Cloned Meat...

I receive morning emails called the Morning Cup. These are filled with stories about happenings within the Food Industry. There is a gentleman named Bob that does little editorial pieces about random thins such as his overweight doctor that told him to watch his carbohydrate intake. Many times below his post he will post comments that he received from people about previous editorials. This is one of them in response to his discussion about how the FDA has approved the sale of cloned meat.

"Bob, cloned animals will be pressed on us from the industry and eventually, over time, become familiar and therefore acceptable. However, I doubt that the public will go along quickly nor easily. The need for cloned animals is similar to the need for bovine growth hormone to get more milk per cow when there was already a surplus of milk or irradiating meat that can still be contaminated later: These things are not driven by any lofty desire to help mankind or improve our food supply but simply to improve economics for business, and they offer little or no benefit to the public. The fact that our wonderful government (who of course is never influenced by lobbyists, big business, pro-business administrations, politics, bureaucratic blindness, or self-interest) has also approved and certified as safe such famous things as DDT, thalidomide, DES, defective polio vaccines in the early days, etc., certainly makes me feel good about eating meat or dairy from cloned animals. Hey, I'm happy to eat anything so the food companies can create distorted creatures with more meat or higher milk output or longer shelf life so they can save or make more money! Sure. Really! ..... Certainly having some solid science and greater peer concurrence behind a decision is important, but what these folks keep missing, over and over and over, is that people for some reason don't completely trust the FDA nor big business, and people don't want to find out x-years from now that it was all wrong and they've been harmed. Let's see: Should I take a chance on my health for no good reason or just go safe? Mmmm ..... Maybe food from cloned animals will be proven as truly safe after much time to rule out long-term effects not picked up yet, and maybe the public will embrace it after a time as it gradually insinuates itself on us. But for now, I'm in your camp, Bob, maybe for some different reasons but same endpoint. I just hope the FDA displays enough respect for the public it allegedly serves and enough integrity to control the companies that it's supposed to regulate by insisting that food from cloned animals be so labeled so we dumb unenlightened consumers can make our choices. The companies will survive, not to worry."


I believe that some of these views are shared by many people and I find it interesting that the writer states that people don't completely trust the FDA. To me it is amazing how that role of governmental bodies has changed from making decisions like fortifying flours with folic acid and fortifying milk with vitamin D to now regulating artificial flavors and passing cloned meat as safe.
I believe it is necessary to make changes within our food system in order to be able to effectively and sustainably produce food for the whole US. But I don't know the reasoning behind the cloning of animals and the desire to use these animals for a meat source. As far as I am concerned animals are capable of breeding. They do not need humans to physically remove DNA from them and make a clone.