lots, fattened, sold and slaughtered. In the beef industry, it is about a 18-24 month process. The males get neutered when they are a few months old.
Very few animals bred for food get to actually remain as breeding stock. The females have a better chance since they can produce better feed animals for years. The breeding process is very tightly controlled. Consider what the sperm from a champion bull is worth. Likewise for a champion dairy bull.
No diversity is present in the industry. Everything is bred for a purpose. Nature has nothing to do with it.
These clones are not genetically identical to uncloned animals. The newborn clone has the same depleted count of telomeres that the fully-grown animal had when the clone's original tissue was taken from the original animal. But not the amount that a natural animal has when it's born. The adult clone will also have fewer telomeres in every cell than a natural adult.
We don't know that those lowered telomere counts affect the tissue in any way that affects the eater. But we also don't know that it doesn't affect us. We do know that the animals die much younger, because telomere countdowns are directly reflected in the aging process. So a "middle aged" cloned sheep is really like an old natural sheep. And there could very well be many other effects, some of which are much more subtle, some of which could be unhealthy. The FDA should not even allow sale of these animals for food until their hazards are disproven.
But we won't even be able to tell the basic difference by looking at the label. Because the food industry doesn't want us to know, because they have their reasons for cloning that have nothing to do with our health or safety.
That's shows what's unnatural about our government that's protecting these industries, rather than letting us decide how to protect ourselves, when the FDA won't.
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make install -not war
Yes, he is. Read your link. It may be on the FDA's web site, but it lists the responsibilities and powers granted to the Secretary of Agriculture, who is the head of the Department of Agriculture, not the Food and Drug Administration (which is an agency in the Department of Health and Human Services, led by the Secretary of Health and Human Services).
No, I have no idea why the FDA has law that doesn't concern them on their web site.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
What?
Dolly was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell. I think the first cloned animal (if you don't, not counting bacteria and other things that do it on their own) was a tadpole in the 1950s.