FDA: Cloned livestock is safe to eat

Source
how does everyone feel about this? i personally don't really like the idea and that as of right now their talking that the cloned livestock doesn't have to be labeled as such when its packaged.

Yes, I agree it definitely should be labeled... Cloning is still just too damn primitive and the full risks are still unknown.

Remember that excellent steak you had, and you have never had one like it since. Well now you can.

There is really no reason why the cloned meat wouldn't be safe. But another question is...why?? Why clone when the old way still works. With cloning, the clone becomes progressively shorter-lived and eventually you have to start the whole thing over again.

Here's some response to this issue.

SCIENCE IN SOCIETY:
Dutch Pull the Plug on Cow Cloning
Martin Enserink

AMSTERDAM--In an unprecedented move, the Dutch minister of agriculture on 26 February put a stop to cloning experiments carried out by Pharming, a company based in Leiden, the Netherlands, that specializes in producing drugs in milk. According to the government, Pharming must desist from cloning cows until it proves that drugs from such animals are better than those made by other methods. In response, the company has announced plans to move its cloning research to the United States.

Decrying the ruling, consumer groups gave warning that cloned food would enter the food chain untested on humans, and from a field of science in which cloned animals are often born sick or with severe abnormalities. “Consumers are going to be having a product that has potential safety issues and a whole load of ethical issues tied to it, without any labelling,” said Joseph Mendelson, legal director of the Washington-based Centre for Food Safety.

Some US consumer groups maintain that surrogate mothers, in which the cloned animals are grown, are treated with high levels of hormones. They claim that clones are often born with severely compromised immune systems and receive massive doses of antibiotics, opening the way for large quantities of pharmaceuticals to enter the food supply.

The US National Academy of Sciences also warned recently that the commercialization of cloned livestock for food production could increase the incidence of food-borne illness, such as E-coli infections.

Cloned cows producing human antibodies could soon be drafted into the battle against a wide variety of microbes, including those attractive to terrorists.

James Robl at the Connecticut-based company Hematech and his colleagues used artificial chromosomes and cloning technology to create cattle that contained a full suite of functional human antibody genes.

However before any antibodies the animals produce can be used in patients, the researchers need to knock out the cows' own antibody genes. This would make it possible to harvest pure human antibodies from the animals.

What does this mean? The Dutch banned the research and the companies performing the research there have moved to the United States. We have just lifted the ban here and now there is talk of producing human polyclonal antibodies with the cloned animals. On top of it all, the new products will not be labeled at the market.

Not sure what I think of this.
I personally would never knowingly eat a cloned Big Mac.
Although i think it could be put to great use.
Think of all the poor starving people in Africa,North Korea.
This could bring added food to areas that have little.

Originally posted by forestlady
There is really no reason why the cloned meat wouldn't be safe. But another question is...why?? Why clone when the old way still works. With cloning, the clone becomes progressively shorter-lived and eventually you have to start the whole thing over again.

Link please.... the only time I hear that brought up is in some cliched scifi flick. Also if this does infact turn out to be a real problem, then all we have to do is regrow the telomeres every so often. Don't have the technology to do that reliably yet, but it's coming. There is a gene switch that governs it taht was just discovered. Lots of applications that stuff has...

Frankly, I can't wait until this technology reaches the point where we can selectively clone specific organs/tissues within nutrient vats in a mass production environment for implantation and consumption. Organ and Blood donation could be a thing of the past and true "cruelty free" meat will arrive. Though in the meantime we have to test it more thoroughly. Dolly was only born 10 years ago.

I could see the government or governments using this as a way to create some unknown virus's and what have you that enter the population would be a great way to do some population control

“Consumers are going to be having a product that has potential safety issues and a whole load of ethical issues tied to it, without any labelling,” said Joseph Mendelson, legal director of the Washington-based Centre for Food Safety.

Viruses? Government control?
Cloning involves making a copy of a living organism by artificially giving birth to an offspring using it's genes. Which makes it exactly as harmless as eating the original animal.

DNA modification is what you ought to be concerned about, cloning is nothing more than finding a healthy animal, and making more of it.

I would have absolutely no concerns what-so-ever in eating a cloned animal.

Even if they decide to go forth with DNA modification, there still is little reason to be concerned. If you eat a modified DNA strain it's not going to do a damned thing to you. Know why?
Look at it this way.
If you eat a cow, do you become one?
No of course not... but you just ate it's DNA.
Digesting DNA has NO affect on you at all... any worries about it is just plain paranoia of what you don't understand.

Cloning for consumption and without labels to tell.

No, I don't like it and I don't have to eat it.

So far I have given up on red meat, and if I must have to have it, I can afford to have from organic sources.

I don't like it and I won't take it.

But if any of you have no problem with it, then be happy having your fill of it.

The only cloning I want is the one that is to save lives no to be feed by it.

I will take my time and see in 20 years if I am still around what the side effects will be.

Originally posted by Black_Fox
Although i think it could be put to great use.
Think of all the poor starving people in Africa,North Korea.
This could bring added food to areas that have little.

If anyone were truly concerned with the starving peoples of where-ever, then we'd stop paying farmers to not grow crops... There is more than enough food to go around -- it'd just change the market prices, and people wouldn't make 'enough' profit.

Or we could go over there and make the land farm-able again.. oh, wait, the warlords won't have it...

While I hope that this is put to good use, somehow I think it's all in the name of profit -- and not human profit, but a handful of people who are being greedy...


Edit: Sorry! Didn't make it to the bottom of the page.. I shall carry this to the other thread.

[edit on 28-12-2006 by Diseria]

Originally posted by Black_Fox
Not sure what I think of this.
I personally would never knowingly eat a cloned Big Mac.
Although i think it could be put to great use.
Think of all the poor starving people in Africa,North Korea.
This could bring added food to areas that have little.

see www.abovetopsecret.com...

and

www.abovetopsecret.com...

This empty promise is an old hat by which GM crops were sold a while ago, too bad only royalty fees for a few corporations soared, while the FDA and thier colleagues in foreign countries turned a blind eye towards side effects.

Turns out the stuff has lower yields overall, ruins microbial live and soil quality, emits toxic, insect killing pollen and on top of all that turned out to be susceptible to exactly the parasites they were supposedly immune against.

a complete disaster, the two threads i linked should have all the references you need.

So, please spare us the world hunger argument, if anything, destroying ecosystems and fertile soils will aggravate the situation. Remember: fewer goods --> higher markup, that's all that counts and everyone is in the market for food, ie. it's all a scam.

[edit on 29-12-2006 by Long Lance]

Originally posted by sardion2000
Yes, I agree it definitely should be labeled... Cloning is still just too damn primitive and the full risks are still unknown.

Cloning is primitive yes, but what is primitive is the tools to actually make the clone grow. As soon as it grows, it is a replica of the 'mother', and therefore just as safe to eat.

The point about cloning, is that you can find the perfect cow for instance - With sweet, tender meat and it grows at 2x rate compared to normal cows for instance, and it has an improved immune system. In that way, its cheaper to grow the cow, it gives better meat and it grows faster.

You clone it and suddenly have 10 replicas of the perfect cow --> Cheaper and better food.

In my eyes the only thing holding this back, is the primitive cloning methods and the fact that most people don't know s*** about what this is about..

You won't be eating meat from a cloned cow. You will be eating meat from the cloned cow’s progeny. Cloning is WAY too expensive to be used as a direct source of food.

If you insist on labeling indicating that the meat you’re looking at came from the sons and daughters of cloned animals, you should insist that all bottles of wine have a label indicating that it came from grapes from a cloned grapevine.

Originally posted by hlesterjerome
You won't be eating meat from a cloned cow. You will be eating meat from the cloned cow’s progeny. Cloning is WAY too expensive to be used as a direct source of food.

As it is now, yes, but that is not cloning. The prospects of this is to get cloning-methods so cheap, that it is worthwhile.

Originally posted by sardion2000

Originally posted by forestlady
There is really no reason why the cloned meat wouldn't be safe. But another question is...why?? Why clone when the old way still works. With cloning, the clone becomes progressively shorter-lived and eventually you have to start the whole thing over again.

Link please.... the only time I hear that brought up is in some cliched scifi flick. Also if this does infact turn out to be a real problem, then all we have to do is regrow the telomeres every so often. Don't have the technology to do that reliably yet, but it's coming. There is a gene switch that governs it taht was just discovered. Lots of applications that stuff has...

Frankly, I can't wait until this technology reaches the point where we can selectively clone specific organs/tissues within nutrient vats in a mass production environment for implantation and consumption. Organ and Blood donation could be a thing of the past and true "cruelty free" meat will arrive. Though in the meantime we have to test it more thoroughly. Dolly was only born 10 years ago.

My source is my husband, a scientist who personally worked with Liz Blackburn, one of the 3 top scientists in the world, who are working with telemers and life-extension. It works like this: if you clone a 2 y.o. sheep, the telemers erode as if it's already 2 y.o., so you have already lost 2 years of the sheep's life. One day they will be able to solve the telemer problem, but not yet.

Clones are not as healthy and they don't live as long as the original animal. Is it safe to eat? Of course it is, it's just like eating the original animal. I just don't see this as practical, though, because farmers would need to find an animal to be the surrogate animal to give birth; thus requiring more animals than they have presently i.e. not cost effective.

As for the recently discovered gene switch, my husband was one that helped Liz develop that theory - they both agreed that it was a gene that needed to be switched off. It turns out they were both right. This could open all sorts of new doors, it's amazing.

Thanks forestlady, can you ask you significant other to dig up some links for me? I'd love to learn more about this as Biology isn't my strong suit.