US FDA Deems Cloned Animals Edible 598
Coldeagle sends us the news that the US Food and Drug Administration has declared that meat from cloned animals is safe to eat. The agency decided that no labeling is necessary for meat or milk from cloned cows, pigs, or goats or their offspring. (Ironically the FDA didn't include cloned sheep in the announcement, claiming a lack of data, though the very first cloned animal was a sheep named Dolly.) The article notes that a couple of major food suppliers have already decided not to use any products of cloning, and that the groups opposed to cloning in the food chain will now concentrate their efforts on convincing more suppliers to boycott the business of cloning. The FDA noted that their focus groups and other public input indicated that about 1/3 of US citizens do not want food from cloned animals under any circumstances; another 1/3 have no objections; and another 1/3 fall somewhere in between.
What consumers really want to know... (Score:5, Funny)
Dan East
Re:What consumers really want to know... (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt it will take long for it to become priced right for these companies.
The real question is, how long is it before the average consumer becomes apathetic about buying and eatting cloned meat.
Re:What consumers really want to know... (Score:5, Funny)
I believe that would be a cloned-chicken-or-the-egg argument. Sorry, couldn't resist.
Re:What consumers really want to know... (Score:5, Insightful)
How many programmers do you know who have never put a bug in their code.
We know how those languages work and can mathematically analyze their operation.
There are so many interactions going on within an organism that we have little idea
how the 'code' we decide to inject is going to behave. The significance of this is
not in the animal or plant being modified, but in their offspring.
The lack of restraint on GM food is ridiculous. Is anyone surprised the FDA allows
cloned food if they allow GM food?
Re:What consumers really want to know... (Score:5, Insightful)
Many people complain that we don't know with 100% certainty what will happen with genetically modified foods. But it's a mistake to think that we have ever had that sort of certainty concerning our foods, modified or not. And today with GMOs we have at least as much if not much more knowledge about our foods and the changes we're making to them as we ever have had.
Also, I think many people discount the benefits of engineered foods too quickly. Without modern, engineered, high yield crops much of the world would be starving today.
Certainly there's room for caution and rational skepticism, but it's silly for educated people in the 21st century to be imagining that Frankenstein is going to grow out of a corn field.
Re:What consumers really want to know... (Score:5, Insightful)
The original idea was robust crops that would work in the third world, where death from lack of food is an everyday occurrence.
Alas for them the corporations discovered that it made cheap food that they could make good profits on, and the biotech companies realised this was an idea way to control farmers worldwide by forcing them to purchase a constant supply of (patented) seeds, not replanting with saved seeds as has been the practice since farming was first developed.
Basically it went from a wonderful idea to just another way for money to be made.
Someone else will have to find the cites for this if you want them.
Peanuts (Score:4, Insightful)
What's to say some variant of a protein created in a GM crop won't trigger massive alergic reactions in a very small proportion of the population.
How would you suggest that they test GM food against that ? Other than stick it on the shelves and see who dies?
Re:Peanuts (Score:5, Insightful)
You still see peanuts in the supermarket dont you?
Anyway, it would have to be a pretty small percentage for it to be missed in testing.
Too small for it to be a problem.
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With hard work and a little bit of luck, I think we can genetically engineer foods to kill *way* more people than cars.
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We still want to mitigate the risks as much as possible, but panicking because somebody, somewhere might possibly die at some point in the future because of something is a little ridiculous.
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Maybe these people know what they are allergic to. The problem with GM food being not labled at all (let alone with the details of exactly how it has been modified) is that they may think something is safe to eat when it isn't.
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Why is this a problem? Why do you always assume that crops modified by nature are always safe to eat? They're usually subtly different with every generation.
Food that's been genetically modified by nature isn't labeled. You know, by radiation in the pistol or stamen. Or in the testes or ovaries. Or by all of a certain strain of f
Re:Peanuts (Score:4, Insightful)
Food that's been genetically modified by nature isn't labeled. You know, by radiation in the pistol or stamen. Or in the testes or ovaries. Or by all of a certain strain of food dying off because it was less resistant to disease."
I don't think you understand what puts most people off. The issue isn't against selective breeding or natural variance. Every organism that reproduces sexually (and yes, this does include plants) is going to show variance in the next generation. That is the nature of sexual reproduction (half of the chromosomes from one parent, half from the other). Creating a strain of plants that have higher yield from selective breeding is generally not considered a bad thing.
What freaks many people out about GMO food is when genes from different species (and not even closely related species either) are getting inserted into organisms. Like the insertion of a fish gene into a strawberry plant. It is situations like there where the possibility for unintended consequences increases, along with the difficulty in tracing the source of issues.
If I am not allergic to strawberries, and decide to purchase some the next time I go to the store, I would like to think that I can be reasonably sure that I will not suddenly break out in hives. If those strawberries are labeled a GMO food, then I can set that expectation aside, or choose not to eat them. If they are labeled in detail enough to explain what makes them a GMO (what genes did they add, change, or remove) then consumers can make an informed decision about whether eating that particular GMO food is a good idea. If something has a gene from a peanut added, someone who has an extreme sensitivity to nuts might choose to avoid that food, and therefore avoid possible unexplained death due to no one knowing that they inadvertently consumed a protein that their system rejects.
Labeling GMO foods allows for accountability and for consumers to make conscious, informed choices about their diets.
Re:What consumers really want to know... (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea of genetically enhancing food isn't new. It's been done for centuries - we just know a bit more on how it works. Selective breeding is STILL the number one way that scientists use to genetically enhance our food.
I don't have a problem with cloned food, or genetically modified food. If it's better for us, and it still gives us nutrients, I'm all for it.
What I'm really looking forward to is the ability to manufacture beef without growing an entire cow. Wouldn't it be great if they could create a delicious, juicy steak without having to murder animals to get it?
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"diseased insects?" Care to give an example? Most what I know about insects and genetically-engineered crops is the BT toxin added to the corn genome. The corn emits Bt, which is then consumed by corn borer larvae, who die. It's a pretty interesting thing, except that you now have Bt toxin inextricably laced into commodity corn.
Aventis Crop Sciences patented a variant of Bt corn, called StarLink corn [wikipedia.org]. It contained a variant of the Bt toxin that was cons
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Yes – a few seconds after the engine of the oil-tankship stopped to work, nothing hugely alarming had come to light. Unfortunately, the vessel crashed into the pier after travelling for a few kilometers.
CC.
Re:What consumers really want to know... (Score:5, Interesting)
Lets say, for example, that a plant species, over millions of years, is slowly affected by small changes that gradually turn it into a plant we know and love today like corn. This plant has evolved a certain level of genetic stability against mutations, such that during the normal process of crossbreeding and mutation, the possible results that can be achieved will mostly be stable. This is important.
Now, take a piece of genetic code and inject it in there sporadically. The plant now consists of several distinct chunks of information that are forced to be related to each other through horizontal gene transferral. Now, after months of testing (note the first process took millions of years), we deem it is safe to eat and put it into the wild. The plant works better than before because it was designed as intended. This is great, but there's a problem. There's no control over the plants in the wild.
Once the gene is in the wild, and the plants cross pollinate with non-GMOs, the genes are out of our control. The genes will remain in our food chain for as long as that kind of plant remains in the food chain. Now, maybe you trust the groups who produce these GMOs to have done due diligence on their testing of the stuff, but with as complex of a chemical system as an organism, and something as complex as genetic code, I think we're just kicking ourselves.
The number of plants needed to create individual problem genes that are beneficial to the plants but hurt us are there. How many kernels of GMO corn does it take to feed Rhode Island. How about NY? The rest of the US? Genetics is a search and optimization problem. Take genes, randomize as needed, preserve helpful ones, repeat. And the problems will arise much faster than normally because its no longer a search between combinations of stable genes that have undergone the same search pattern. There is new data in the mix and it doesn't have the support of natural redundancy that the old plant or donor animal had.
I have no problem with GMOs if they CANNOT reproduce on their own. Hiding the genes is a non-solution because the genes are still in the code. The issues arise from the presence of the genes in the code, and over several decades.
We know that with months of testing, nothing bad can happen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_orange [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polychlorinated_biphenyl [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide [wikipedia.org]
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Except this is patently false. Most of the crops we eat today (including certified "organic" crops) have been produced by mutation breeding. Meaning that the changes in the plant didn't happen over millions of years - They happened instantly, when the plant was subjected to intense amounts of man-made radiation, and/or highly toxic chem
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Well, normally I tell smarmy dorks to type "mutation breeding" into Google, but that might be too complicated for you:
http://www.amazon.ca/Mutation-Breeding-Theory-Practical-Applications/dp/0521036828/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200536610&sr=1-6 [amazon.ca]
https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no38082.htm [vedamsbooks.com]
ht [mext.go.jp]
It's Not Cost Prohibitive... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's Not Cost Prohibitive... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's Not Cost Prohibitive... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Perfectly-immune organism" cannot exist. That's an oxymoron. All life is just an arms race. The attacking organisms need to feed to survive and will adapt to your defenses. Then defenses have to adapt to the new attack vector. For examples, see the super-resistant MRSA? Or other superbugs? The same thing will happen to any "supercow". That's why you can't have a perfect anti-biotic - eventually something will be resistant to that anti-biotic. After all, the cells of the organism that is using anti-biotic are not all killed by it
Oh, and bananas have an immune system too.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7117/abs/nature05286.html [nature.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innate_immune_system [wikipedia.org]
Antibiotics. Also, MHC. (Score:3, Insightful)
This doesn't happen... the reason animal cells aren't killed by antibiotics is because of fundamental differences between eukaryotes and prokaryotes. The ribosomes [nih.gov], used to make proteins are very different. Also, other antibiotics attack DNA gyrase [wikipedia.org] and the formation of cell walls [wikipedia.org], which animals don't have.
Instead, bacteria can either mutate or readily swap/steal
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At the risk of mixing metaphors, cloning is putting all your eggs in basket.
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Thbbtttt...the supply and demand problem comes with corn now having high prices and farmers reducing their hops and barley crops in order to cash in on high corn prices. Now the damn beer prices are going to g
Re:It's Not Cost Prohibitive... (Score:5, Funny)
Me too! That inorganic stuff is completely inedible...
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http://www.grinningplanet.com/2005/12-27/health-benefits-of-organic-food-article.htm [grinningplanet.com]
http://www.organicconsumers.org/organic/polyphenolics031203.cfm [organicconsumers.org]
The fact is, we don't fully understand nutrition yet (either for plants or humans). Reductionist explanations have repeatedly turned out to be wrong -- first we figured out fats, carbohydrates, and protein, and thought we had it solved.
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Re:What consumers really want to know... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:OT: 25 replies? (Score:5, Funny)
Ahh... the cloning technology has arrived to Slashdot!
Cloning in nature (Score:3, Informative)
And don't think you veggiesaurs are exempt. Have you ever eaten anything grown from a clipping of a plant? That's a clone.
And don't get me started on the beer drinkers who are quaffing yeast pee...
Re:Cloning in nature (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I don't get it either. I mean, people being annoyed/apprehensive about GMO foods, that I get (the discomfort level, I mean, not the irrational fear that follows it). But clones? They're just twins, for goshsakes, a pretty common natural occurrence.
Re:Cloning in nature (Score:5, Interesting)
In the long run, though, cloning your food animals is a bit of a cop out. It means you're trying to maximize your growth/production without establishing sufficient genetic diversity in your strain. As with cloned forests, you've got a highly homogeneous population that is much more susceptible to disease epidemics.
But I admit it would be tempting if they could guarantee a perfect filet mignon every time.
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Except that would miss the point entirely. You'd need to clone a lamb very shortly after it was born, at which point you wouldn't really know how it was going to turn out as an adult. I mean, yes, you can tell if a lamb is going to grow up to be a massively faulty sheep, but you've got no real idea how it's going to look in two years time. Lambs are pretty much just lambs.
You could take samples of genet
Problems with telomeres in clones (Score:3, Funny)
The telomere length varies in cloned animals. Sometimes the clones end up with shorter telomeres since the D.N.A. has already divided countless times. Occasionally, the telomeres in a clone's D.N.A. are longer because they get "reprogrammed". The clone's new telomeres combine with the old ones, giving it abnormally long telomeres.
Now, what does this mean for cloned animals? I don't know, but they do kind of work as end caps on the DNA and if the telomeres wear out, the DNA starts to lose genetic information from the ends. This undoubtedly means the sheep will eventually turn into flesh eating zombie sheep whose meat turns humans into brain sucking zombies as well. Australia will be the first continent to go.
Well, maybe not. Heck, I'm not too worried
Re:Problems with telomeres in clones (Score:5, Funny)
Zombie herbivores? I can see it now... Graaaainnsss....Graaaaiiinnnnssss....
IGMC.
Re:Cloning in nature (Score:5, Insightful)
If you ate a double yolk egg, it was certainly not a cloned animal. Assuming you didn't eat a Balut [wikipedia.org] egg, the egg was unfertilized and thus not an animal at all.
I think you meant to imply that eating a twin is the same as eating a clone. It is not. A clone implies that the animal has identical chromosomes to an already existing (adult or otherwise) animal. Twins (identical) share the same chromosomes because they came from the same zygote and split off in early development.
You are right that some animals and plants are capable of cloning themselves, but no higher order animals and certainly no mammals. In light of the fact that people probably eat cloned fruit (cloned by humans), I can understand their uneasiness with eating cloned mammals.
I would probably eat a cloned steak, but if given the choice, I would probably buy the un-cloned steak every time.
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If you've ever eaten an orange, odds are you've had a clone. If you've ever drunk wine or grape juice, odds are that was a clone too. There's simply not many fruits that aren't clones of eachother, because what often makes a good tasting fruit doesn't make good root stock or high seedling yields. Most people just either don't know, or are so used to it that they don't
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Re:Cloning in nature (Score:5, Insightful)
Customers are expecting non-cloned meat; they're not expecting meat from an animal who resides in a barn with a north-facing door. Accordingly, it would be reasonable for them to know the former, but not the latter.
I do hope that the FDA allow producers to label their meat non-cloned only if it isn't in fact cloned. Yes, scientific studies are important, but in the end, as with organic produce, the customer should at the very least not be lied to. For some, after all, they have an almost religious zeal in their choice. Would be accept non-kosher meat being sold as kosher? The health argument here misses the point.
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And that's exactly the problem I have with this, issues of safety/quality aside. If they are so confident that products from cloned animals are okay, then what's wrong with full disclosure? If they're afraid that cloned products which are labelled as such won't sell, I would argue that the market (customers) has the right to decide whether or not they want to buy it for any reason or
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Again if the problem is that people don't understand cloning, this is an educat
Re:Cloning in nature (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm afraid you aren't understanding the distinction -- or, you're in fact trying to pretend there isn't one with that analogy. Either way, it's specious.
A plant clipping will naturally re-grow, you don't really need to do much with it, because plants have evolved to propagate this way. Put the damned thing in water, and it grows. Hell, it's not even a clone, it's the same original plant essentially. We're cool with that.
However, my limited understanding is that we introduce degradation and errors when we replilcate DNA of mammals. We simply haven't cloned enough animals, over enough generations to have any factual data that the original genes aren't getting slightly borked by the technology which is doing this. We think we know, but we don't.
Hell, new data suggests that by the time a man is in his 70's the DNA in his sperm has degraded substantially. Make a clone of a cow, clone that, and then clone it again. Short of doing a hell of a lot of research, there is no evidence to support the claim this is safe. There is definitely evidence to suggest there is degradation in the genes of clones and the animals aren't as healthy.
IMO, the FDA has said something is safe which they can't possibly know. And, they're doing it to support an industry which doesn't want to be compelled to label the origins of such things.
There simply isn't enough long-term evidence to say it is safe, merely that we've not yet found any evidence that it isn't safe. For a lot of people, that doesn't meet the threshold of proof that we should be eating these things.
Is it fear of the unknown? Possibly. But, how many things used to be considered absolutely safe until it had been around a while? I seem to recall they used to use pesticides on people and entire towns under the belief that it was safe. You need real, long-term data to make the positive assertion it is safe. I don't believe we have that. By the time you fuck with your food supply and find out that it wasn't safe, you're screwed.
By all means, eat your cloned steak. But, I think they should be labelling it, and people should have the choice to buy it or not.
Cheers
Re:Cloning in nature (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, you've illustrated how cloning might be bad for the organism that is cloned, but where you--and everyone wringing their hands about this--falter is by then suggesting that this has some sort of health impact on someone who eats it.
Your stomach and small intestine have absolutely no interest whatsoever in the quality of food's DNA. It's just matter to be converted into glucose for cells to burn. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that your body somehow incorporates DNA, good or otherwise, into your body. If that were the case, I'd be a fish right about now, being that I eat some every single day (living in Japan). But last I checked, I was still a crap swimmer, and afraid of water to boot.
To sum up, of course cloned animals are safe to eat. So are GM products. Pesticides, herbicides, growth hormones, antibiotics... Not so much. But animals and plants that do not produce toxins or aren't full of rocks or whatever? Absolutely fine.
I simply cannot understand how so many people can problematize such a simple thing as digestion of organic matter. There are plenty of things to consider when talking about mass cloning and/or mass GM, but health most certainly is not one of them.
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A plant clipping will naturally re-grow, you don't really need to do much with it,
I'm not really sure what "natural" means. It seems to have something to do with not being influenced or created by people. If that's the case, NONE of the food you eat on a daily basis is "natural", even the super-earth-friendly organic stuff, even something grown in your own garden. Basically all our food has been engineered by us for thousands of years, since agriculture began.
However, my limited understanding is that we
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Not only are they clones, but they're the "bad" kind of "adult" clones that inherit genetic damage. If you're against cloned food, never eat anything with apples in it.
Some non-cloned, non-varietal mutt apples are pretty good, it's just hit-or-miss. If you're opposed to cloning, you can grow your own apples. Just plant
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Cows have been made dependent on humans. The term is Domestication. Cows, like sheep, used to be perfectly independent from humans before the Egyptians trained them [wikipedia.org] into submission.
That said, in America, the cows bred are so pumped up on growth hormones and other meat-meddling stuff that they will no-doubt differ very greatly from their pre-Western civilisation ancestors abov
Edible (Score:5, Funny)
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I'd much rather... (Score:5, Interesting)
if cow A is good to eat, then a clone of cow A should be just as good to eat.
Re:I'd much rather... (Score:5, Insightful)
The two are not mutually exclusive.
Big Food Corp AKA the Family Pharm (Score:5, Interesting)
The two are not mutually exclusive.
Nice understatement.
The real heart of the matter isn't "frankenfood" (though it's a marketing issue, for sure) or the inevitable genetic damage carried forward by the clones; it's the way that the food industry is becoming more capital intensive through ideological progress, vertical integration and conglomeration, and through designing a complex chain of pharmacological dependencies. All these things undermine your food security by replacing family farms (and local processors) with giant corporate systems that DO NOT have you or your community's best interests at heart.
Cloned, monogenetic livestock herds will require Big Pharma to support them, they'll be susceptible to epidemics and genetic flaws. They will go hand in hand with methods of production that are over-scale and thus risky. They will be controlled by a very few corporate giants, and will further push farmers out of business, to be replaced by more of the same faceless institutions.
I'm all for mass international corporate production--of electronics. Food, however, is different. Our food security requires
well, that's as a start. Food security isn't about stockpiling or having enough or locking your roommates out of the pocket pizzas. It's about integrating the food system into the regional economy and seeking better quality and diversity, it's about reliability and nutrition, and minimizing risks.
Cloned livestock herds will work against food security, because of how they will be developed, produced, and owned. The so-called health issues are second to these concerns.
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Your faulty assumptions are:
1. Family farms DO have your best interests at heart.
2. Giant agribusinesses are somehow completely unaware of and unconcerned with the risks of genetic monocultures and chemical dependencies.
1: This is not a faulty assumption, just because you know some a-hole farmers (I'm in Canada, so YMMV.) Most farmers care, and the less in hock they are to the vertical integration duopoly of banks and industry suppliers, the more they care. However, face to face interaction introduces accountability at the personal level. Know Thy Farmer, a principle of food security.
2: I am not assuming this--maybe you're confusing individuals in a corporation with that corp as a legal entity. I am assuming (based on e
Re:I'd much rather... (Score:4, Insightful)
readers please observe the following disclaimer:
"clone" does not mean "exact copy"
"should": refers to ideal scenario only, and is not necessarily applicable to the real world
"just as good": does not necessarily refer to consumer satisfaction
IMO, the parent comment is just the sort of response you'd expect from a computer science crowd trying to comment on biological systems. Cloning a cow is not the same as cloning a partition on a hard disk.
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Will this be the end of... (Score:4, Funny)
And never *never* will you find a chicken quite so tasty...?
Until they get cloning right.... (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously there are worse things to eat that the FDA has approved. But still, considering gene therapy is at hand, it does make me hold caution to ingesting something that may contain genetic issues.
Re:Until they get cloning right.... (Score:5, Informative)
The genetic issues are confined to the animal. You can't screw up your own DNA by eating meat that has faulty DNA. I can think of a few possibilities that could happen down the line: genetic mutations in the cloned animals makes them more prone to disease. But, meat is already screened for human-communicable diseases, so nothing to worry about there, except that cloning may not prove to be a viable solution to making more livestock. Genetic mutations in the cloned animals cause them to grow differently, changing the quality of the meat. OK, that's something to be a bit concerned about, but grade A sirloin is grade A sirloin. I suppose if the taste was so different that it doesn't taste like cow, chicken, etc. any more they may need to start labeling stuff better (and show us pictures of the animals that are so freaky they don't taste like their ancestors any more). Cloned animals may not be able to reproduce. Of course, they don't really care about that since they're cloning instead of procreating.
All in all, there's nothing to worry about, and labeling meat as 'CLONED' will just make it easier for consumers to boycott perfectly safe products. There's just too much mis-information about a lot of biotechnology and I don't think that enabling advocacy groups to spread a bunch of FUD is the best plan. If you feel that badly about it, buy a ranch and grow your own. I assume that you'll also go back to eating maize instead of corn -- octoploid genetic freak vegetables.
Re:Until they get cloning right.... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's ok (Score:5, Funny)
The FDA Approves Shit Anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the same FDA that has permitted plenty of E. coli outbreaks [google.com] because they refuse to put an end to unhealthy meat practices.
This is the same FDA that bends to political pressure instead of caring about the health of the American public it is supposed to protect.
What about hormones which possibly cause early puberty in girls? I could go on but I won't bother, we all know what we're putting into our bodies...
Cloned beef may be safe but it's the practices that they allow outside of this that really suck and I wouldn't trust a fucking thing they approve and neither should you. If only that beef didn't taste SO good
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Re:The FDA Approves Shit Anyway (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, he is. Read your link. It may be on the FDA's web site, but it lists the responsibilities and powers granted to the Secretary of Agriculture, who is the head of the Department of Agriculture, not the Food and Drug Administration (which is an agency in the Department of Health and Human Services, led by the Secretary of Health and Human Services).
No, I have no idea why the FDA has law that doesn't concern them on their web site.
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Touche.
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No label? (Score:5, Insightful)
This has all happened before... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, when the first smallpox vaccine was invented, there were very similair panics to what we see today over genetic engineering.
People are stupid, but they are also easily distracted and forget last year's MAJOR CRISIS in favor of this year's equally all-consuming disaster.
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I'd agree with you, but eating Alar-treated apples [wikipedia.org] has so obviously turned us all into a bunch of blind, cancerous mutants, that we've all learned our lesson.
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2) It was new and different and the
Freerange/Organic more important imo (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Freerange/Organic more important imo (Score:5, Insightful)
Once scientists have perfected vat-grown meat [wikipedia.org], you'll be able to eat meat without concern for the ethical implications. Until then, human consumption of meat will continue to cause unnecessary harm to living, feeling animals, among whom are included chickens and fish.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Insightful)
ALL animals have very similar thoughts and receptors to our own. Things like fear and pain are primordial and necessary for any survival. Other things that are necessary generally involve some sort of social structure in most animals, which involves, yes, thought! The only thing we think we have over animals is reason (though the lack of communication is probably what is the barrier here), though with some parts of the world as crazy as they are, I would not exactly say that many of us actually foll
Re:Freerange/Organic more important imo (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be pretty remarkable if fish didn't sense pain. The question is whether they are *conscious* of pain (or anything else).
they are widely considered to be as intelligent as mammals
That assertion doesn't make any sense. Mammals include homo sapiens, blue whales, and the bumblebee bat. I'm pretty confident I'm more intelligent than a chicken.
The site you use to back up your claim is biased, and a few quotes without context do not make it "widely considered".
Not that I think animal welfare is something we should ignore, but we should be scientific about it.
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People should ask of themselves what exactly they are capable of and comfortable with, and accept responsibility for what they eat. In doing so, I've becom
No more doggy bags (Score:5, Funny)
Dan East
No diversity = higher risk (Score:5, Insightful)
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Dolly not the first animal cloned (Score:2)
This steak... (Score:2, Funny)
meanwhile, on the industry side... (Score:5, Insightful)
groups opposed to cloning in the food chain will now concentrate their efforts on convincing more suppliers to boycott the business of cloning
If GMO grain and hormone-loaded-milk are any example, the industry is concentrating on keeping the FDA from requiring industry mark which meat is from cloned animals. *And* aggressively going after businesses that market food as NOT being cloned/GMO/hormone-loaded.
It's absolutely hilarious to listen to the logic: "If we labeled it, people wouldn't buy it." Ho, really? No kidding, sherlock! That's how capitalism works. And guess what? 1/3rd of America doesn't want anything to do with you.
I'm so tired of farmers and businessmen that are the first to yack about "freedom" but keep begging for the government to save them / prop them up. As more and more people start demanding organic foods, the non-organic foods will drop in price because demand drops. I'll bet anything that the non-organic agribusinesses will go running to Congress begging for larger handouts...
Not Geneticallly Identical (Score:5, Informative)
We don't know that those lowered telomere counts affect the tissue in any way that affects the eater. But we also don't know that it doesn't affect us. We do know that the animals die much younger, because telomere countdowns are directly reflected in the aging process. So a "middle aged" cloned sheep is really like an old natural sheep. And there could very well be many other effects, some of which are much more subtle, some of which could be unhealthy. The FDA should not even allow sale of these animals for food until their hazards are disproven.
But we won't even be able to tell the basic difference by looking at the label. Because the food industry doesn't want us to know, because they have their reasons for cloning that have nothing to do with our health or safety.
That's shows what's unnatural about our government that's protecting these industries, rather than letting us decide how to protect ourselves, when the FDA won't.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Until their hazards are disproven? I'm not sure that it's scientifically possible to do that...
Nature tells us... (Score:3, Insightful)
When that stops, trouble starts. It's that simple.
Label it at least! (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a consumer rights issue.
All up and down this post, geneticists and biology teachers have been going on and on about telomeres and banana clones and blah blah blah...the fact is, meat from a cloned animal is NOT the same as meat from an animal born as a twin. The long term consequences of narrowing genetic diversity in biological food product (what cows have become) could have very nasty consequences.
The FDA did their studies and approved cloned meat. Fine by me, but we have the right to know WHAT we are eating...especially in regards to this issue.
Dolly: Certainly not the first cloned animal (Score:5, Informative)
What?
Dolly was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell. I think the first cloned animal (if you don't, not counting bacteria and other things that do it on their own) was a tadpole in the 1950s.
Public Opinion (Score:3, Interesting)
1/3 think it's ok
1/3 are somewhere in the middle
And maybe 1 in 1000 know enough to have a meaningful opinion at all.
Re: (Score:2)
I am quite sure you have eaten many clones. Humans have been cultivating and eating cloned fruits and vegetables for many centuries.
Re: (Score:2)
As if the FDA doesn't control veggies...
Besides, clones are not restricted to animals. In the world of plants more freaky genetic things happen.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
oh, but i only eat organic vegtables i hear you say? hate to break it to you but there's plenty of organic things that are deadly or more so then non organic....
Re:Glad I'm a veg (Score:4, Interesting)
If you are an ovo-lacto vegetarian (no meat at all, but haven't given up eggs and dairy) like me, then you need to be concerned. Potentially any dairy will now be able to use cloned cows to produce their milk and butter, which they can then sell to us without revealing that fact. I am already very concerned regarding what dairies I purchase from, simply due to my views on animal rights, but this will add yet another variable to the situation. I recommend that you not blow this off as something that will not affect you.
For the record, I currently buy what milk I do use from Organic Valley [organicvalley.coop], an American organic coop owned and operated by the small family farms that make it up. They are quite open regarding their methods and the treatment of their animals, so I feel at least relatively satisfied in that respect.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And this in the best case scenario where the makers of the animal don't try to sq
Re:Continue to Oppose? (Score:4, Insightful)
your own example of fruit shoots you down, all fruit is transplanted on root stocks and cloned from the same tree's over and over.it's been done this way for hundreds of years with no ill effects, so there's your long term evidence.
not only that but through selective breeding and tigthly run farming you've pretty much been eating the same cow for decades anyway.
also i might add that while each cow has the same DNA, they will be different in many subtle ways influcened by their environment.
And they aren't prohibiting it, just not requiring it which IS free, unlike your own fascist solution of government mandated labels.
Bad analogy -- plant cuttings != animal cloning (Score:3, Interesting)
Um, dude, I hate to break it to you, but cuttings of any sort, grafted to root stocks or planted on their own, are not cloned, but are rather in effect offshoots of the same original plant. As numerous other posters have noted, cloning is an entirely different process, which involves taking the genetic stock of an adult organism and creating an embr
Re:Continue to Oppose? (Score:4, Interesting)
eeeeeeeh! wrong answer. taking cuttings and striking them is no different to cloning, and it's been done by humans for 100's of years.
"my very inexpert understanding of what cloning means"
I think this makes a point all on it's own.
"Good thing the fascist government is stepping in and regulating lead in children's toys."
nice going you even played the "Think of the children card". pity your confusing something known to be toxic with something that's known not to be....
oh and cloning is has nothing to do with genetically modified crops, if anything it's EXACTLY the oppersite since it's purpose is to get the exact same gene's over and over. as usual you people are confused about what your opposed to.
Re:Whoa whoa whoa. Hold on a second. (Score:4, Informative)
Very few animals bred for food get to actually remain as breeding stock. The females have a better chance since they can produce better feed animals for years. The breeding process is very tightly controlled. Consider what the sperm from a champion bull is worth. Likewise for a champion dairy bull.
No diversity is present in the industry. Everything is bred for a purpose. Nature has nothing to do with it.