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FDA on Verge of Approving Cloned Livestock

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From the Wall Street Journal:

After more than six years of wrestling with the question of whether meat and milk from them are safe to eat, the Food and Drug Administration is expected to declare as early as next week that they are....

While many consumer groups still oppose it, the FDA declaration that cloned animal products are safe would be a milestone for a small cadre of biotech companies that want to make a business out of producing copies of prize dairy cows and other farm animals—effectively taking the selective breeding practiced on farms for centuries to the cutting edge.

Reacting to the news, New York magazine's Grub Street takes an unexpected stance on the issue:

The great problem of selling meat in restaurants is that, as in dating, there is no way to guarantee that you’ll get someone (or someone’s aged carcass) that you really like. So an ideal solution is to find one that you know is great and clone it.

Photograph from iStockphoto.com

6 Comments:

Okay, so cloned animal products are safe to eat. The real health issue is whether or not they're safe to overeat.

This isn't about safe. This is about being able to patent life and collect royalties. Monoculture is a setup to obliteration (think Irish Potato Famine as just one small in comparison example). Just because the FDA says it's okay doesn't mean it's a good idea. They've okayed a bunch of things that have been exposed in this last year. Nevermind that agribusiness trades executives with the government to serve as appointees at the FDA and USDA. What we don't know won't hurt them.

There are a lot of issues around clones (as well as many other issues being pushed by industry) and if would do us all well if we actually researched the pitfalls around them rather than just accept the company lines they provide via Madison Avenue so they can pocket your cash via Wall Street.

We can't unring a bell.

RE: " Just because the FDA says it's okay doesn't mean it's a good idea. "

Nor does it mean it's a bad idea?

The science involved is nearly impossible for an average educated person to understand, let alone argue, but substitution of political rhetoric for reasoned discussion doesn't enhance the argument in any direction.

Well heck, that's why I said it would do us all well if we actually researched some of the pitfalls around the issue. Don't need to come up with a negative (and I'd say false) label to define what I was saying in order to dismiss my words.

But, to get people started here's just a few resources to go to:

Organic Consumers Association

Some of the risks of cloning

The Type of company that would own the patents and collect the royalties (already has applications in for pigs)

Not to mention loss of diversity and monoculture (think Irish Potato Famine for that potential nightmare only on a much bigger scale).

Sustainable Table:

Health Concerns Despite claims that food from clones is safe, many believe that there has not yet been an adequate amount of research conducted to prove that this is true.ix Most assertions of this technology’s safety are based on a 2005 study on milk taken from just four cows and beef from only two cattle.x

What is clear is that many scientists believe cloning produces animals that are more likely to become sick than animals that are born naturally. Dolly the sheep, for example, developed premature arthritis and lung disease that led her creators to euthanize her after just six years—roughly half the lifespan of a normal sheep.xi

As of 2001, 95 percent of all cloning experiments ended in “disaster,” and there were “serious problems” with all five species of mammals that had been cloned at that point.xii Researchers involved in cloning have noted severe physical deformities that have occurred in cloned animals, including oversized navels, oddly-shaped heads (cows that have heads shaped like those of bulldogs), and malformed arteries.xiii Cloned animals tend to have more problems during childbirth, resulting in higher rates of death among mothers and children during birthing, xiv and they have also tended to exhibit disorders such as blocked intestines, immune deficiencies and diabetes.xv

The developmental and genetic abnormalities that tend to characterize cloned animals raise concerns about the use of cloning technology in food production. Dolly’s creator, Ian Wilmut, has stated that small imbalances in a clone’s protein, hormone, or fat levels could affect the safety and quality of its milk or meat.xvi

I could go really in depth but not sure that's appropriate here.

Won't hurt us a bit to spend a little more time letting the animals go through a few more generations to see what the effects are. They've really only been around for about a decade. What's another decade on the last 12,000 years we've been involved in agriculture?

Well heck, that's why I said it would do us all well if we actually researched some of the pitfalls around the issue. Don't need to come up with a negative (and I'd say false) label to define what I was saying in order to dismiss my words.

But, to get people started here's just a few resources to go to:

Organic Consumers Association

Some of the risks of cloning

The Type of company that would own the patents and collect the royalties (already has applications in for pigs)

Not to mention loss of diversity and monoculture (think Irish Potato Famine for that potential nightmare only on a much bigger scale).

Sustainable Table:

Health Concerns Despite claims that food from clones is safe, many believe that there has not yet been an adequate amount of research conducted to prove that this is true.ix Most assertions of this technology’s safety are based on a 2005 study on milk taken from just four cows and beef from only two cattle.x

What is clear is that many scientists believe cloning produces animals that are more likely to become sick than animals that are born naturally. Dolly the sheep, for example, developed premature arthritis and lung disease that led her creators to euthanize her after just six years—roughly half the lifespan of a normal sheep.xi

As of 2001, 95 percent of all cloning experiments ended in “disaster,” and there were “serious problems” with all five species of mammals that had been cloned at that point.xii Researchers involved in cloning have noted severe physical deformities that have occurred in cloned animals, including oversized navels, oddly-shaped heads (cows that have heads shaped like those of bulldogs), and malformed arteries.xiii Cloned animals tend to have more problems during childbirth, resulting in higher rates of death among mothers and children during birthing, xiv and they have also tended to exhibit disorders such as blocked intestines, immune deficiencies and diabetes.xv

The developmental and genetic abnormalities that tend to characterize cloned animals raise concerns about the use of cloning technology in food production. Dolly’s creator, Ian Wilmut, has stated that small imbalances in a clone’s protein, hormone, or fat levels could affect the safety and quality of its milk or meat.xvi

I could go really in depth but not sure that's appropriate here.

Won't hurt us a bit to spend a little more time letting the animals go through a few more generations to see what the effects are. They've really only been around for about a decade. What's another decade on the last 12,000 years we've been involved in agriculture?

Well heck, that's why I said it would do us all well if we actually researched some of the pitfalls around the issue. Don't need to come up with a negative (and I'd say false) label to define what I was saying in order to dismiss my words.

But, to get people started here's just a few resources to go to:

Organic Consumers Association

Some of the risks of cloning

The Type of company that would own the patents and collect the royalties (already has applications in for pigs)

Not to mention loss of diversity and monoculture (think Irish Potato Famine for that potential nightmare only on a much bigger scale).

Sustainable Table:

Health Concerns Despite claims that food from clones is safe, many believe that there has not yet been an adequate amount of research conducted to prove that this is true.ix Most assertions of this technology’s safety are based on a 2005 study on milk taken from just four cows and beef from only two cattle.x

What is clear is that many scientists believe cloning produces animals that are more likely to become sick than animals that are born naturally. Dolly the sheep, for example, developed premature arthritis and lung disease that led her creators to euthanize her after just six years—roughly half the lifespan of a normal sheep.xi

As of 2001, 95 percent of all cloning experiments ended in “disaster,” and there were “serious problems” with all five species of mammals that had been cloned at that point.xii Researchers involved in cloning have noted severe physical deformities that have occurred in cloned animals, including oversized navels, oddly-shaped heads (cows that have heads shaped like those of bulldogs), and malformed arteries.xiii Cloned animals tend to have more problems during childbirth, resulting in higher rates of death among mothers and children during birthing, xiv and they have also tended to exhibit disorders such as blocked intestines, immune deficiencies and diabetes.xv

The developmental and genetic abnormalities that tend to characterize cloned animals raise concerns about the use of cloning technology in food production. Dolly’s creator, Ian Wilmut, has stated that small imbalances in a clone’s protein, hormone, or fat levels could affect the safety and quality of its milk or meat.xvi

I could go really in depth but not sure that's appropriate here.

Won't hurt us a bit to spend a little more time letting the animals go through a few more generations to see what the effects are. They've really only been around for about a decade. What's another decade on the last 12,000 years we've been involved in agriculture?

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