Letters to the Editor
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Well, I have no objection..
If the base animal is safe to eat, why would the clone be any different, save from what is added to the beast after it's born (Hormones, antibiotics, etc.)..
Would it make any kind of sense to use a base animal with genetic problems?
I don't see any reason not to consume it if it's a clone of a healthy animal.
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Cloned Schmoned
This is a totally bogus issue. It would make a lot more sense to agitate for labels showing the antibiotics that have been fed to the animals we eat.
Given all the crap that goes into our food supply hysteria about cloned animals is beyond stupid.
So why are you hyping this issue?
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Clone = after-the-fact twin
I just don't get why someone would be anxious about cloned food--does the FDA notify us when a particular calf is born a twin? That's just a "natural" clone (assuming an identical twin), and it's totally not an issue.
Cloning livestock represents other threats--it minimizes the disease resistance of the herd by reducing the genetic variety of that herd, and could result in a loss of biodiversity in the form of certain genetic traits. Those are concerns. Those warrant sustained conversations about ethics and genetics.
But unless you want to be 100% sure you're not eating twins either, what's the deal with clones?
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public interest v. public opinion
Following pulic opinion is not, de facto, in the public interest.
If a majority wouldn't drink from water fountains that other races had, and certainly wouldn't let their children do so, it doesn't follow that those opinions are well reasoned, or that it's in the public interest to defer to them.
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I'm surprised
no one has posted FOR labeling food. This isn't a matter of whether the food is safe or not, it's a matter of having a CHOICE about what we eat. It's also yet another example of Republicans being against government regulations unless they are for them. I say put the labels on the food and "let the market decide."
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@wright5579
There is nothing stopping companies from marketing non-cloned food. The market can decide. If people don't want to eat cloned meat, get meat from producers who don't clone.
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Miising the Point
The point is not whether or not it would be safe to eat a cloned animal. As pointed out, if the original animal was safe to eat, we can reasonably expect that the cloned offspring would be as well. Besides, cloning an animal isn't a cheap process, I understand that cloned offspring would be more like to be used to produce reproductive cells, e.g. sperm for artificial insemination, rather than meat.
The question is whether or not we have the right to know what we're buying and what we're eating. As I see it, FDA and USDA approval is the base requirement for a product appearing on the market, it's not enough to get me to actually ingest it. As we've seen in the past with bovine growth hormone and other routinely administered veterinary pharmaceuticals, the FDA and USDA are far more interested in protecting agribusiness than they are in protecting consumers.
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Follow the footsteps of Organics
If anti-cloned food takes off, I expect it to follow in the footsteps of organics:
(A) Some crazy folks organize locally to ensure they're purchasing non-cloned meat.
(B) Some stores figure out they can make money by certifying the meat as non-cloned and labeling it.
(C) One of the stores becomes a nationwide retailer, or a nationwide retailer takes up the business model.
(D) Other businesses figure out there's money to be made as well, and ask the FDA for mandatory labeling (with the weakest certification possible).
(E) You can walk into the nation's largest supermarket and purchase non-cloned, labeled meat.
Now, time to go find some other crazy neighbors...
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Focus group recruiting
You're grasping at straws with that last bit, Alex. Focus groups aren't designed to represent opinion. That takes a large, random sample. Why spend money to include the views of vegetarians, etc. when you already know what they'll say? If the FDA had wanted to stack the groups with industry advocates, they could have done so. It makes no sense to assume something nefarious with regard to their "bias" given the study's results. Assume it instead for their disregard of the findings, and leave it at that.
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I think the headline of the post is misleading
Would it not be more intellectually honest to say "FDA disregarded survey results"? The way it reads it sounds more like they disregarded some scientific study on the safety of the products.
Just my opinion.
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Ridiculous
I would certainly feed meat from a cloned animal to my children. And I'm not interested in knowing whether or not it's cloned. However, as a previous poster noted for themselves, I'm much more concerned about what is put into the animal afterthefact (such as hormones and antibiotics). For all the members of their focus groups to say that they wouldn't serve the cloned meat to their kids says to me that there was definitely some bias in the focus groups. Not everyone is going to object.
And why would public opinion be taken into account when requiring or not a label that would be meant to indicate some sort of safety issue. There is no safety issue.
And while there is apparently no safety issue in giving growth hormones to cows, so the feds didn't require a label, the food industry learned the value of voluntary labelling for those of us who are concerned about the hormones.
The food industry is going to have the same response to this issue. If there is enough of an uproar, they will label the meat when it is not cloned. And people will have the choice if it is really an issue for them. There does not need to be mandatory labelling.
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Kind of a misleading headline
"FDA disregarded results on food from cloned animals"
Kind of implies that the FDA disregarded scientific results.
In fact what the FDA did was disregard the evidence of the prevelence of ignorant superstitions among the general populace.
Do we want the FDA making choices based on such superstitions?
The information contributed nothing to the debate on saftey, which is the mandate of the FDA.
I don't want them considering the moral and superstitious objections in how I am treated for disease, I don't want them to consider such things when debateing what I eat.
Taking into account the foolish belifes of the American people is the congresses responsibility, not the responsibility of the nations regulatory agencies.