Posted on 01/20/2008 2:07:26 PM PST by SJackson
FDA confirms milk, meat from clones safe to eat
Moratorium on clones in food supply to continue as market adjusts
By Heidi Clausen Regional Editor
The Food and Drug Administration on Jan. 15 issued its final risk assessment on clones, confirming its earlier findings that milk and meat from cloned livestock is safe for human consumption.
Several years of studies have concluded that food from clones does not differ from from food from conventionally bred animals.
However, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's moratorium on milk and meat from cloned animals in the food supply will continue for an unspecified period to give the market time to adjust.
The moratorium will allow for continued study of the potential economic effects of clones on the market.
The offspring of clones will be permitted to enter the food supply immediately without special labeling.
Despite the agency's findings, surveys reveal that consumers still are not comfortable with the notion of buying foods produced from cloned livestock.
Dairy organizations worry that the inclusion of milk from clones could hurt overall milk consumption.
The two major U.S. cloning companies, Trans Ova Genetics of Sioux Center, Iowa, and ViaGen of Austin, Texas, last month unveiled a new national registry to track cloned animals.
Despite recent findings, few clones are likely to end up on store shelves, as they cost far more to produce than they would be worth at slaughter.
The cost to create a clone can range from $10,000 to $20,000, so it's more likely their offspring would join the food supply.
Heidi Clausen can be reached at clausen@amerytel.net.
For expanded coverage, see the next edition of The Country Today
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Cloned food products are a sight less troubling than genetically engineered ones (which aren’t troubling to me, btw).
Nothing against cloned food and I doubt if there is anything to worry about - In fact I’ll eat it if and when it is there. The fact of an FDA stamp of approval means less than nothing to me about the safety of this produce given their abysmal track record. The stamp appears to be at the behest of the highest bidder and often gives a false sense of security to consumers.
What this means to say is that the FDA and the big companies behind this are pushing to make big bucks irrespective of how “safe” it may be. Coming from the huge industrial complex known as modern day farming.
BTW don’t forget to sign up for NAIS. After all whether you are Republican or Democrat the nanny state government knows what is best for you.
I hope they have to label the stuff.
I dont want no frakenflesh.
And they know this from long term studies? No? I didn’t think so.
ICE CREAM CLONES FOR EVERYONE!
“I hope they have to label the stuff.”
They don’t, thats been part of the deal. The will be no regulations requiring them to label the product as being from a cloned animal.
Nor will they track animals who have been bred from cloned animals. So a few chicken/cow/pig generations from now you will have no idea if the DNA in you mean is Live or Memorex.
They are safe. The frankenfood hysteria is just that. Additionally, we should be irradiating our food like France does. Do so and watch Escherichia coli 0157:H7 poisoning incidents drop to almost zero.
“And they know this from long term studies? No? I didn’t think so.”
I’m hoping there will be enough demand that producers of non-cloned animals will label theirs appropiately.
LOL Have seen a few witty remarks today.
Good to see upbeat funny posts during the Mud Slinging season.
Nobody ever said politics was pretty.
Send in the clones.
Cloned food is a great source of consistent quality, but there remains the problem of Cellular aging. When Clone animals are born, their DNA begins to immediately fall apart (Aging). You’ll see 1 year old calves with the health problems and organ failure of an 8 year old cow.
Husbandry is a profession and skill that hasn’t really been consulted in this matter. And in general, Animal Husbandry is mostly ignored in the US in the first place.
I don’t want to eat any cloned meats. That much I know at this point. And it is much to do with the unknowns of that DNA issue you mention that specifically troubles me.
I’m not worried about meat/milk from cloned animals... I’d want to know it was from cloning, but other than that, it doesn’t bother me... Maybe with cloning, we can get rid of things like Mad Cow, Foot and Mouth disease, etc...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_husbandry
Meat; If YOU did not hunt/harvest it, there is a high probability it is domestic. Or simply put, a product of animal husbandry.
I think dairymen would take exception to your assessment. The dairy herds in the US are able to produce more milk each year with fewer animals because of the dairy industry’s obsession with husbandry and genetics.
I don’t think so — at least, not yet.
We still don’t know enough about TSE’s (transmissible spongiform encaphalopathies — a generic way to describe all of them — BSE, scrapie, CWD, CJD, etc) to know how they transmit yet.
FMD — FMD suffers from two problems: it mutates rapidly, and it spreads even more rapidly. So even if you could breed animals that would resist a specific serotype of FMD, there would be a new one to come along pretty quickly.
What you’d see with cloning is that rather than go through the laborious genetic selection for desired characteristics in (let’s use cattle as an example), once you hit a “winner” in the genetic lottery, you’d clone that animal, rather than use it in a breeding program hoping that the traits that made it a profitable animal were heritable.
Do a google for sperm sales in beef production. When you look at the ratings on each animal, you’ll see a term “EPD” — Expected Progeny Difference. What you’d ideally like to have when you hit a winner of a bull is that all male offspring from that bull would be winners too. But it doesn’t work like that, since the cow has some input into the situation.
With cloning, you’d have a new bull every X years, with the same (exactly the same) winning traits.
Now, where the problem will come is that when you start getting a lot of cloning going on, you lose heterogeneity that leads to “hybrid vigor” — which in animal herds provides something of a natural firewall against diseases coming into the herd and spreading like wildfire. Cloned herds will be highly susceptible to that one mutation of a disease that will waste the entire herd at once.
I don’t think you’ll see cattle/sheep/pig/etc producers jump on this cloning issue too much outside specific animals with outsized winning traits. ie, you’d see this in genetics producers’ herds, but not in production herds. If we do see it in production herds, we’ll quit seeing it as soon as there is some disease that wipes out entire cloned herds because of the lack of heterogeneity and the producers’ grandpappies tell ‘em “There was a reason why we crossed cattle... and you’ve just re-discovered it.”
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