28 Dec 2006
FDA: No safety labels needed on cloned food

They're missing the point entirely: of course cloned meat is safe for human consumption. We eat identical twin cattle, sheep and hogs all the time, and they're genetically identical, which is all cloning is about.

The danger from cloned cows (or any genetically manipulated organism) come from the attack on bio-diversity that it represents. We've managed to reduce the diversity in livestock and other crops dramatically by selective breeding (and line breeding, or breeding in). Imagine the impact the "perfect cow" will have on the industry if it's available for cloning.

Why should you care? After all, perfect cows make perfect steaks, right? You should care if you'd like to keep eating, because reducing the biodiversity of a given population increases it's susceptibility to disease and genetic defects - livestock today is actually much less healthy than it was before programmed selective breeding began to be practiced on a large scale in the 19th century.

We're busy playing god on a scale heretofore undreamed of: because if we make just one serious screw up we're gonna be real hungry for a long, long time.

Meat and milk from cloned animals may not appear in supermarkets for years despite being deemed by the government as safe to eat. But don't be surprised if "clone-free" labels appear sooner.

(link) [CNN.com]

21:34 /Agriculture | 3 comments | permanent link