FDA and cloned cows

 

The Food and Drug Administration, about a week ago, announced that the milk and meat from cloned animals are safe to eat and drink. The FDA said that the milk and the meat are “indistinguishable” from animals that are bred and raised in conventional methods. The decision removes the last big U.S. regulatory hurdle to marketing products from cloned livestock, such as cows and pigs.

So why has the FDA rushed the approval?

The FDA, in their normal haste to appease manufacturers so they can get their products to market, has again favored another industry over the concerns of the consumer.

Companies like ViaGen, a subsidiary of Exeter Life Sciences in Austin, Texas, and Cyagra, which offers livestock-cloning services to ranchers for replicating their most elite sires and dams, have been waiting several years for a final decision from the FDA.

 

In 2001, the FDA put a voluntary suspension on the sale of these items so they could begin their study of the risks that may be associated with food from cloned animals.

The findings by the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine, which will be published and made available, states that none of their studies show “any remarkable nutritionally or toxicologically important differences” in the meat and milk from cloned animals. The only problem with that is this: The industry is new and no long-term studies have been made, because they can’t be.

 

I’ll have a clone burger with fries to go

Coming to you soon (it will be a couple of years before they get the costs down), you may be eating a cloned burger with your fries, and you won’t even know it, because the FDA will not require any labels that say, “from cloned animals.”

The FDA is saying that a glass of milk and a hamburger from a cloned animal will taste exactly the same as those from naturally-bred animals, and that there are no differences.

But there are differences; big differences: A clone is created in a lab, to be an exact duplicate of an existing conventionally-bred animal.

 

With cloning also come ethical concerns that are not found in the conventional process of breeding. The process itself has a very high risk of birth defects, and the mere fact that it is created in a lab would make many wonder if this is morally acceptable.

Soon many will be faced with a choice: do I want to eat and drink products from cloned animals, or just avoid them altogether because of ethical reasons, or some other personal reason?

The FDA says that you, the consumer, will not have the option of knowing whether your meat and milk are from cloned animals. The FDA said that it has no plans to require labels. The FDA is saying that if you, the consumer, have an ethical or moral problem with clones, they also don’t care.

 

As a consumer of meat and milk by-products, I personally want to know what kind of food I am putting in my mouth, and where it comes from, or at least I want the option of being able to know, and I think that there are millions of people that feel that same as I.

I urge everyone who cares about what they eat, or anyone who may have an ethical or moral problem with cloned milk and meats, to contact elected officials and tell them to have the FDA require labels.