That does it, folks: As was expected last week, The FDA today officially declared certain cloned livestock safe to eat. From the L.A. Times: Initially, only a small amount of steaks, pork and dairy products derived from clones will become available in grocery stores. But over the next three to five years—after ranchers have time to clone their most prized animals and those clones are able to breed—the products will become routine on store shelves, industry executives said. Cloned cattle, pigs, and goats are aces to eat, the agency said, but as for cloned sheep—well, there's not enough info regarding them or other species for the government to OK. So put down your knives and forks if you were...
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Pitchforks are raised. The battle is on: Italian farmers fight cloned food....
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Said a document release Friday by the European Food Safety Agency: “It is very unlikely that any difference exists in terms of food safety between food products originating from clones and their progeny compared with those derived from conventionally bred animals."...
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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...
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Wired's Ben Paynter talks to ranchers, dairy farmers, and scientists about the business and science of cloned meat and milk. Although these products haven't yet been pushed onto the public, they may be seen in stores soon. Keeping clone offspring out of the food chain is "impossible to police," says Don Coover, president of bull semen company SEK Genetics....
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Business Week's Debate Room has short arguments for and against cloned food. Pro: "Instead of simply breeding more cattle and hoping that greater numbers will yield better beef, farmers can choose to a reproduce cows guaranteed to produce the highest-quality steaks." Con: "People smoked cigarettes for decades before the Surgeon General determined them harmful to the health. "We were told DDT was safe, we were told Thalidomide was safe, we were told Vioxx was safe," points out Mikulski." [via justhungry del.icio.us]...
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California proposes a bill to label cloned foods, which under current statutes can slip into the market incognito. Meat and milk from cloned livestock could reach the shelves by this spring, so senator Carole Migden argues that consumers have the right to know what they're eating. I love the picture, especially the green mustache on the kid! US Food Policy Blog gets into the meat of the matter here....
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