Cloned Livestock to get FDA Clearance this week

[bronxiteforever]

By JANE ZHANG in Washington, JOHN W. MILLER in Brussels and LAUREN ETTER in Chicago
January 4, 2008; Page B1 Wall Street Journal

Get ready for a food fight over milk and meat from cloned animals and their offspring.

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.

Consumer wariness toward cloned food may lead to a backlash from opponents in Congress and other markets, such as the European Union, who are concerned that not enough data are available for a viable study on the safety of the products. There are also ethical worries because cloned animals tend to have more health problems at birth than conventionally bred animals.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119938649276665241.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[Mz Pip]

1. Blech.

Maybe the stuff is okay to eat but I think it's creepy. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.

I can only hope that the stuff will be labeled. If it isn't I guess I'll be eating a lot of seafood and drinking my coffee black.


Mz Pip
:dem:

[Mojorabbit]

2. I don't understand

why they are even doing this. Why not let the animals breed naturally. It has worked for thousands of years. What possible benefit can there be for cloning them?

[The2ndWheel]

3. Control, profit, production

What possible benefit can there be? What benefit could there be to controlling what makes up your product? What benefit could there be to being able to mass produce more of that product? What possible benefit could there be to owning the DNA of your product? What possible benefit could there be to making more and more people dependent on your product?

If we allow non-human animals to make other non-human animals naturally, it wouldn't benefit us. They would evolve to survive. We need them to remain as docile as possible so that we can throw them into meat grinders and conveyor belts without a fight. We need them to be nothing but a commodity. They can't exist for their own sake.

"Why not let the animals breed naturally. It has worked for thousands of years."

That really hasn't worked for thousands of years. Cows, pigs, chickens, we don't let them breed with a cow, pig, or chicken of their own choosing. Cloning is just the next step in our relentless desire to control life. That is the ultimate benefit.

[RC]

4. After the cloning is perfected, then they will be generically modified to get

the uniform specifications they want for easier slaughtering and machine processing. Cloning has a better image than GM or Frankinfoods does. That is why that is being done first. Make no mistake, the GM animals that are coming will be all cloned animals. They only have to live and appear healthy for less than 3 years. Probably much less with GM.

[flashl]

5. Why?

"Most consumers do not find this appealing," says Marguerite Copel, vice president of corporate communications at Dean Foods Co., one of the nation's largest milk producers, which says it won't sell any milk from cloned animals.

...

ViaGen and Trans Ova Genetics, another of the three livestock-cloning companies in the U.S., recently announced a voluntary tracking system that will help food makers, slaughterhouses and marketers to prove, if they choose, that they aren't selling such foods. The program doesn't cover the offspring of clones, however.

...

The meat industry is more bullish on cloned products than the dairy industry.

...

Many consumer groups and some members of Congress are vehemently opposed to cloned foods reaching grocery shelves.

...

U.S. food companies could face more trouble from European Union regulators and consumers, who are unlikely to respond favorably to the idea of eating cloned animals or their offspring. According to a recent poll, 55% of Italians think the EU should ban food made from cloned animals.